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

  • _bcron_@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    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

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      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.

      • _bcron_@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        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?

        • wagesj45@fedia.io
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          12 hours ago

          Even if it’s true, he’s just admitting that he doesn’t care about future generations. Fuck them kids, I guess.

        • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          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.