TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Can humans say the largest prime number before we find the next one?

314 pointsby robinhouston6 months ago

27 comments

lordelph6 months ago
I got strong &quot;The Nine Billion Names of God&quot; vibes from this!<p>Just as the last video is uploaded, without any fuss, the stars start going out...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;urbigenous.net&#x2F;library&#x2F;nine_billion_names_of_god.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;urbigenous.net&#x2F;library&#x2F;nine_billion_names_of_god.htm...</a>
评论 #42096542 未加载
评论 #42093857 未加载
评论 #42094436 未加载
评论 #42094537 未加载
utopcell6 months ago
So, each human gets 419 digits from a pool of ~41M digits, or a target of ~100k videos uploaded.<p>This is the weirdest DDoS attack on YouTube I&#x27;ve seen.
评论 #42092565 未加载
评论 #42093664 未加载
评论 #42098584 未加载
largbae6 months ago
The key is to say it in a base-M136279841 number system.
评论 #42092370 未加载
kylecazar6 months ago
Are they going to verify that everyone said their sequence correctly?<p>It would be a silly and pointless prank to derail the effort by omitting a number on purpose, but this is the internet... Or maybe it&#x27;s just the &#x27;coming together&#x27; aspect that we&#x27;re going for anyway, in which case, it doesn&#x27;t matter :)
评论 #42092251 未加载
评论 #42093791 未加载
评论 #42092077 未加载
Xcelerate6 months ago
Ooh, let’s do this with the Busy Beaver function too. BB(5) is only 12,289 binary digits to say out loud. BB(6) and BB(7) can’t possibly take that much longer to say.
评论 #42095066 未加载
评论 #42092451 未加载
ks20486 months ago
The homepage seems to be missing: 41 million digits at 2 digits per second ~= 237 days.<p>It seems the 419 digits&#x2F;person was chosen to lead to 100,000 people.
jws6 months ago
Don&#x27;t be boring. A quick triage with an AI and a spot check suggest that the guitar solo at the end of <i>Hotel California</i> has just about the right number of notes (depending on how many &#x27;7&#x27; you get).<p><i>Sweet Child of Mine</i> probably works.<p><i>Comfortably Numb(ber)</i> allegedly works, but I doubt any of the singers I have access to can enunciate fast enough. For the most relaxed of the options, it has amazing little clouds of fast notes.<p>MUST RESIST: this is worse than waking up to a Saturday morning &quot;Nerd Sniping&quot;, I could lose the whole weekend to this… I&#x27;ll bet Nate isn&#x27;t busy… With him and the girls from (redacted) <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> could work…<p>UPDATE: There goes the weekend. So far I&#x27;ve been in a fight with ChatGPT about counting syllables in copyrighted lyrics where I ended up suggesting it get help for its obvious emotional trauma at the hands of an IP lawyer and lined up 5 singers. &quot;enjoy the ride&quot; has beaten &quot;they are just intrusive thoughts&quot;.
评论 #42095776 未加载
评论 #42095498 未加载
joshdavham6 months ago
This looks like an awesome project! I wish you guys the best in your race against the machine.
mserdarsanli6 months ago
They should say it in binary
评论 #42091639 未加载
评论 #42091714 未加载
评论 #42091782 未加载
评论 #42092920 未加载
评论 #42093212 未加载
评论 #42091800 未加载
评论 #42097979 未加载
magicmicah856 months ago
How fun. I went ahead and automated this by recording numbers 0-9 into mp3 files and then reading each prime number individually to play the mp3 of the corresponding number. Feel free to reuse if you want to participate.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;magicmicah&#x2F;a8cf863ed656e5b56c54496561a1767b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;magicmicah&#x2F;a8cf863ed656e5b56c5449656...</a>
评论 #42096865 未加载
bromuro6 months ago
What about having a computer say them? How long would it take to have them recorded?<p>The assignment here would be to find enough people to _listen_ to batches of 416 of them.
评论 #42096723 未加载
thih96 months ago
&gt; None of us can do it alone<p>Off topic but this is not technically true. 41 million digits means 1.3 years of saying one digit per second. Even taking 3x as long, to account for sleep and other activities, this would take about four years - still very much doable.<p>Four years times $100k&#x2F;year plus $100k completion bonus equals $500k; I guess many people would be willing to do it alone under these conditions.
评论 #42095607 未加载
creativenolo6 months ago
This is wonderful.<p>But then I read it, and they call it stupid. And then I think, oh… I think I will move on. How boring am I. And why put it up on YouTube - so many videos - given you can’t legitimately download all the videos (unless I am mistaken?) I mean you are investing so much of other people time with this, you think you might offer up an alternative own system in return… how boring I am.
sushid6 months ago
Some unanswered questions: why in 419 digit chunks? Are there repeating chunks that they&#x27;re going to dedupe?
评论 #42091837 未加载
Svoka6 months ago
Btw, is it possible to say such number at all? In English, I mean. How would that work?
评论 #42092097 未加载
cryptica6 months ago
When I see stuff like this, I don&#x27;t understand how the economics work out for YouTube. So many pointless videos uploaded for free. How can they possibly make a profit?
Waterluvian6 months ago
Feels like a good cause to get out the IIGS and boot up Kid Talk.
Eddy_Viscosity26 months ago
Instead of base 10, you use base <i>largest known prime</i>, then this is pretty easy to do: 1
TheRealPomax6 months ago
This title <i>really</i> needs &quot;Mersenne&quot; in it, because for just &quot;primes&quot; the answer is trivially &quot;no&quot;.
评论 #42097588 未加载
qwe----36 months ago
Just to me, this seems like a waste of resources
评论 #42095619 未加载
评论 #42092406 未加载
评论 #42093399 未加载
tyjkot6 months ago
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the purpose of finding prime numbers that are insanely large?
评论 #42095300 未加载
评论 #42098922 未加载
评论 #42095342 未加载
metalman6 months ago
given some sort of excrmption from time the chance of any human or group of humans getting it right are still zero, nobody is that good, so the only plausable way to do it, is to just aproximate the number, which we then might as well get on with congradulating ourselves with a job well done, me first I so great,now you ,and you ,and well everybody so great now
carabiner6 months ago
I can, but I&#x27;m built different.
justplay6 months ago
does the current largest prime number have any practical implications as for today ?
评论 #42093317 未加载
评论 #42092329 未加载
评论 #42092363 未加载
fuglede_6 months ago
At <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5GFW-eEWXlc&amp;t=1480s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5GFW-eEWXlc&amp;t=1480s</a>, the characters in the 1977 epic space opera Star Wars state the first 48 (binary) digits of the prime, 47 years before its discovery!
评论 #42093661 未加载
unsigner6 months ago
Nice try, AI trainers.
评论 #42094341 未加载
cfiggers6 months ago
Big assumption there