Comment on New largest prime number discovered by former Nvidia software engineer

secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• Urist@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yeah, fuck those assholes that pursue science for the benefit of humanity! I do not see why anyone should be allowed to be creative if I do not ser the benefit for me in particular.

  source

  • secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Exactly! I don’t even see how there could be a benefit for me. If I don’t understand it, there’s no benefit. After all, I did take Algebra. We need to decide democratically what science is, with everyone getting a fair vote, so wasteful science like this can finally be stopped.

    source

    • Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Like voting on which science is right lol?

      That’s how we end up with solar roadways…

      source

      • Urist@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Much of the basis for the RSA cryptosystem, and by extension much of modern computing, was done by some mathematician who prided himself that his work was not applied mathematics and could not ever be applied in any way (bonus point for being pertinent to the topic of large primes). Science is exploratory work, not a straight path to some predefined goal. The person above is evidently clueless as to how science is conducted.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
      • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Solar freaking roadways

        source
    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Brilliant satire. This is how you do it, folks.

      source

      • Urist@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Now I want to try too: The ultimate form of democracy is when people are voting with their wallets. Then they can have the freedom to express both what they want and how much they want it. That is why profitable = good and freedom, actually.

        source
    • WrenFeathers@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think we have already done that and you just disagree with what we have agreed to categorize as science. This shouldn’t stop you from making your own computers and have them do whatever you’d like though.

      Because, well…. That’s democracy.

      source
• el_abuelo@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Is this Poe’s law? I genuinely thought this was satire but the downvotes and responses are very serious!

  source

  • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think it’s satirizing the other guy in these comments.

    source
• njordomir@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If Jesus had wanted us to use prime numbers why did he turn the water into wine and not numbers? Checkmate atheists. /s

  source
• pftbest@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is a very dangerous way of thinking. You cannot tell at the time of discovery if specific research will be useful or not down the line. You need to advance the research in all directions, even if some of them seem silly or useless, or else you will handicap your progress in other fields which you didn’t see the connection with at first.

  source
• secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  All knowledge is good knowledge

  source

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ohhh, you’ve never gained pandemic weight and then gone shopping for jeans in public and seen yourself in a mirror, have you

    source

    • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wat?

      source
• wieson@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If you want it to be useful for the economy and industry in order to warrant funding, I’ve got news for you:

  The majority of modern encryption relies on prime numbers. It is currently speculated but not known, that the number of prime numbers is infinite.

  Should it be proven, that there are only a finite amount of prime numbers, all encryption would become vulnerable.

  source

  • Miaou@jlai.lu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is easily provable that there is an infinite number of prime numbers.

    source
  • sudneo@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Many encryption algorithms rely on the assumption that the factorizations of numbers in prime numbers has an exponential cost and not a polynomial cost (I.e. is a NP problem and not P, and we don’t know if P != NP although many would bet on it). Whether there are infinite prime numbers or not is really irrelevant in the context you are mentioning, because encryption relies on factorizing finite numbers of relatively fixed sizes.

    The problem is that for big numbers like n=p*q (where p and q are both prime) it’s expensive to recover p and q given n.

    Note that actually more modern ciphers don’t rely on this (like elliptic curve crypto).

    source
  • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There are infinite prime numbers. This has been known for thousands of years. You can find numerous proofs of this online, and go through them until one makes sense to you.

    Also, quantum computers are on track to make division-based cryptography useless in the next decade or two. (Note that this only affects public key cryptography, and not shared key cryptography. So your online backups should be safe as long as you have a password for them.)

    source