A treatise on the advantages of factoring over PRPing/LLing
 

If you look for Mersenne primes, you should be prepared to find nothing, and nothing, and nothing. But after I've started TFing on my GPU this year, it's been like a little Christmas every 3 weeks or so[SUP]*[/SUP].

[SIZE=1][SUP]*[/SUP]Your mileage may vary. Always read the label.
[/SIZE]

That's great. Until all the easy factors are found. Then it is back to having Christmas only once per year.

I get similar satisfaction from DC. An exponent gets squared away every few days.

The last 25 years has been more fruitful for Mersenne prime finding, than any other similar length time span in history. There have been centuries with no finds. [url]https://www.mersenne.org/primes/[/url]

+1

Similarly, P-1 is super rewarding, and additionally it has the lottery aspect of finding massive factors!

[QUOTE=Runtime Error;566299]
Similarly, P-1 is super rewarding, and additionally it has the lottery aspect of finding massive factors![/QUOTE]

Oh yeah. Starting this week I dedicated a worker for P-1. There is a Top 100 factor hidden out there and I have a... um... er... the-prime95-equivalent-of-a-bullet with its name on it.

[QUOTE=kriesel;566271]The last 25 years has been more fruitful for Mersenne prime finding, than any other similar length time span in history. There have been centuries with no finds. [url]https://www.mersenne.org/primes/[/url][/QUOTE]

Who knew computers were so helpful with, er, computation?

[QUOTE=ZFR;566263]If you look for Mersenne primes, you should be prepared to find nothing, and nothing, and nothing. But after I've started TFing on my GPU this year, it's been like a little Christmas every 3 weeks or so[SUP]*[/SUP].

[SIZE=1][SUP]*[/SUP]Your mileage may vary. Always read the label.
[/SIZE][/QUOTE]

Ta da.

[CODE]UID: ZFR/Daria, M103461923 has a factor: 35104615462903630715167 [TF:74:75:mfaktc 0.21 barrett76_mul32_gs][/CODE]

It's a little Christmas, on Christmas.

I've been doing a lot of 72,74 factoring on The big[SUP]tm[/SUP] numbers and I have to say, it's very satisfying to see a factor pop up every 20 or so minutes!