Discussion related to cado-nfs

[Emmanuel Thomé <Emmanuel.Thome@inria.fr>]

On Sat, Apr 08, 2017 at 10:13:45PM -0400, Earl Fechter wrote:
> [...]
> I know I'll realistically have a very slim chance of splitting the
> number with my home computer, but I'm doing it like the lottery: you
> know you probably wont win, but that doesn't keep you from trying.

In addition to what Pierrick just said, even if you go with ECM, the
probability that you "win" and find a prime factor of, say, a 1024-bit
composite with ECM, compared to the money you'll pay to supply power to
your computing devices (be they iphones or whatnot), is so ridiculous
that you would be much, much, much better off playing the _real_
lottery.

(disclaimer: I didn't do the probability computation for real, but you
get the idea...)

E.