Gridbach
Learning and science
distributed computing for number theory
SHOW HN2025
244points
134comments
#246of 3,837 in 2025
Top 7%of 2025 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
7 positive, 33 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 13 critical, out of 56 comments about the project. Thread score -0.04.
Execution: 2 for, 7 againstIdea: 2 for, 6 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Nostalgic and fun project for commenters who once checked Goldbach themselves
From 1 comment
When I learned programming, one of my first programs was a (rather lame) attempt to check the Goldbach conjecture. Over the years, as I learned more programming languages (first…
krylon on HN
Cool project and easy to contribute compute
From 2 comments
Impressive work! I did my share and added one billion verified numbers to your total, now you just need to get (almost) another billion of people to do the same and you'll…
laurent_du on HNRunning it now. On my phone (FairPhone 4) it took about 20 seconds for a round. On my desktop (Debian Liunux, KDE, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz), Firefox runs a round…
heikkilevanto on HN
Objections
'World record' claim is misleading given tiny increment over prior result
From 4 comments
Cool project but... This is an egregious misrepresentation of the actual results both from significance perspective and accuracy perspective. A. No validation is done on server…
commonlisper on HNThat makes sense in sports. But in math? It's trivially easy to generate thousands of so-called "world records" every second. Here's one: 4*10^18 + 7*10^13 + 1. Boom! New world…
throwaway150 on HNThis is more like if someone pulled a truck down 2,800 miles of road between NYC and LA in 2012, left it there, and then you grabbed the rope in 2025 to pull it less than another…
zamadatix on HNI call BS on this one. Placing a penny on top of skyscraper doesn't make you a builder of highest building. Still an interesting (more than) weekend project but not a meaningful…
Karliss on HN
Results cannot be verified because clients can cheat and server does not validate
From 3 comments
Cool project but... This is an egregious misrepresentation of the actual results both from significance perspective and accuracy perspective. A. No validation is done on server…
commonlisper on HNI truly hate to bring this up, knowing how much passion has gone into this project. But there's an important thread got buried due to arguments! That thread raises serious…
throwaway150 on HNDoes the gridbach server trust all submitted results to be correct, or can it somehow verify them (much faster than the outsourced computation) ? I managed to contribute 2B…
tromp on HN
Compute is inefficient compared with the prior native record software
From 1 comment
I call BS on this one. Placing a penny on top of skyscraper doesn't make you a builder of highest building. Still an interesting (more than) weekend project but not a meaningful…
Karliss on HN
Requests
Explain how results are validated against cheating clients
From 3 comments
But how do you make sure the user actually runs your component without any modification?
Gehinnn on HNHonest question— how is this verified for accuracy ? What if there is a bug ?
pylua on HNI truly hate to bring this up, knowing how much passion has gone into this project. But there's an important thread got buried due to arguments! That thread raises serious…
throwaway150 on HN
Fix multi-tab counting issue
From 3 comments
Running it now. On my phone (FairPhone 4) it took about 20 seconds for a round. On my desktop (Debian Liunux, KDE, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz), Firefox runs a round…
heikkilevanto on HNThis is neat :) X3D processors seem happy with running cores*1.5 tabs as long as you can keep it cool, was locked at 90C overnight and it never throttled below 4.2. Can see…
monster_truck on HNThank yoy for trying! I am aware that it doesn't work correctly when opening the app in multiple tabs in same window.
jay_gridbach on HN
Add GPU version of client
From 1 comment
@londons_explore @JohnKemeny Thanks you for your interst to my project! I have to admit the computation speed is slower than I expected. I have a plan to develop GPU version of…
jay_gridbach on HN
Questions
How is the browser client prevented from submitting fake results?
From 2 comments
Does the gridbach server trust all submitted results to be correct, or can it somehow verify them (much faster than the outsourced computation) ? I managed to contribute 2B…
tromp on HNBut how do you make sure the user actually runs your component without any modification?
Gehinnn on HN
Is the goal to distribute compute cost?
From 1 comment
Didn't seti@home get discontinued because the state of the art of computation progressed in the direction of cloud computing? Is the goal here to distribute the cost burden?
gnarlouse on HN
Alternatives named
Earlier Goldbach verification record by sweet.ua.pt native software
From 2 comments
This is more like if someone pulled a truck down 2,800 miles of road between NYC and LA in 2012, left it there, and then you grabbed the rope in 2025 to pull it less than another…
zamadatix on HNI call BS on this one. Placing a penny on top of skyscraper doesn't make you a builder of highest building. Still an interesting (more than) weekend project but not a meaningful…
Karliss on HN
SETI@home
From 1 comment
Didn't seti@home get discontinued because the state of the art of computation progressed in the direction of cloud computing? Is the goal here to distribute the cost burden?
gnarlouse on HN