Show HN: Alphabinary Encoding

3 points by spb 9 years ago | 3 comments

spb 9 years ago |

So, this is an idea I had a while back, inspired by how ideas like [illegal primes][] are fundamentally irrepressible as free speech, due to the intrinsically fluid nature of abstract data.

It's not just useful on a free-speech axis, though: in terms of just bare usability, it opens the door for a simple way to represent arbitrary numbers (like IP addresses) mnemonically, without having to lug around huge arbitrary dictionaries that might have proprietary restrictions to them, like the one what3words uses to encode geo coordinates.

I'm interested in hearing what uses Hacker News readers could come up with for this, and other thoughts around these kinds of concepts.

[illegal primes]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

WorldMaker 9 years ago | |

It's interesting to compare it to an encoding like base65536 [1].

From that respect, alphabinary feels less like an encoding and more like steganography, especially given how low efficiency the encoding is overall. Given that steganography of a sort seems at least partially an intended goal, that's not necessarily a criticism here, just an interesting observation.

If my goal were just to make sure I can encode binary things in a tweet, the current best bet appears to be base65536 (with the dream of Unicode filling out enough to support a good base131072), but alphabinary seems like an interesting idea to keep in mind for possible steganographic uses where one might want to make it less obvious any encoding was used at all.

[1] https://github.com/ferno/base65536

spb 9 years ago | | |

Precisely - calling it an "encoding" here is more of a tongue-in-cheek nod to how simple the steganographic rule is than an intention to imply that it be used as a straightforward representation.

Also, "steganography" tends to imply that the intent is to hide the underlying message, and that's not necessarily the case here, such as when employing alphabi for mnemonic purposes ("Baywatch hologram lemonade asteroid" being easier to remember than "52.84.24.108").

Furthermore, the purpose of the "encoding" being so flexible (and, consequently, low-density) is that it can be used, then, as a medium of expression - it's not that the "message" is hidden, it's that, well, [the medium is the message][], and per Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights linked there (emphasis mine):

> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

[the medium is the message]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message