A new record prime number has been found! The 52nd Mersenne prime was found this week: 2136,279,841-1 is a prime, more 41 million digits long. I played a very small part in finding the 39th Mersenne back in the early 2000s, so this is exciting news. Also an interview with Luke Durant, the man who found it.
For more than 70 years computer scientists have studied sorting algorithms. Amazingly, we're still finding ways to make them faster and more memory efficient. Python recently replaced its legendary TimSort, and today Rust 1.81 released with two new adaptive sorting algorithms featuring serious performance improvements.
The well known saying about eating and having cake makes a lot more sense if you reverse the subjects, ie. "You can't eat your cake and have it too". Did you know that until recently you could be sued for singing the Happy Birthday song?
An alternade is one of those fun word puzzles that I enjoy solving by cheating, using wizardry rather than brain sweat.
The other day, while driving, a friend commented that the most common word in song titles was Love, and that the second most common was not 'You' as you might hope, but 'I'.
