Seventeen or Bust drive

[philmoore]

Louie Helm has announced a two-month drive at Seventeen or Bust in an attempt to find another prime (or two or three) to help solve the Sierpinski problem:
http://www.seventeenorbust.com/
This project found their last prime just over six years ago at 3.9 million digits. Their status page shows that some candidates have been now searched up to 7.8 million digits. They certainly seem overdue for a prime.

For newcomers, this project uses the Prime95 software, but connecting to a different server. An alternative platform is also set up as a BOINC project under Primegrid:
http://www.primegrid.com/
Now that the dual Sierpinski problem is (probably) settled (Five or Bust), it would be nice to see some progress made again on this problem. This project certainly has the potential to break the GIMPS monopoly on the 10 largest known primes!

[Mark Rose]

I wish I had more cores to throw at it.

Sadly, I can only produce ~225 jEMs/sec.

[swellman]

Been following the progress of SoB for years. It had to be frustrating to find 5 primes in a month followed by sporadic hits and now nothing for 6+ years. Maybe this push will yield a prime or two.

[ixfd64]

What the heck is a jEM? I could never figure it out from the SoB website.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by ixfd64

What the heck is a jEM? I could never figure it out from the SoB website.

Their wiki had this description (the wiki is currently down...I think it has been for a while):

jEMs stands for "jiggered Exponentiation Modulus's" and is cacluated as constant * n² * loglogn
jEMs is the current unit of measurement for work done by the SoB client. It replaced cEMs on March 23, 2009 and all previous statistics were recomputed using this unit. This resulted in early tests being given more credit and newer tests given less credit, making credit given more fair and in-line with the actual work done.

I don't know what the constant is, but with that part of the formula, it should be easy to approximate.

[Batalov]

I received a rather weird looking email that had every property of being a simple spam (including a reference to "penny stocks being on the rise") that dresses itself as a "science magazine". It came from seventeenorbust's email. First, I wanted to let them know that their server was probably hacked and the contributors' emails were stolen, until I noticed the header (see below).

This is all very, very weird abuse and sad if it is true, to say the least.

[Prime95]

Originally Posted by Batalov

I received a rather weird looking email that had every property of being a simple spam (including a reference to "penny stocks being on the rise") that dresses itself as a "science magazine". It came from seventeenorbust's email. First, I wanted to let them know that their server was probably hacked and the contributors' emails were stolen, until I noticed the header (see below).

This is all very, very weird abuse and sad if it is true, to say the least.

I've been getting the emails for several months. I was not overly offended (i.e. did not view it as a terrible privacy abuse). Occasionally, the articles are rather interesting. The author of the "magazine" is Louie Helm, original organizer of Seventeen or Bust.