We know that while the cost per byte of persistent storage has dropped hugely over the years, it’s still a pain to fork out for a new disk drive. This must be why [MadAvidCoder] has taken a different approach to storage, placing files as multiple encoded pieces of metadata in Wikipedia edits.
The project takes a file, compresses it, and spits out small innocuous strings. These are placed in the comments for Wikipedia edits — which they are at pains to stress — were all legitimate edits in the test cases. The strings can then be retrieved at will and reconstituted, for later use. The test files are a small bitmap of a banana, and a short audio file.
It’s an interesting technique, though fortunately one that’s unlikely to be practical beyond a little amusement at the encyclopedia’s expense. We probably all have our favorite examples of low quality Wikipedia content, so perhaps it’s fortunate that these are hidden in the edit history rather than the pages themselves. Meanwhile we’re reminded of the equally impractical PingFS, using network pings as a file system medium.
Everyone should watch Tom7’s “Harder Drives” video. Very related.
“All edits to Wikipedia were constructive and useful, such as grammar fixes and clarity improvements” reads like they used AI to come up with 200 meaningless edits. IMO this project is just as bad as the bots spamming open source projects with frivolous bug reports.
Why stop here? With just a few $$$ worth of PVC pipe you can hack your local orphanage to function as a free septic tank! And the public library is filled with all the toilet paper you could ever need, for FREE!
oh come on! Do you ever read the edit pages? I doubt it. It’s more like hacking a septic tank to fill another septic tank. In fact I’d much rather if they could hack “This page can be improved”, many of which are 15 years old. And what about their begging for money on every visit for the past few months when it costs them less than $100,000 to run annually. Maybe they have a reasonable cause, but it’s not preserving the site, it’s not supporting what they claim. And I’m not giving a penny til Jimmy Wales steps down. Wikipedia continues to be useful in spite of itself. If the entire web wasn’t being ensh*ttified, better sites would come around. I still miss H2G2 which should have survived and created competition. Please figure out where the sewage is actually coming from!
” it costs them less than $100,000 to run annually”
Who told you that? Grok? or the white house?
wikipedia publishes their yearly financials.
that “it costs them less than $100,000 to run annually” is simply a lie.
the hosting costs alone are over $3M (https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2023-2024-annual-report/)
Please don’t. Wikipedia is already hammered all day by spam bots, AI crawlers and vandalism. They don’t need any more resource drainers.
I agree.
And I can’t help wonder if this is part of the campaign against Wikipedia.
To be fair, Wikipedia hasn’t been relevant for years because of a group of their mods removing relevant pages and blocking modifications to pages so fake stuff stays up and can’t be modified while important pages are set for removal. I blocked Wikipedia at work and home, both through DNS blocking and uBlacklist (so they don’t show up in search results either). Only sites I block are Wikipedia and Pinterest. I’ll unblock them if they get rid of their team of mods.
Wikipedia has issues in some areas, but it’s still one of the best uses of the internet and it has millions of articles that are free of the modern day insanity. We just have to accept that nothing can be perfect I guess.
I completely agree about blocking pinterest though, but then, who wouldn’t?
Just upload the files to your own sandbox :)
Please do not advertise Wikipedia vandalism. It’s one of the most useful non-profits out there.
Oh, they’ll love this – as often as they beg for money – to have someone using their platform for what is effectively steganography.
Coincidentally, I’m working on a very similar system that works with almost any website that supports comments.
001:395:104d76aa6754458fb4151b23e439299c::b6aeee287bdf40e4abef872d53514fe7
C’mon, leave Wikipedia alone. Grokipedia is slop so it is begging for this kind of experimentation.