[mm_alex]

surprised all the comments here are about whether he achieved compression or not. Point = Missed!

the entire thing was an ingenious trolling exercise, as he says, to 'out trick the trickster'. his goal was to exploit the loose wording of the challenge, and prove a point (possibly winning $5k in the process); I found it an entertaining story along those lines.

it proves nothing (new) about compression, or lack of it; he even stats that the consensus at the time was 'unanimous' that no compression had taken place. that's not where the interest in this link/story lies.

thanks for the original link, OP.