One example are JSON/XML/HTML responses over HTTP: you need the 8-bit ("binary")...

dnet on Jan 18, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Fast base64 encoding and decoding

One example are JSON/XML/HTML responses over HTTP: you need the 8-bit ("binary") data in an ASCII format to fit into JSON/XML/HTML, while HTTP provides gzip (or DEFLATE, Brotli, etc.) compression over the whole response if both the client (by including the "Accept-Encoding" header in the request) and the server implementations support it.

hackcasual on Jan 18, 2018 [–]

Correct, we're sending data points as typed arrays inside a much larger JSON payload.