An effort in which thousands of people donate their computers' unused processing power uncovers the largest prime number so far known. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote ...

Three, as Schoolhouse Rock! told children of the 1970s, is a magic number. Three little pigs; three beds, bowls and bears for Goldilocks; three Star Wars trilogies. You need at least three legs for a ...

A new network paradigm can generate meaningfully random numbers—and fast. In network encryption, randomness has huge value because it’s not “solvable” by hackers. Classical computers can’t be ...