ananyo writes “Researchers hoping to get ’2′ as the answer for a long-sought proof involving pairs of prime numbers are celebrating the fact that a mathematician has wrestled the value down from infinity to 70 million. That goal is the proof to a conjecture concerning prime numbers. Primes abound among smaller numbers, but they become less and less frequent as one goes towards larger numbers. But exceptions exist: the ‘twin primes,’ which are pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. The twin prime conjecture says that there is an infinite number of such twin pairs. Some attribute the conjecture to the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, which would make it one of the oldest open problems in mathematics. The new result, from Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, finds that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are less than 70 million units apart. He presented his research on 13 May to an audience of a few dozen at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although 70 million seems like a very large number, the existence of any finite bound, no matter how large, means that that the gaps between consecutive numbers don’t keep growing forever.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Quidsi, the Amazon-owned parent company to a collection of single word e-commerce domains including Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, Yoyo.com, and more, is today launching a new membership program called Familyhood Plus. The program offers consumers free two-day shipping with no minimum purchases, and other exclusive deals. Prior to today, Quidsi sites would only promise free two-day shipping for orders of $ 35 dollars or more, but these could include a cart filled with items from across all the Quidsi-owned sites. In addition, the company notes that many orders are now being delivered in a day or sooner, and in New York and San Francisco, Quidsi has been experimenting with same day delivery for orders placed before 9 AM. That makes the need for an exclusive shipping program negligible, perhaps. The new Familyhood Plus program is similar to Amazon’s own Prime membership program, which provides Amazon.com shoppers with free two-day shipping with no minimum order size. Amazon Prime is $ 79 per year, in part due to its other features including unlimited access to Prime Instant Video, and the Kindle Lending Library. Meanwhile, Quidsi’s Familyhood Plus program doesn’t have annual membership pricing set yet, the company notes. Instead, the program, which offers support across all ten of the Quidsi-run sites selling items for home, kids, babies, and pets, will be available only as a pilot trial for now. Using the coupon code “GOCRAZY,” consumers can try the program for free during the first three months, with annual pricing likely offered when the trial completes. The free shipping will apply to over 90 percent of the products on Quidsi sites, except for the “Add One” items which like Amazon.com add-on items, are products offered at a discount when tacked onto larger orders. When ordered alone, these “Add One” items will not qualify for free shipping. However, AutoShip orders and those placed via mobile devices and native apps will receive the free shipping benefit. Familyhood Plus members are also agreeing to receive promotional emails which offer exclusive deals, but there’s an opt-out process for those not interested in that aspect of the new service. Amazon has been ramping up its Quidsi properties this year, bringing Diapers.com to the iPad in February, adding pet medications to Wag.com in March, and debuting children’s fashion site Look.com just last month. More details on the new membership program are here.
A temporary solution to the drama that unfolded this morning when 
At NVIDIA’s press conference today, NVIDIA had a couple little surprises. Little being the word, there — they announced a diminutive 7″ tablet to compete with the likes of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. The price, $ 249, is certainly competitive. But the tablet itself, the hardware anyway, blows them out of the water.
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