> The discovery was the result of almost exactly one year of work and about $2 million of Durant’s own money.
> Durant, who made his money off the boom, said he put his time and money into the project to show people that they aren’t helpless to technology giants and that we can figure out massive problems if we work together.
If I sold absolutely everything I owned, I would not even have close to half of what it Durant invested in his pet project. While I like his intended sentiment, I can't help but notice the irony.
> Durant, who made his money off the boom, said he put his time and money into the project to show people that they aren’t helpless to technology giants and that we can figure out massive problems if we work together.
I can appreciate the sentiment but
> The discovery was the result of almost exactly one year of work and about $2 million of Durant’s own money.
doesn't really show me much especially since
> The prime number Durant discovered serves no real purpose for society.
This sort of shows the opposite: if it takes $2M to discover something that doesn't have a real purpose, yeah I definitely feel a bit helpless against tech giants trying to do anything that is marginally useful.
> The discovery was the result of almost exactly one year of work and about $2 million of Durant’s own money. ... The prime number Durant discovered serves no real purpose for society.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/17189376/308851 claims it's O(N^2). 10^82 operations ... say you can run 10^10 iterations in a second which no current CPU is capable of but let's pretend, it's not like a factor of 10 or 100 will make a big difference given how this is like 10^54 times the age of universe.
I understand some negative comments here, that this was somewhat pointless waste of money. But I would argue that him spending 2M$ is in the same category of people spending money to do climb a mountain nobody did climb, or beat world circumnavigation record etc. I.e. this is a bit of hunt for glory. And in some sense it's not the worst one.
> Durant, who made his money off the boom, said he put his time and money into the project to show people that they aren’t helpless to technology giants and that we can figure out massive problems if we work together.
If I sold absolutely everything I owned, I would not even have close to half of what it Durant invested in his pet project. While I like his intended sentiment, I can't help but notice the irony.
Quite. I get the point but why not volunteer (to do something) and really show your grit?
Pissing around with M primes and trying to make a point is a bit wank as a stance from a multi-zillionaire.
He isn't helpless (to technology giants and that we can figure out massive problems if we work together.)
... and that's lovely.
9 years ago I asked how much a Mersenne prime is worth to us. I guess we have an answer now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932238
I might be getting wooshed here.
I can appreciate the sentiment but
> The discovery was the result of almost exactly one year of work and about $2 million of Durant’s own money.
doesn't really show me much especially since
> The prime number Durant discovered serves no real purpose for society.
This sort of shows the opposite: if it takes $2M to discover something that doesn't have a real purpose, yeah I definitely feel a bit helpless against tech giants trying to do anything that is marginally useful.
Not sure how to react to this.
Hitchhiker's Guide's Deep Thought "42" was 7.5 million years, just for a guide-post.
- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=707236
This algorithm is not practical.
GIMPS Discovers Largest Known Prime Number: 2^136279841 – 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904237 - Oct 2024 (11 comments)
New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024 - Oct 2024 (120 comments)
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWIWS5Jd3k5QHdc0...
> I was able to find this number that’s astonishingly large … but I was able to do it just by using big tech’s leftovers.
Did he do this by taking advantage of spot pricing? It isn't actually mentioned how he uses those leftovers in the article.