It's a bit odd, the way this is presented as a discovery by an amateur mathematician. It's a distributed calculation, and his machine was the one that found it. It's largely chance, although it does appear that he has souped up his hardware.<p>Just ... very odd.<p>Related:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904237">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904237</a> :
GIMPS Discovers Largest Known Prime Number: 2^136279841 – 1 (mersenne.org)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858024</a> :
New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably) (mersenne.org)