<story><title>Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life</title><url>https://kevingal.com/blog/mona-lisa-gol.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>waltbosz</author><text>For years I&amp;#x27;m been thinking about something like this in terms of data compression:&lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to have some sort of cellular automata program that generates the uncompressed data after so many generations.&lt;p&gt;The compressed data would be the start state of the game field, which over several generations would produce the uncompressed data.&lt;p&gt;For it to work, you would have to start with the uncompressed data and work backwards. Which is what the author of this article is trying to do with these pictures.&lt;p&gt;Based on what I can understand from the article, there is no hope for my data compression scheme.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tobias3</author><text>This is addressed since forever in the comp.compression faq &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.faqs.org&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;compression-faq&amp;#x2F;part1&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.faqs.org&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;compression-faq&amp;#x2F;part1&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; see &amp;quot;9.2 The counting argument&amp;quot; and the link there to &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dogma.net&amp;#x2F;markn&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html#Q19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dogma.net&amp;#x2F;markn&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html#Q19&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life</title><url>https://kevingal.com/blog/mona-lisa-gol.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>waltbosz</author><text>For years I&amp;#x27;m been thinking about something like this in terms of data compression:&lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to have some sort of cellular automata program that generates the uncompressed data after so many generations.&lt;p&gt;The compressed data would be the start state of the game field, which over several generations would produce the uncompressed data.&lt;p&gt;For it to work, you would have to start with the uncompressed data and work backwards. Which is what the author of this article is trying to do with these pictures.&lt;p&gt;Based on what I can understand from the article, there is no hope for my data compression scheme.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BuildTheRobots</author><text>I couldn&amp;#x27;t read this without thinking of πfs (Pi FS).&lt;p&gt;Pi being an irrational number contains all other numbers. Therefor rather than sending someone a file (eg a video) all you need to do is search the never-ending π and send people the offset instead. 100% compression here we go.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;philipl&amp;#x2F;pifs&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;philipl&amp;#x2F;pifs&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In reality though, searching through Pi to find that offset - especially for bigger files, can take a while.</text></comment>