SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the 2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23-29-... dept.
https://www.mersenne.org/primes/?press=M136279841
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 2136,279,841-1, having 41,024,320 decimal digits. Luke Durant, from San Jose, California, found the prime on October 12th.
The new prime number, also known as M136279841, is calculated by multiplying together 136,279,841 twos, and then subtracting 1. It is over 16 million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. It is only the 52nd known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly more difficult to find. Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. GIMPS, founded in 1996, has discovered the last 18 Mersenne primes. Volunteers download a free program to search for these primes, with a $3000 award offered to anyone lucky enough to find a new prime. Prof. Chris Caldwell founded an authoritative web site on the largest known primes which is now maintained by volunteers, and has an excellent history of Mersenne primes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday October 23 2024, @09:48PM (9 children)
That does indeed seem to have gotten lost in the quote, it's from the first paragraph of the link. I see now that it got lost in my copy-paste of the submission to.
Also why are there negative signs in the dept line? Negative prime numbers are not really a thing. Was that added as some kind of space filler cause I did not add those in there.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday October 23 2024, @11:01PM (6 children)
The text needs ❬sup❭❬/sup❭ tags.
2❬sup❭136,279,841❬/sup❭-1 renders as
2136,279,841-1
( I have used Unicode characters U+276C and U+276D to show the angle brackets/less-than & greater-than signs used in tags. They will not work by copy and pasting the text. )
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Thursday October 24 2024, @12:25AM (1 child)
Fixed. Thank you all.
(Score: 2, Funny) by pTamok on Thursday October 24 2024, @07:17AM
Thank you for making the necessary changes to the original article.
For someone with self-diagnosed minor OCD, me seeing something that can be put right without being able to do it myself is a niggle.
Yes, I straighten pictures, too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 24 2024, @11:12AM
> for > and < for < also work. No need to go unicode. :)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 24 2024, @07:37PM (2 children)
I can use < angle brackets > in the text just fine.
To write a less than symbol (<) write: <
To write a greater than symbol (>) write: >
To write an ampersand character that does NOT have any other significant meaning, write: &
It is left as an exercise for the reader how I wrote this post.
If we sing a slaying song tonight, what tools will be used for the slaying?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Friday October 25 2024, @10:16AM (1 child)
The problem comes when you want to copy and paste text in comments, if, for example, you want to quote something,
In order to quote you, I had to go back and edit the quote. If I hadn't, it would have looked quite different on publication (you can check with 'Preview', as the system then interprets the characters. Using Unicode lookalikes allows you to quote without needing to go back and edit.
Here is what your text looks like when copied and pasted into a quote without re-editing. Do you see the problems it generates?
But thank-you for the comment.
When
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday October 25 2024, @01:37PM
You do identify a real problem. With my approach, copy-pasta characters seem to disappear into nothingness. In reality they seep into the groundwater and surrounding environment. Using Unicode characters would avoid that problem.
If we sing a slaying song tonight, what tools will be used for the slaying?
(Score: 2) by hubie on Thursday October 24 2024, @12:41AM (1 child)
The software replaces spaces with dashes for what is in the Department field. It is so that a name can be created for the department out of a short (hopefully sometimes funny or insightful) sentence. Perhaps one should capitalize the first letters in each word to do it properly, or enclose it in parentheses, but dashes also work, and perhaps was easier to code? So if one put "department of redundancy" in the Department field, you'd get in Slashcode from the department-of-redundancy dept., though perhaps one would rather have from the Department of Redundancy Department or from the "department of redundancy" dept.
It is problematic if one puts punctuation there, such as commas. I have found that you can put in HTML spaces and they won't get replaced by dashes the first time they render, but the HTML turns into regular spaces when the story is submitted. When an editor goes in later and reviews the submission and posts it, that HTML code isn't there and those spaces then get replaced by dashes.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Thursday October 24 2024, @12:43AM
I forgot to add that I removed the commas so at least it looks like a sequence of positive integers again.