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2020-03-14, 06:02   #21
LaurV
Romulan Interpreter

Jun 2011
Thailand

100001101111002 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by retina Forget about the prize. The chances of finding a prime to claim any money from anyone (EFF or GIMPS) is too low to make any practical difference. And if you are doing this to claim some prize then you have better odds buying lottery tickets.
That for sure! Hunting for primes and generally, any math related computations, have to be treated like a hobby, and source of fun and entertainment. Participating in forums like this, meeting clever people (and less clever too :P, there are a lot of cranks wandering around), finding a prime or a large factor from time to time, that is priceless. But on the other hand, you will have to "invest" a lot of money and/or time and/or resources to stay "in touch". We personally spent over $100k in hardware, electricity, nerves, etc, along the ~20 years, and no prize money could cover for it, but we learned a lot of things meantime, and had a lot of fun... Unless you are tremendously lucky, your path will be the same. You will not get rich from hunting for primes. If you think you are tremendously lucky, go hunting for bitcoins, you have about the same chances to lock a block by yourself, running a couple of good GPUs, as you have to find a mersenne prime with the same hardware, and a block today, even after the HUGE CRASH from yesterday, still worth$70k, which is better than the \$50k you get from EFF after GIMPS split.