According to GIMPS, this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’ spanning 17 countries” that utilized an Nvidia A100 GPU chip to make the initial diagnosis. The primary architect of this find is Luke Durant, who worked at Nvidia as a software engineer for 11 years
Is it 3?
I bet it’s 3.
Me wondering why I haven’t been able to deploy cloud instances with the A100 for an actual useful purpose for the past month
Size does matter, after all?
I don’t understand this and therefore it’s stupid and pointless. Fuck you math elitist assholes with your so-called “large” prime numbers spending billions of dollars that could be used to make my life better. I don’t comprehend this at all and there it does not matter. The end.
Yeah, fuck those assholes that pursue science for the benefit of humanity! I do not see why anyone should be allowed to be creative if I do not see the benefit for me in particular.
We need to decide democratically what science is, with everyone getting a fair vote, so wasteful science like this can finally be stopped.
Like voting on which science is right lol?
That’s how we end up with solar roadways…
Much of the basis for the RSA cryptosystem, and by extension much of modern computing, was done by some mathematician who prided himself that his work was not applied mathematics and could not ever be applied in any way (bonus point for being pertinent to the topic of large primes). Science is exploratory work, not a straight path to some predefined goal. The person above is evidently clueless as to how science is conducted.
Yes I’m with you 100% there :-)
I think we have already done that and you just disagree with what we have agreed to categorize as science. This shouldn’t stop you from making your own computers and have them do whatever you’d like though.
Because, well…. That’s democracy.
If Jesus had wanted us to use prime numbers why did he turn the water into wine and not numbers? Checkmate atheists. /s
This is a very dangerous way of thinking. You cannot tell at the time of discovery if specific research will be useful or not down the line. You need to advance the research in all directions, even if some of them seem silly or useless, or else you will handicap your progress in other fields which you didn’t see the connection with at first.
If you want it to be useful for the economy and industry in order to warrant funding, I’ve got news for you:
The majority of modern encryption relies on prime numbers. It is currently speculated but not known, that the number of prime numbers is infinite.
Should it be proven, that there are only a finite amount of prime numbers, all encryption would become vulnerable.
And this helps humanity and mathematicians by…nothing. It’s absolutely nothing.
If we can analyze larger primes, we can generate larger primes which has applications in math, particularly cryptography and other areas, not even beginning to look at number theory. Specifically being able to verify them over a cloud is useful, we can generate them quicker and worry about their safety less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hensel’s_lemma has uses in physics actually.
Oh, you mean you don’t understand it, gotcha.
Yes, and Bayesian statistics are useless too, they’re all about things that have already happened!
No. I understand it plenty. Quantifying shit to the Nth degree doesn’t fix anything. It makes math more precise, but math that will never be used for any practical applications.
Please inform me about the ways this information and “breakthrough” will be used in a meaningful way that matters at all.
math that will never be used for any practical applications.
Ummmmm…… what?
Does it need to? Does anything need to? I’d argue that humans toying with the novelty of ‘seemingly useless’ things has enriched humanity by a whole lot. Archmedes basically dicking around doing fuck all in that shed of his instead of growing crops
Yes. The amount of effort and resources used to do this shouldn’t just be a fucking waste.
This is a fucking waste. Proper fucking waste.
Nobody will use this math in our lifetime. Probably not the next generation either. We’re incapable of using it in any meaningful way except bragging rights.
Nobody will use this math in our lifetime.
That’s a presumption. Have you ever considered that there’s a non-zero chance that you’re wrong?
It’s not a presumption when there is no basis for it all. It’s a fucking fact.
If there was a segment of society that said “Hey, we really want to do this thing, but we really just need the highest prime number possible! Why won’t anyone find that for us?” Then I’d say OK.
You’ve got a guy out to beat a record and get his name on the books here. Useless.
Finally! Someone who understands! If it’s not something we can understand, it’s not really math.
