That’s really a leap about the writer’s interest.

They could just as easily have felt the underlying reason was so obvious it wasn’t worth mentioning.

I know how base64 encoding works but had never noticed the pattern the author pointed out. As soon as read it, I ubderstood why. It didn’t occur to me that the author should have explained it at a deeper level.

▲ tharkun__ 7 days ago | parent [-]

Is it? In the first paragraph the author clearly shows his ignorance of base64. When told that it "looks like base64 encoded JSON" he

    was incredulous but gave it a go, and it worked!!

Even if you don't notice the ey specifically the string itself just screams base64 encoding, regardless of what's actually inside.

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appreciatorBus 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

TBC I was addressing the parents suggestion that the writer was incurious.

One blog post is hardly enough to just someone as ignorant but after quick look at the author's writing/coding/job history, I doubt he is that either.

I think it's fantastic that you can look at a string and feel it's base64 essence come through without a decoder. Thinking about it for a minute, I suspect I could train myself to do the same. If someone who already knew how to do it well wrote a how-to, I bet it would hit the front page and inspire many people, just like this article did.

I just don't get the urge to dump on the original author for sharing a new-to-him insight.

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creatonez 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They were probably expecting base64 encoded binary data. Base64-encoded-binary-inside-Base64-encoded-JSON-inside-JSON is a really strange construction if you haven't encountered it before, because of how much space it's wasting playing a game of Russian nesting dolls.

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fc417fc802 7 days ago | parent [-]

Just add a layer of compression periodically to reclaim the wasted space and it will all work out.

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throwaway4496 6 days ago | parent [-]

If you have a compression that works on encrypted data, you can avoid wasting your time on the "encryption".

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fc417fc802 6 days ago | parent [-]

Base64 isn't encryption. The overhead added follows an extremely predictable pattern. That said I've no idea what the performance of common compression algorithms might be in such a use case. The comment was entirely tongue in cheek.

	▲	throwaway4496 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I apologise for my mistake. Either the comment got edited or I misread encryption somewhere in there.