New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably) • Hacker News Board

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#71

Post by tromp » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 8:25 AM UTC

Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #39

freeqaz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good POW mechanism that would test primes? I found this but curious what else exists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin

Thats it (afaik), and it could be for the usual, dismissive reasons, but its easy to hand-waive the "make primality a part of the work" part but it also comes down to the properties of the work that require it to be useful: the difficulty of the work must be adjustable, the difficulty/reward ratio must scale to the polynomial of users/work-rate to avoid sybil/"51% (31%)" attacks, and dissuade volatility during transi…

You forgot one important property: it must commit to the new block(header).

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#72

Post by Jerrrrrrry » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 8:36 AM UTC

tromp wrote: post #70

freeqaz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good POW mechanism that would test primes? I found this but curious what else exists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin

There's also https://gapcoin.org/ for searching prime number gaps (mine the gap).

I knew I forgot something, thank you!

10 years!

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#73

Post by nbbaier » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 8:42 AM UTC

solardev wrote: post #53

ziofill wrote: post #3

I can swear something like 20+ years ago I found a new one too, but I didn’t realize the importance of it. I had just downloaded GIMPS and I was just messing around with it, and when I saw the message I thought “ok, cool!” and proceeded to turn it off.

I thought this was about GIMP at first, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Like did they hide a prime number check into the brush strokes algorithm so users would become pseudorandom generators whenever they made art...? And you just happened to draw the right thing that also happened to be a prime? But nope, it's just a similar acronym! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Internet_Mersenne_Prime_...

I absolutely had the same thought progression

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#74

Post by throwawee » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 8:54 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #44

MPSimmons wrote: post #10

Time for Bruce Schneier to change the combination to his luggage again

Luggage that would make Dan Brown green with envy.

Needlessly confusing if Dan Brown is green and Dan Green is white. Somebody standardize Dans.

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#75

Post by sashank_1509 » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 9:13 AM UTC

I always wondered if we could parallelize a prime test on GPU. That would give us a Datacenter level compute and really help us scale, but it might be too hard to do.

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#76

Post by 4gotunameagain » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 9:18 AM UTC

sashank_1509 wrote: post #75

I always wondered if we could parallelize a prime test on GPU. That would give us a Datacenter level compute and really help us scale, but it might be too hard to do.

https://github.com/preda/gpuowl

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#77

Post by iamgopal » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 9:50 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #62

jl6 wrote: post #55

Finally! Just when I thought everyone had moved their spare compute to more lucrative schemes. It’s the longest wait for a new mersenne prime since the discovery of M32 in 1992.

amazing how many bitcoins have been discovered since then. Satoshi should've incentivized mining something useful.

every new prime for new block, but not linear.

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#78

Post by Nition » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 10:03 AM UTC

therein wrote: post #19

ziofill wrote: post #3

I can swear something like 20+ years ago I found a new one too, but I didn’t realize the importance of it. I had just downloaded GIMPS and I was just messing around with it, and when I saw the message I thought “ok, cool!” and proceeded to turn it off.

I'd believe it. Many years ago when I was around 10 years old and not understanding the concept of probability properly, I decided I had come up with a way to enumerate the lottery numbers and come up with a reasonably sized set of numbers to place bets for. I proceeded to write 9 pages of numbers for my father to place bets for. It is a 6/49 lottery so 6 balls are drawn from a set of 49 and you need to get all of th…

I'm not sure why your comment is currently downvoted, you're not claiming it was anything but random luck and it's a funny story. Thanks for sharing.

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#79

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 10:06 AM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #9

dooglius wrote: post #7

Why don't they say what it is?

Because the EFF Cooperative Computing Awards for the first discovery of large enough prime numbers are still active. Publishing the probable prime in advance would risk someone verifying faster than GIMPS.

How do you prove that you verified that a number is a prime?

If you want to prove that a number is not a prime you can show the factorization or that it breack the little theorem of Fermat with 367984321568, and everyone can check the refutation inmediately.

I don't know a similar method to show that you actualy verified the number is a prime.

Re: New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)

#80

Post by tromp » Sat, Oct 19, 2024, 10:43 AM UTC

Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #72

tromp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also https://gapcoin.org/ for searching prime number gaps (mine the gap).

I knew I forgot something, thank you! 10 years!

There's also https://riecoin.xyz/ searching prime constellations.