If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how
Bizarroland@kbin.social to 
Assume that the future can change based on your actions, so any historical information that you bring along with you from the intervening 25 years may quickly drift out of the new realities history.
Edit: also assume that you can be given a healthy 21-year-old body if you want or take your previous self's place.
Further, identification will be provided for you if you were not born at that time.
Simple. Im ripping up the ticket.
Since my actions have knock on effects and the ticket is 1 way that means Id have to abandon my wife and child and given how much my actions would change things, effectively unmake my daughter.
The worlds fucked, I might be able to unfuck it but theres a better chance Id just create a different flavor of shit sandwich. But to know Id never hear "Dayyydeee come pway wif meeeeee" again.
Fuck it. Let it burn.
If you got a camping backpack maybe you could bring them! That's my plan.
What would your response be if you could take your family with you?
Id need seed money so Id get the lottery numbers for the biggest win shortly after I arrive, digital copies of the worlds financial newspapers for 25 years, some targeted stock info on companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Intel, facebook and other "Big Tech" and media firms. Knowing when to buy certain stocks and when to dump them would allow me to slow grow myself into someone that could have serious levels of control over a vast number of industries with far reach.
To make an impact with that reach, Id also have a serious SHITLOAD of research papers for anything related to green energy, cancer research and any other medical research that could save a shitload of lives. With 25 years of "leaps and bounds" in tech and medicine up my sleeve Id start a green energy company that knows which competition to buy and when, what "suggestions" to offer my researchers when I stop by for a visit. Same with biotech and medical research.
Given 25 years Id be a global renewable energy mogul who has done more to cure cancer (especially in kids) aids and a host of other diseases than any other man in history, controlling significant portions of the mass media in every first world country I could get my hooks into AND with the ear of very serious people in academic circles... Id be a fucking kingmaker with such an amazing public persona that to come at me would be career suicide for anyone in politics.
You could theoretically also download every single patent that has been filed in the last 25 years and then go back and patent them earlier.
I'm pretty sure being able to release lithium ion batteries in 2001 would make a dramatic change in the world and make you a billionaire in and of itself.
Perovskite solar cells would be a great follow-up to that, and you could revolutionize computing by knowing how to make raspberry pi's.
Obviously as you work your way up the tech tree you need more and more money and more and more time but once you have the blueprints for the technology everything after that is money and manpower.
For instance, risc v is Open source hardware. You could quite easily develop the lithography processes needed to create the CPUs and be a thousand steps ahead of Intel in developing cutting edge top of the line computers. Combine that with releasing a modern Linux kernel with an OS to match for free along with the hardware purchase and you could completely destroy Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Apple and Google in a fell swoop.
In 1999 I think the fastest processors were at what 300 MHz, maybe 600 something like that, Risc V processors are commonly available today running at 1.85 GHz along with graphics abilities that would blow away anything that existed in 1999.
You would also need to redevelop flash storage and RAM to match, and it would probably be a good idea to roll out Wi-Fi as well, but if you had a billion dollars by the year 2000 and all of the equipment you could easily see these things being released by 2005 and not be beholden to any shareholders.
See I think that you're thinking too "directly" which would make you enemies and draw too much attention. Coming out of nowhere with unproven ideas 20 years in the future... People are going to ask questions.
By owning my own green energy and biotech companies I could hire the people who would eventually make the breakthroughs themselves and drop breadcrumbs in front of them "You know I was reading your paper on blah blah blah and I'm by no means an expert but it seems to me like yadda yadda yadda might be worth looking into" because when I back the money truck up for the 3 leading researchers into Lithium Ion batteries in the world because I'm "Passionate about green energy" it stands to reason that we would make radical breakthroughs and patent them.
And I was just lucky enough to buy a lot of bitcoin when it was cheap and sell just before peak, I got out of real estate just before the crash in 08. I supported presidential /Prime Ministerial candidates when they announced they were running because "I have faith in you Mr Obama"
I dont need to make breakthroughs, I just need to make sure I surround myself with people who will make them and ensure I get myself a cut of the profits. Me being involved will have people lining up to pour their money into the pile.
Oh and while I'm at it Ill cozy up to that sick fuck epstein and sink his boat way fucking earlier.
We have a very similar way of thinking.
Part of me thinks it would be hard to convince people you were from the future, but I think if you did all this, everyone would be certain you were.
Was there a specific breakthrough you're referring to with Li-ion batteries? Because they were discovered several decades prior to 2001. Maybe just getting manufacturing and mass production infrastructure up and running?
Well yes, goodenough invented them in 1991, but the density increases that tripled their capacities and themanufacturing capabilities that decreased their cost to manufacture by a factor of 10 didn't happen until the mid-late 2000s.
