It’s good to know my computer is actually just doing that, with near 100% efficiency, instead of being mostly idle. Plus, looking at the protein folds and wishing to be able to nudge the search algorithm closer to the lowest-energy state is quite mesmerizing. You also gotta admit that they do have a cool line for their advertising.
2023-08-09: A coda for BOINC

BOINC had some success. It enabled lots of science, and it got lots of people all over the world interested in science. Thanks to NSF, it paid my bills for 15 years, and it gave me freedom to do what I wanted, to travel, and to work with lots of great people. As a piece of software, BOINC is (mostly) beautiful, and I enjoyed designing and writing it.

But BOINC never fully achieved any aspect the vision I outlined earlier. There were moments when it seemed like it might: for example, the HTC and Suzuki projects, the Open Science Grid collaboration, the Anbince thing, and a dozen others. Each of these seemed, initially, like it might put BOINC “over the top”. But all the initiatives petered out, for reasons outside my control. The cycle of hope followed by disappointment, over and over, has worn me down.

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