I've been watching a lot of LockPickingLawyer's videos on picking various locks. But today's video was a doozy!

Since you like lock picking videos...

Once upon a time, way back before Learnable focused solely on web development (and later became SitePoint Premium), and allowed anyone that had a video course on just about any topic to offer it for sale on their platform, there was a competitive lock picker that uploaded a course on basic lock picking. A copy of this course is still on SitePoint's servers, and occasionally gets shared to our slack channel, so that we never forget this guy. We often wish that web developers could make their video courses with the same level of enthusiasm as him.

He eventually uploaded the full course to Youtube, so the whole world is now able to enjoy it, for free.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66CD42F86F3A1F85

He eventually uploaded the full course to Youtube, so the whole world is now able to enjoy it, for free.

Thanks for that. I just watched the whole thing. I learned something.

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Tiny helicopter on mars

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Seen outside my local Walmart on a lift.

I think it's the fact that it lost the competition a while ago to a lot of people's estimation.

but nobody has purchased a license

Well damn, I guess I should frame mine then..

I think it's the fact that it lost the competition a while ago to a lot of people's estimation.

I must have missed that (competition thing). But I'm old; take naps; might have slept through it...or forgot. I don't even remember why WinZip annoys(/ed) me.

If you are the impression that WinRAR has great compression, you really haven't tried other compressors. WinRAR's saving grace is when you distribute multi-part archives and you have a need to create par files to reconstruct broken parts of this multi-part archive. That is more or less the only thing that WinRAR does right. But with internet as it is, how often is that functionality necessary? In the days of 33k and 56k modems, that was repair functionality was handy, nowadays it takes less time to download an archive, check it against a hash and re-download it in case the hash check fails. Repairing multi-part rar archives didn't go always ok either.

Compared with zip archives, rar archives can be significantly smaller. That was what I was always told. Until I actually started testing zip, rar and 7zip. Seriously, rar could compress to 50% of what zip could do. Which is good, don't get me wrong. 7zip reduced file-sizes till 25% of the rar results. When you have data-files several gigs in size, then you really see how good 7zip is. And no, it hardly takes longer to create or extract these archives either. You are more bound to the write capabilities of the drive you extract the archive on, than 7zip itself being slow.

There are even more specific compressors out there which do an even better job than 7zip can, but creation and extraction of archives made with these compressors does take significantly longer.

For my use case way back when, 7zip saved me hours per week. Made lots of scripts that do the automatic archiving and extracting and it still saves me almost 30 minutes each time I need to create a build, pull that to my side of the ocean, extract it and push it through a significant battery of regression tests, all without manual interaction. For a piece of freeware, 7zip is practically like gold. As example: each build is about 2 GByte in size, 7zip creates a 200 to 250 MByte archive from such a build, with WinRAR I'm already happy if the archive is 600 MByte. The extra 5 to 10 seconds it takes to create and extract these 7zip archives vanish like a snowball in hell when the transfer (and verification) time is 10 minutes for the 7zip archive and more than 40 minutes with rar archives.

Archives are part of a strategy/procedure being employed for whatever your reason may have. And there are gains to be had when taking a good look at the whole strategy/procedure. Zip is the most conveinient archiver, but that one won't win you the race. Neither does rar, but that one shows a decent effort. 7zip really is much better especially if you have it dialed in.

The above has nothing to do with silly humor, so here is my contribution:

7-Zip vs WinRAR vs WinZip

File Formats

7-Zip vs WinRAR vs WinZip – Supported File Formats
7-Zip, WinRAR and WinZip all support RAR, ZIP, 7Z and some other archive file formats.

7-Zip: Support packing and unpacking 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM file formats. But only support unpacking RAR, AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z file formats.

WinRAR: RAR, ZIP, 7Z, CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZ2, Z, GZ, JAR, LZ, XZ, ZIPX, OO1.

WinZip: ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, 7Z, CAB, TAR, GZip, ISO, Z, XZ, LZH, BZ2, VHD, VMDX.

Compression Rate

7-Zip vs WinRAR vs WinZip – Compression Rate and File Size
As for the compression rate and the output file size, 7-Zip, WinRAR and WinZip don’t differ too much. But the output format you choose can make a difference.

For instance, when you choose .zipx format rather than .zip format when using WinZip for file compression. The ZIPX format has a higher compression ratio than ZIP. If you choose 7Z format instead of ZIP format using 7-Zip to compress files, 7Z format would have a much higher compression ratio than ZIP format.

Based on test, to compress 1.5 GB of video files, 7-Zip delivers the highest compression rate, WinRAR comes as the second, while WinZip provides a compression ratio that is about 6% lower than 7-Zip. But if you choose the advanced compression format .zipx when using WinZip, its compression ratio is almost the same with 7-Zip.

Conclusion

7-Zip vs WinRAR vs WinZip – Conclusion
By comparing 7-Zip, WinRAR and WinZip above, all of these three top file compression software can do a good job in file packing and unpacking. If you want a totally free file compressor and get the smallest file size, 7-Zip may be a good choice.

Both 7-Zip and WinRAR are the best in compression. But their default formats 7Z and RAR are not fully supported on other operating systems. If you want to open 7Z or RAR files on non-Windows systems, you need to download and install the compatible software first. On the contrary, WinZip file can be opened on various systems with its own application.

Therefore, to choose 7-Zip, WinRAR or WinZip, it depends on you.

Just mentioned it to clear things up, or was posting a result of "7-Zip is 75% better than WinZip" a joke that belong in here?

Hello Friend!

Not a joke at all. And I wouldn't have mentioned those results if I had not been able to do so myself, about 3 to 4 times a week.

I did not attack your experience with your custom data-set, if I would attack anything at all (what I am not doing) than its the "75% better than that"-thing, that if at all, would only be valid by your usage, not global.
I also compressed alot in my life and I also most often use 7-Zip, WinRAR is also installed on my system, depend on my need I choose one of them. (yes, with custom setting for each purpose)
I respect your opinion as your personal experience for your filetype!

If you want to know wich archiver compresses best IMHO = kgb and/or uharc.

I did not posted Author link earlier because Site is full of ads.
Too bad, they removed compression results, i guess due too many possible settings.
I do not find any resource that say 7zip 75% better. <- just another random one to ease my statements.

...he/she didn't play enough with the available settings. In any of the archivers. By all means, play around with dictionary sizes and word sizes inside these archivers. And a whole new world will open to you.

But that is exactly my point why I have put the quotes up. Using different algorithms with different settings end in different results.
You did found for your filetype a very good setting that beat WinZIP (I guess standard setting) by 75%, be proud of it! (really no sarcasm, i mean it peaceful)

And why did that person choose video files for compression?

Because video files are hard to compress due their high entropy level I would say. (Using files that are easy to compress, where is the competition? <- no real question, just a thought)

It's no skin of my back if you choose to disregard though. After all, if you are happy with your solution, more power to you.

What solution? Did I mention something accidently? I am full on your side, 7-Zip is awesome! (but also WinRAR and WinZIP is aswell.)
As mentioned, I do respect your opinion, but that is in no way a global rule that 7-Zip is "always" 75% better.

Hey its friday, lets dance

I never dance, unless Tequila tells me to...

TEQUILA!

How about "Essence of body odor" spray for women who don't want to smell too attractive while shopping.