Nice!

Join the distributed search for square-cube pandigitals!

Why does this exist

Square-cube pandigials ("nice" numbers) seem to be distributed pseudo-randomly. It doesn't take very long to check if a number is pandigital in a specific base, but even after we narrow the search range to numbers with the right amount of digits in their square and cube there's a lot of numbers to check. This system coordinates multiple clients to search more efficiently.

For more background, check out the original article and my findings.

Client Quickstart

The easiest way to get started is by going to https://nicenumbers.net/search/ and running it in your browser. You'll see live results and everything will be submitted in your name.

If you want to go even faster, you can run the native binaries from the latest release or run the docker image. We usually see a ~2x speedup versus the browser.

# Run the release binary
./nice_client

# Run the docker image
docker run -it --init ghcr.io/wasabipesto/nice_client:3

# Run with a username
./nice_client --username gilgamesh

# Run with 12 threads
./nice_client --threads 12

# Run forever
./nice_client --repeat

# The docker image supports these options too!
docker run -it --init ghcr.io/wasabipesto/nice_client:3 --repeat

# Both versions also support environment variables
docker run -it --init -e NICE_USERNAME=gilgamesh ghcr.io/wasabipesto/nice_client:3

You may get slightly more performance by building the binaries yourself. Building the client requires rust and a few other dependencies.

# Install rust and cargo
sudo apt install build-essential curl git
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Clone this repository
git clone https://github.com/wasabipesto/nice.git
cd nice

# Build the client binary
cargo build -r -p nice_client
cd target/release

# Run once with default settings
./nice_client

You can find various settings and their options with the --help flag:

Usage: nice_client [OPTIONS] [MODE]

Arguments:
  [MODE]
          The checkout mode to use

          Possible values:
          - detailed: Get detailed stats on all numbers, important for long-term analytics
          - niceonly: Implements optimizations to speed up the search, usually by a factor of around 20. Does not keep statistics and cannot be quickly verified

          [env: NICE_MODE=]
          [default: detailed]

Options:
      --api-base <API_BASE>
          The base API URL to connect to

          [env: NICE_API_BASE=]
          [default: https://api.nicenumbers.net]

  -u, --username <USERNAME>
          The username to send alongside your contribution

          [env: NICE_USERNAME=]
          [default: anonymous]

  -r, --repeat
          Run indefinitely with the current settings

          [env: NICE_REPEAT=]

  -q, --quiet
          Suppress all output

          [env: NICE_QUIET=]

  -v, --verbose
          Show additional output

          [env: NICE_VERBOSE=]

  -t, --threads <THREADS>
          Run parallel with this many threads

          [env: NICE_THREADS=]
          [default: 4]

  -b, --benchmark <BENCHMARK>
          Run an offline benchmark

          Possible values:
          - default:     The default benchmark range: 1e6 @ base 40
          - large:       A large benchmark range: 1e8 @ base 40
          - extra-large: A very large benchmark range: 1e9 @ base 40. This is the size of a typical field from the server
          - hi-base:     A benchmark range at a higher range: 1e6 @ base 80

          [env: NICE_BENCHMARK=default]

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

  -V, --version
          Print version

Project Architecture

This repository has a common library with most actual functionality included. There are two main binaries: the API server and the client. These can be run directly from source with cargo run -p nice_api or cargo run -p nice_client. There are also binaries for a deamon and some scheduled jobs, and a library for a wasm client.

There are some feature flags that enable specific dependencies:

• nice_common/database is set automatically from binaries that connect directly to postgres (api and jobs). This requires the libpq-dev package to be installed.
• nice_client/rustls-tls is enabled by default and uses rustls for TLS connections, which doesn't require any external dependencies. Disable it and enable nice_client/openssl-tls to use openssl.

Building the WASM client requires wasm-pack.

There are also a few scripts, to be used with rust-script. You can install it with cargo install rust-script then run the scripts directly. It will take a while to build the first time you run it.

If you want to run a copy of this server yourself, a SQL schema file has been provided. You can build the bases and fields with the insert_fields script.

Why are you writing this from scratch for like the tenth time

It's the sixth time. And no comment.