Three Hutter Prize wins in a month bring nearly 10% improvement in Wikipedia compression

Marcus Hutter, the prize’s sponsor and manager, said three winning submissions within a month delivered nearly 10% total improvement—the largest progress in the contest’s 20-year history. The Hutter Prize website lists a June 26 win by Ibrahim Marcouch and Kaido Orav, followed by David Freelan on July 19 and Vladimir Ivanov on July 24. The contest rewards lossless compression of a 1GB Wikipedia extract.