> that asymmetry is weirdly powerful for specific problems.

100% agree when it works in your favor. We use it for exactly that situation where a non-zero false positive rate is fine and you can choose how much memory to devote to getting it closer to zero.

There have a been a couple times though where we've needed a "keep everything not on this list" operation, and unfortunately bloom filters don't work well for that situation. There are alternatives, but none as elegantly compact as bloom filters.