500000 EUR is the prize pool. Each winner has to gain at least 1% improvement over previous record to claim a prize that is proportional to the improvement. Getting the full 500000 EUR prize requires an 100% improvement (i.e. compressing 1GB to zero bytes).
because with that knowledge, you will be able to decompress 0 dollar to infinite dollars which the storage mafia will pay you for not publishing your breakthrough in making them obsolete.
Let's say you really find a new, much much better compression algorithm for texts. I do believe that soon new applications will appear that will make use of the whole storage space that existing data storage devices can offer.
Are you possibly hinting at the endless stream of "new generation iWasteware camera, now with 2 gigapixel sensor" in combination with camera apps that put a (high) limit on the lowest resolution one can choose?
I did not have exactly this application in mind, but I was aware that this kind of waste does exist for many commercial applications when I was writing my reply.
Well, if you achieve this, you'll basically have proven that something (a bunch of information) equals nothing (no information). So 1=0.
Once you have that, becoming rich is trivial. Multiplying both sides of the equation by one trillion, 1 trillion = 0. So open a bank account with $0, now you have one trillion. Easy.
A funnier (although grimmer) way: let p be the world's population. Multiplying both sides of the equation by (p-1) you get p-1=0. Thus, p=1. If you assume that you exist (which is a reasonable assumption, following Descartes's reasoning) you now own all the wealth in the world.
I think personally I can compress $1b into 0 within a week, but $1tr would be a real challenge. Another thing I should point out that I don't support compressing people (for now).
holographic storage, if we can harness the zero point field the way Karl Pribram postulated cognitive memory works (i.e. using the Void for storage) may actually get us to 0 "physical" B ;)
Not really 0, since any exe file will have some minimum length, and that's defined to be part of the calculation.
Conceptually you could cram it into some dozens of bytes (trivial initial state of the universe + basic physics + iteration). In practice, of course, that's ridiculous.
Well, all right, I could use conventional compression such that S2 is zero, by making S1 what would have been S1 + S2. That still leaves the "compressed image" having zero bytes, by hiding the actual compressed image in the executable.
Note well: I am not claiming that there is any reasonable reason to do this. It's just a way to say "well acksually..."
So your way around is by baking the data into the executable instead?
How good of a ”solution” is that in reality? Like what if you were tasked to decompress multiple different files? Would you bake does into the executable aswell?
Personally, I would count this way around as invalid.
Notice how you had to change the wording in this comment to make the scenario work. If the problem statement is "compressing 1GB to zero bytes" or "decompress 1GB from zero bytes" then that trick is easily called out as invalid.
