Compression of random binary data

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:11 AM, Steve D'Aprano
<steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Oct 2017 02:40 am, Lele Gaifax wrote:
>
>> Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> writes:
>>
>>> But given an empty file, how do you distinguish the empty file you get
>>> from 'music.mp3' and the identical empty file you get from 'movie.avi'?
>>
>> That's simple enough: of course one empty file would be
>> "music.mp3.zip.zip.zip", while the other would be
>> "movie.avi.zip.zip.zip.zip.zip"... some sort of
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory applied to file system entries
>> :-)
>
>
> Does that mean if I name an empty file
>
> serenity2-by-joss-whedon.avi.zip.zip.zip.zip.zip
>
> Dancerswithnumbers' magic algorithm will recreate the movie from some
> alternative universe where it actually exists?
>
> Awesome.

Yes, but then you'd get
dmca-takedown-request.pdf.zip.zip.zip.zip.zip.zip.zip which would also
be empty.

ChrisA