system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: I read about a "Zip Bomb" today that is a zipped file that is only 42kb when compressed, but unzipped is 45.5 Petabytes. My question is how can so much information be compressed into such a small file size?
gpt
Imagine a file that's literally just 45.5 PB worth of 1s. Like in binary just 1111111111... etc

It's really easy to compress that, yeah? You just say "45.5 PB worth of 1s" and you've got the exact same data in a compressed form.

You want your zip bomb to look legitimate, though, so you alternate more than that so that the compressed form is, say, 42KB.

Any useful data couldn't be so compressed.