Comment on New largest prime number discovered by former Nvidia software engineer
_bcron_@lemmy.world 13 hours agoDoes 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 13 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 12 hours ago
That’s a presumption. Have you ever considered that there’s a non-zero chance that you’re wrong?
just_another_person@lemmy.world 12 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.
catloaf@lemm.ee 12 hours ago
That segment exists. That’s literally why they are continually trying to find larger primes.
SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 8 hours ago
If smart people thought like this, we won’t have cryptography.