[Jetlag]

There I stood in front the infernal machine. Crumbled, soggy paper in hand. It fell to pieces before I even had the thought to preserve it somehow. Sixteen random characters, gone in the wash. My thesis, gone in the wash. A decade, gone in the wash.

I could try to rewrite it. But I wouldn't even know where to start. Of course all my research was encrypted too! I'm no idiot! This was work, this was hard work. I'm not even sure I could remember it all. "I wrote them down in my diary so I wouldn't have to remember."

I did the calculation. Brute forcing the password would take more than my lifetime with all the machines in the lab. Would Moore save me? Could I stand the wait? Later on, I stood on the roof of the math building (a quiet escape a few grad students shared) contemplating my next move. Looking out, late at night, it came to me. I couldn't do it, but the they could. Even just a fraction of the computers out there could get me my thesis back.

But how? I could create a distributed computing project, it was something I had worked on before. But there was no way to attract the required users. I needed something as least as big as the largest projects that already existed. I needed to give people something. A bounty isn't enough, the prime project has a great bounty, but I need more users. They all want money. But I had no money. So, I gave them the next best thing: the promise of money.

[mrcharles]

What's your pen name so I can buy your books.

[gwern]

Sounds like the start of an older Neal Stephenson novel (eg. _Snow Crash_ or _The Big U_).

[nicpottier]

Seriously.. have you written larger works? Would love to read them.