6 ms·

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 ar

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.

dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
lifthrasiir 2y ago
Do you have any slightest idea about the exponent, including how many digits in the exponent? I assume you had no account (otherwise there should have been some logs for that).
therein 2y ago
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 them right to get the jackpot. It would have cost a little under 95$ to have played all my numbers (for a jackpot around $1.5M) I gave him however it would have taken a lot of effort to manually enter them. My father just does one page because it is silly. The numbers are silly, everything about this is silly. I completely understand in hindsight. But it turned out page 7 had the winning combination.
- Jerrrry 2y ago
  I've seen that movie too
- Nition 2y ago
  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.
- ashleyn 2y ago
  If the balls were improperly weighted at the lottery commission, then maybe you'd have unwittingly discovered the bias in the game. That's certainly possible.
schoen 2y ago
If it was literally around "20+ years ago", like 2004 or slightly before, it might have been M40 or M41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mersenne_primes_and_perfect_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mersenne_primes_and_pe... If this happened the way you remember, it's really unfortunate, but it wouldn't have stopped the prime in question from being discovered, because GIMPS always at least eventually gives out numbers to multiple people to check, and doesn't mark Mersenne numbers as checked until a computer actively reports that they were checked. However, your name could have ended up on that Wikipedia list as a discoverer. :-)
- aphantastic 2y ago
  Interesting that all the primes since 2001 have been discovered by Intel processors (at least those where the processor was recorded). How’s that for marketing?
  - throawayonthe 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    If bitcoin used a facet of primality in its Proof-of-Work, that would nearly needlessly gloating. But it doesn't, and unfortunately even worse, it wasn't ASIC-resistant, which had second-order effects that Intel could had actually taken advantage of if they werent sleeping from being too comfortable.
    - freeqaz 2y ago
      Is there a good POW mechanism that would test primes? I found this but curious what else exists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin
      - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
        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 transitions must be easily verifiable, Primecoin uses Cunningham Chain primes - basically sequences of primes where 2x+1 is prime. They are marginally useful with other applications on the horizon. I could see adjusting the arbitrary rule-set - similar to the varying rulesets of cellular automata, like Conways - to further Number Theory/Game Theory/Swarm Economics at a general interdisciplinary level to be the most potentially rewarding, covering a larger swath of unknown unknowns.
rollinDyno 2y ago
Hey at least you weren't one of those kids who ran into those online faucets that were giving bitcoins for free and didn't think too much about it.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  its like "the game" but you feel like you got stabbed by Hindsight herself
- stavros 2y ago
  I remember the faucet giving 5 BTC to play with. I still have my wallet history from those days, with transactions of multiple millions (today) in BTC between wallets and friends.
Aurornis 2y ago
> 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. GIMPS would run for weeks or months first. You wouldn’t have seen anything if you had just downloaded it and were messing around. As I recall, you had to do some work to get it running at boot automatically.
- stavros 2y ago
  Does it take months to check one prime? Maybe the author got extremely lucky.
solardev 2y ago
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_Search?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Internet_Mersenne_Prime_...
- nbbaier 2y ago
  I absolutely had the same thought progression

dangsux 2y ago

[dead]

lifthrasiir 2y ago

Do you have any slightest idea about the exponent, including how many digits in the exponent? I assume you had no account (otherwise there should have been some logs for that).

therein 2y ago

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 them right to get the jackpot. It would have cost a little under 95$ to have played all my numbers (for a jackpot around $1.5M) I gave him however it would have taken a lot of effort to manually enter them. My father just does one page because it is silly. The numbers are silly, everything about this is silly. I completely understand in hindsight. But it turned out page 7 had the winning combination.

Jerrrry 2y ago
I've seen that movie too
Nition 2y ago
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.
ashleyn 2y ago
If the balls were improperly weighted at the lottery commission, then maybe you'd have unwittingly discovered the bias in the game. That's certainly possible.

schoen 2y ago

If it was literally around "20+ years ago", like 2004 or slightly before, it might have been M40 or M41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mersenne_primes_and_perfect_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mersenne_primes_and_pe... If this happened the way you remember, it's really unfortunate, but it wouldn't have stopped the prime in question from being discovered, because GIMPS always at least eventually gives out numbers to multiple people to check, and doesn't mark Mersenne numbers as checked until a computer actively reports that they were checked. However, your name could have ended up on that Wikipedia list as a discoverer. :-)

aphantastic 2y ago
Interesting that all the primes since 2001 have been discovered by Intel processors (at least those where the processor was recorded). How’s that for marketing?
- throawayonthe 2y ago
  [dead]
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  If bitcoin used a facet of primality in its Proof-of-Work, that would nearly needlessly gloating. But it doesn't, and unfortunately even worse, it wasn't ASIC-resistant, which had second-order effects that Intel could had actually taken advantage of if they werent sleeping from being too comfortable.
  - freeqaz 2y ago
    Is there a good POW mechanism that would test primes? I found this but curious what else exists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin
    - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
      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 transitions must be easily verifiable, Primecoin uses Cunningham Chain primes - basically sequences of primes where 2x+1 is prime. They are marginally useful with other applications on the horizon. I could see adjusting the arbitrary rule-set - similar to the varying rulesets of cellular automata, like Conways - to further Number Theory/Game Theory/Swarm Economics at a general interdisciplinary level to be the most potentially rewarding, covering a larger swath of unknown unknowns.

rollinDyno 2y ago

Hey at least you weren't one of those kids who ran into those online faucets that were giving bitcoins for free and didn't think too much about it.

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
its like "the game" but you feel like you got stabbed by Hindsight herself
stavros 2y ago
I remember the faucet giving 5 BTC to play with. I still have my wallet history from those days, with transactions of multiple millions (today) in BTC between wallets and friends.

Aurornis 2y ago

> 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. GIMPS would run for weeks or months first. You wouldn’t have seen anything if you had just downloaded it and were messing around. As I recall, you had to do some work to get it running at boot automatically.

stavros 2y ago
Does it take months to check one prime? Maybe the author got extremely lucky.

solardev 2y ago

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_Search?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Internet_Mersenne_Prime_...

nbbaier 2y ago
I absolutely had the same thought progression