http://boingboing.net Brain candy for Happy Mutants Sun, 19 May 2013 17:03:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 http://boingboing.net/2013/02/11/another-prime-number-down-inf.html http://boingboing.net/2013/02/11/another-prime-number-down-inf.html#comments Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:45:50 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=212319 There are 17 million digits in the largest prime number we know of, so far. Its discovery is part of an ongoing distributed computing project aimed at exposing the existence of ever larger prime numbers, largely because prime numbers are there — flagrantly going around, only being divisible by themselves and the number 1. We'll show them, won't we? The Electronic Frontier Foundation foundation, for instance, is currently offering a $150,000 bounty for the first folks to bring in a 100-million-digit prime. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/02/11/another-prime-number-down-inf.html/feed 14 http://boingboing.net/2012/05/07/howto-re-create-the-scrooge-mc.html http://boingboing.net/2012/05/07/howto-re-create-the-scrooge-mc.html#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 23:41:20 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=159131 the Billfold today, a wonderful and mathematically precise post that explains exactly “how much money do I need to create giant floes of gold in a private vault and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck?” (thanks, Dean Putney!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/07/howto-re-create-the-scrooge-mc.html/feed 21