← Back to context

Comment by nickpeterson

5 months ago

Random question, how big is hacker news? It’s plain text so I’d imagine it’s reasonably compact?

<back of napkin>

Based on the current id, about 45,000,000 items.

Assuming 1KB per item, about 45GB.

So with code and OS, probably it would fit on a $10 thumb drive without compression.

</back of napkin>

If I am within a couple of orders of magnitude, it is hard for me to see a benefit from compression.