There are also other battery technologies that you can release like glass batteries which are still being worked on today.
You could use modern tech to get a 30x increase in their ability per penny and corner of the market.
I think taking over the tech industry like this might be the most difficult strategy to take over the world. Firstly, the only way all of that info fits in a backpack is either if you commit it all to memory (which no single human has ever done), or you load it all onto a hard drive and keep it secret the whole time you're in the past.
Second, if you do manage to keep it secret, you still need to know it well enough to leverage it to convince the Intel's and AMDs of the world to fund you to create these advances in technology. A random homeless person who magically knows how to execute EUV lithography probably isn't going to be given the time of day to prove it.
If you can't keep it secret, and it leaks, you're now useless and the Intel's, AMDs, etc. with more resources will kick you to the curb and do everything themselves.
The lottery/investing strategy is probably the more lucrative strategy, depending on how much of a difference the butterfly effect makes.
I was assuming that the order of priorities would be to first identify the best lottery that you can win within like a 1-month period of your arrival, and then immediately follow that up with purchasing the best stocks that you possibly can purchase that will 500x your lottery winnings within the next 2-4 years.
Once you have those in place then acquiring capital via bank loans and Angel investors to do things like build and develop lithography machines to roll out your brand new processors and the flash storage and ram that runs it would be a comparative Cakewalk.
Obviously it would be much more difficult than just waving your hands but considering that you should be able to turn 15 or 20 million US Dollars into a billion+ dollars within 2 years then people should believe that you are some sort of vunderkind and follow you around and do whatever you tell them to do and hopes that some of your money will rub off on them.
That's fair. Basically pull an Elon, but instead of shit posting and ruining it all, you let your PR team make you president.
My dumb ass would put it on a blu ray or a flash drive or something unavailable to a normal person in 1999
Uh, no one said save the world. The assignment was to take it over.
Dont want to do that either if it means abandoning my daughter. If I was going to do it I'm doing it benevolently.
Chad
We don't really know what would happen to this reality. It might just flicker and vanish away. But if you had a new daughter, she might be awesome too and without the time travel, would have never existed.
That’s cool and all, but they love this daughter now.
That's kinda where I'm at. My wife is probably the entire reason I'm not either dead at my own hand or crazy. And meeting her was a complete accident.
There is a subplot in the INVINCIBLE comics that follows this very premise, and chooses the same decision you do for the exact same reason
Gray's Sports Almanac
Just hope your school bully doesn't find it.
God forbid we end up on the 1985 timeline. Can you imagine if someone like Biff became rich and powerful?
Looks at every billionaire... Yeah imagine that.
The joke is that alternate-1985 Biff was literally based on Trump, specifically.
Why don't you make like a tree and get outta here.
It's leave, you idiot! Make like a tree and leave! You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
It only had information up until 2000 so better make good use of it for that one year
I come with scientific evidence of the impeding doom that will be brought by climate change and urge the world's powers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while there is still time! Surely everybody will listen to my proofs and act to protect the world!
Sure, Mr. Gore.
[Monkey's paw curls]
We already had that evidence by the 1960s!
I'm pretty sure someone wrote about it in the 1900s, like 1908 even
Honestly it might be better to bring proof gore is better than bush or they he won florida
LOL. It would be easier to just become the richest man in the world and buy politicians
This time will be different
Lottery numbers and a historical record of the stock market: first, win lottery then invest based on performance
Become a billionaire, then join the oligarchy and use my stock knowledge to bankrupt the rest of the oligarchy
At some point, wouldn't having future knowledge of the stock market either lead to you changing the stock market with the presence of your money until your predictions lose their accuracy, or else get you investigated for insider trading due to it being statistically insanely unlikely to be that lucky?
You could just spread it across a bunch of GICs and then ETFs that were solid performers. You have your lottery money, you just need to earn enough to live the way you want. With enough invested but diversified you could make a fortune without influencing anything as a result of personal choices.
If anythjng, the initial lottery win will have the biggest impact on the timeline, assuming you lay low afterward.
Now, here's the thing. I'd say you would be sharing those winnings with the original winner unless you prevented them from getting the ticket so find a jackpot twice as big as you need and hope a bunch of yous from alternate timeline don't get the same idea.
That's what would happen to me and I'd end up winning about $3.50.
You could also find some of the lottery winners that absolutely hated what happened to their lives after they won and win the draw right before their ticket would have won.
That way you spare them the misery that the money brought them and you get a nice chunk of change for yourself in the process.
The January 2nd Powerball draw was not won by anyone and paid $39M.
That's plenty of seed money to invest in Google, Bitcoin, et al with perfect knowledge of stock trends. Even if it's only short term knowledge due to breaking from the original timeline, you could easily grow your investment into the billions overnight.
