this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Technology
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I don't understand this and therefore it's stupid and pointless. Fuck you math elitist assholes with your so-called "large" prime numbers spending billions of dollars that could be used to make my life better. I don't comprehend this at all and there it does not matter. The end.
If you want it to be useful for the economy and industry in order to warrant funding, I've got news for you:
The majority of modern encryption relies on prime numbers. It is currently speculated but not known, that the number of prime numbers is infinite.
Should it be proven, that there are only a finite amount of prime numbers, all encryption would become vulnerable.
There are infinite prime numbers. This has been known for thousands of years. You can find numerous proofs of this online, and go through them until one makes sense to you.
Also, quantum computers are on track to make division-based cryptography useless in the next decade or two. (Note that this only affects public key cryptography, and not shared key cryptography. So your online backups should be safe as long as you have a password for them.)