My criticism of the article is so harsh exactly because it does not represent itself as merely an idea, it instead attempts to convey the impression of being a groundbreaking scientific discovery.

> Depends on what you mean by "very well". Aggressive data compression is usually considered a good way of storing things.

We're fundamentally in agreement on this. It is, however, not lossless compression, and that's in part where I would assume the speedup comes from.