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by ajuc 937 days ago
We're talking encodings not platonic ideals.

Forget PI. Let's take 1337. Or is it MCCCXXXVII?

Is it 2 or 1.(9)? Or 10 (binary)? Different encodings, same number. Some encodings are just less optimal than others.

Same with text. Is the poem in utf-8 and utf-16 a different poem? What if you zip the file? These are just encodings, and there's no point ignoring the good ones (which for non-random strings are usually programs).