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fuglede_
Earlier Hacker News discussion, after the announcement that a (then secret) number was a probable prime, yet to be verified prime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024
croemer
There are a lot more details available now worth discussing. This thread shouldn't be deprioritized as dupe, it isn't.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
charlieyu1
Wonder why it took so long to find a new one. I get the time complexity is a bit more than O(p^2) by a Wikipedia search, but still, 6 years is a lot.
croemer
Bad luck, there just happens to be no prime number for a long time. The new prime exponent p is 136M, the old largest one was around 82M. So the overall effort to get from 82 to 136 was around 1.75 times the effort it took from 0 to 82 [calculated as (136/82)^2-1]. So it was more effort to find the 52nd than it was to find all 51 before. See here for the relatively unusual large gap: https://www.mersenne.org/primenet/
croemer
I wonder where Luke Durant got the money from to fund the effort. He's a former NVIDIA employee, I wouldn't be surprised if this was funded by NVIDIA.
croemer
Since the announcement a week ago I've started contributing to the project myself. It's fun!