Sorry but this is legitimately a terrible way to encode this data. The number 0.8 is encoded as base64 encoded ascii decimals. The bits 1 and 0 similarly. URLs should not be long for many reasons, like sharing and preventing them from being cut off.

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capecodes 4 days ago | parent [-]

The “cut off” thing is generally legacy thinking, the web has moved on and you can reliably put a lot of data in the URI… https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maxim...

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domga 4 days ago | parent [-]

Links with lots of data in them are really annoying to share. I see the value in storing some state there, but I don’t think there is room for much of it.

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nozzlegear 4 days ago | parent [-]

What makes them annoying to share? I bet it's more an issue with the UX of whatever app or website you're sharing the link in. Take that stackoverflow link in the comment you're replying to, for example: you can see the domain and most of the path, but HN elides link text after a certain length because it's superfluous.

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esafak 3 days ago | parent [-]

SO links require just the question ID; short enough to memorize.

	▲	nozzlegear 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but the SO link was just an example. HN does it with any link, like this one which is 1000 characters long: https://example.com/some/path?foo=bar&baz=bat&foo=bar&baz=ba... If the website or app has a good UX for displaying/sharing URLs, the length doesn't really matter.