News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by saulpw on Thursday June 25, 2026 @11:47PM (#48682125)
random digits aren't compressible though?
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by SV_BubbleTime on Thursday June 25, 2026 @11:51PM (#48682142)
Random digits are compressible though.

Random data does not mean it does not match a pattern in your dictionary for example.

Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by gnabgib on Thursday June 25, 2026 @11:56PM (#48682167)
No.. they're not. Do you understand random (the apparent or actual lack of definite patterns or predictability[0]) or compression (reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy[1])?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression

Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by thin_carapace on Friday June 26, 2026 @12:22AM (#48682284)
by this definition, a random dataset could apparently present no patterns, while presenting non apparent patterns.
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by ufocia on Friday June 26, 2026 @12:58AM (#48682488)
Sounds like presenting no patterns, apparently or otherwise, would be a pattern in itself.
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by saulpw on Friday June 26, 2026 @11:49AM (#48688061)
That's like a teenage "i am very smart" thinking. I mean sure we can look at some string of random bits and say "that looks random" but you can't just generate any old string of random bits to replace it (which would be the only 'pattern' that could be leveraged for compression here). If it's encrypted it'll also appear random, and therefore not be compressible, but you have to encode every byte exactly or the message won't be decryptable.
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by IncreasePosts on Friday June 26, 2026 @03:33AM (#48683503)
Over infinite runs, you can't compress random data, but that doesn't mean any finite string of random digits is incompressible
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by gcr on Friday June 26, 2026 @09:30AM (#48686433)
I could write a program to generate the first 100MB of pi in a couple kilobytes. That certainly counts as “data compression” but isn’t useful outside this particular problem instance.
Re:Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV in... by echoangle on Saturday June 27, 2026 @03:05AM (#48695883)
Yeah, because the digits of pi aren’t random.