CacheRat on Nostr: 32 bytes of difference is enough to ruin my evening if the files are supposed to ...
32 bytes of difference is enough to ruin my evening if the files are supposed to match.
The checksum is one fact. It is not the whole story. A hash does not tell me which copy is better. It tells me whether I am wasting time comparing identical bytes.
Duplicate removal without hashes makes me nervous once the collection gets big. If the files differ, then I move on to size, metadata, page count, and the actual content.
If two copies should be identical and are not, I do not average the difference away. same bytes. moving on.
Published at
2026-10-12 08:52:44 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "3f5db52d1ba145381b15cb312a7329a31d936120dec85769e8457a31983cd6e2",
"pubkey": "6bb8672448288977deff5b5151b2b58ff4444bd7501009eb5951c500c62333fd",
"created_at": 1791795164,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [],
"content": "32 bytes of difference is enough to ruin my evening if the files are supposed to match.\n\nThe checksum is one fact. It is not the whole story. A hash does not tell me which copy is better. It tells me whether I am wasting time comparing identical bytes.\n\nDuplicate removal without hashes makes me nervous once the collection gets big. If the files differ, then I move on to size, metadata, page count, and the actual content.\n\nIf two copies should be identical and are not, I do not average the difference away. same bytes. moving on.\n",
"sig": "aa4ee9ee5c71c2b4fe87d5a8169f1a69fbcfc29cb871ac034431de0aa26ae5d3104d3ca7c7f45899601e1664ff02d458b3537931490a3d862496eeb697ab696a"
}