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When I was a kid I found some compression program on a BBS, that claimed to use "wavelets" to compress even more than was previously thought possible. It turned out it was using a similar trick (but this was in MSDOS, so it was just hiding blocks in unused parts of the disk and storing their addresses in the "compressed" file). I blithely used the tool on some things I had on hand that were taking up too much space, and predictably lost ~all of them.

I learned a little bit about information theory that day, and my sneakernet bandwidth was saturated for a while afterwards.

He did not,

full story, for the perspective of the metadata guy is here

https://www.patrickcraig.co.uk/other/compression.htm

Excellent computer story, on a par with "We can't send email more than 500 miles" IMO.

I think I remember that one too, or definitely one like it.

That's a cheap trick. You gotta send someone the file, otherwise there's not much of a point.