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Comment by zxcvbn4038 | Hacker News Reader

You could do this with any service which accepts user content. You could have a tumblr blog focused on “paranormal phenomenon in white noise images” and fill it full of data embedded in images. If anyone ever asks you just explain that like many pattern illusions not everyone can see images contained within - try squinting, or covering the eye on the predominant side of your body, stand on your head, blah blah blah.

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> fill it full of data embedded in images

This is even easier, because jpg's ignore additional data past the end of the file. Post a low-res ~200kb jpg that has an additional ~20mb of data appended. It'll still render perfectly fine.

Most platforms compress uploaded images, which would result in the appended data being removed.

You could do the same thing with PNGs and different thunk types. Although in both cases you run a risk that some paranoid developer might filter out unexpected thunk types or additional data so in both cases it would be best to put the data in the image payload.

The other consideration is that Tumblr was always very “creator” oriented and while they might produce thumbnails of various sizes the original image is still available and not mangled by resizing algorithms. Other free image hosts are going to crush that image down the maximum amount tolerable to the human eye. Google even does that for paid photo hosting.

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