I think the smiley at the end indicates that it is a joke. After all it was created as a fictional plot device for a comedy.

^ Yes. Clearly people can't take jokes here, already downvoted.

Edit: Even the above got downvoted and I get reminded again that HN is full of stuck up, overly sensitive and unhumorous engineers. With the exception of this being a great place to find interesting things to read the community aspect is uninviting and unforgiving.

The same joke is posted on literally every submission about compression. It adds nothing to the discussion, so it gets downvoted.

Comments about being downvoted are also almost always downvoted. The comment guidelines actually warn you that it's a bad idea.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But trivia is still worthy of knowing about, however tired and overdone, or dated and played-out. Just like, if it were XKCD yesterday, it was The Far Side twenty years ago.