Anybody who was fortunate sufficient to safe a Gmail invite again in early 2004 would have gasped in surprise on the storage on supply, a entire gigabyte! Practically twenty years later there’s extra storage available without spending a dime from Google and its opponents, however it’s nonetheless comparatively simple to hit the paid tier. Think about this although, how about YouTube as an infinite cloud storage medium?

The proof of idea code from [DvorakDwarf] works by encoding binary recordsdata into video recordsdata which might then be uploaded to the video sharing service. It’s hardly a brand new thought as there have been intelligent bins again within the 16-bit period that will do the identical with a VHS video recorder, however it appears that evidently for the second it does what it says, and turns YouTube into an infinite cloud file retailer.

The README goes right into a little bit of element about how the code tries to keep away from the consequences of YouTube’s compression algorithm. It eschews RGB color for black and white pixels, and every displayed pixel within the video is manufactured from a block of the true pixels. The ultimate video is available in at round 4 instances the dimensions of the unique file, and appears like noise on the display screen. There’s an instance video, which we’ve positioned beneath the break.

Whether or not that is in opposition to YouTube’s TOS might be open for interpretation, however we’re guessing that the video web site might spot these uploads with relative ease and apply a stronger compression algorithm which might corrupt them. As an alternate strategy, we suggest hiding all of your necessary knowledge in podcast episodes.