Making Sense of Proof by Contradiction [pdf]
Summary
The article analyzes DEFLATE level 13 in libdeflate, showing it trades substantial encoding-time for tiny size gains (0.134%). It explains the mechanics: deeper window searches, more optimization passes, delayed block size decisions, and caching. The practical takeaway for developers is that extreme encoding effort yields diminishing returns except in single-use, distribution-heavy scenarios. It also presents regression policy and Silesia corpus results.