Perhaps the most amazing stock of the year was Xcelera.com, formerly known as Scandinavia. Once a closed-end fund specializing in Scandinavian stocks, and then an operating company that owned a hotel in the Canary Islands, it made a small investment in an Internet company last year. Before it disclosed that investment, the family of Alexander Vik, the company's chief executive, was given options to buy a million shares of stock, at a price of $3.25 each. The shares ended 1998 at $3.75, or $1.25 adjusted for two subsequent splits. They ended 1999 at $139.50, an increase of 11,060 percent. The Viks' option position is now valued at $415 million.
If a bunch of you's from another timeline can come too, that opens the door to more interesting shenanigans anyway, like if they all get unique valid IDs, one of you could run for political office and get enough alternative selves to come back and vote for them to win. Or get different versions of yourself to run for all the political offices in a given area while bringing enough copies to win all their elections, and completely dominate the politics of the area by having everyone in office have the same or very similar views.
The downside here is I'd have to spend all my time with other me's. I'm pretty sure I'd get on my nerves very quickly.
If you have never seen it, you should watch the British television show Red Dwarf.
There is a character named rimmer who is dead and has been brought back as a hologram.
Relatively early on in the series, through some Star Trek fuckery he manages to bring another version of himself back and begins to cohabitate with himself.
Aside from that, if you even reasonably like science fiction or comedy then it's a damn good show to watch. It's been running for 12 or 13 seasons, it started back in the '80s, and as far as I'm aware there is another season scheduled to be released.
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!"
We'd be too distracted by all the sex to do any of that stuff.
I think as long as you’re careful you could avoid crashing the market until you are ready, and they would have to prove insider trading. I could spread my stock purchases through a bunch of shell corporations as well
Don't go all in to try and be the majority in a ton of things, and good luck PROVING insider information.
Besides if you make enough money, you can just make investigations go away as long as you aren't too flashy about it. Or have a convenient distraction story waiting elsewhere to divert attention away from yourself.
... It freaks me out that is exactly my plan that I've spitballed in the shower several times.
Cia_chatbot knows.
Bear in mind that logically, the longer time goes on and the more you interfere, things will diverge. You might only be able to win the lottery a handful of times before the butterfly effect starts giving you numbers which don't match your predictions from the future. I figure the same thing happens with investments. If someone buys a tonne of shares using billions, the history of the stockmarket will change and over time be unreliable outside of certain events. Might be wise to buy up aquire certain talent though.
make your billions by buying lots of small, but super profitable investments.
Yeah, just buy Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook when it comes out and you’re all set.
Also, start generating Bitcoin in late 2009 and sell it all on Nov 10, 2021.
Sell it when it's in the 10,000 range the first time, circa 2015, then buy back when it drops to 400 in late 2016 and then hold
It spiked to 17,000 in 2017 too, if I recall.
Just buy Apple and Microsoft. You'll be fine.
All of Wikipedia on a thumb drive
List of winning power ball numbers for the past 2 decades.
$20 cash to buy bitcoin
That’s enough. More than enough money to never work again and info to help stop 9/11, etc…
Bring a 2023 model computer back with you and you could just mine all the bitcoin yourself.
Hell, you could even temporally-plagiarize Satoshi Nakamoto and invent it yourself.
This is a great idea but it requires effort and if I were to mine 10billion bitcoin very early, that may change the future of bitcoin such that it never hits 30k+ value per. It seems safer to simply buy 1000 of them at a $0.10 to resale at 10k+.
My plan is minimal effort, minimal impact to anyone that isn’t me, and to get all the money I could ever need.
But on the other hand we could maybe stop NFTs from existing if Bitcoin never gets popular
I have a theory about NFTs.
One of the issues with running any system on the internet where users can upload files is that you have to store those files and make them accessible to people.
Which is fine. But often times users will upload the same file repeatedly or with only minor trivial alterations and that is how you end up with a multi petabyte server farm completely full of duplicate memes and reposted video content.
If there were a system that could uniquely identify each and every single file that is uploaded to it and then on the fly cross compare that file with previous uploads and identify when the file is a duplicate, that would be very handy.
If such a system like that existed, then system would only need a single copy of the file to share out to every single person that wants to view it, saving possibly hundreds of gigabytes of storage space.
Something like NFTs could be used to accomplish that, if it were fully fleshed out and developed.
It would probably need one of the new neural network systems overlaid on top of it to analyze the content and cross compare it, and to single out minor differences and create overlays to account for them.
For instance, if you have a base image on knowyourmeme.com, then all the AI would have to do is separate a layer that contains the text in text format with the information of the font that is displayed on top of the image, and it could share up millions of variations on a base level meme for only a few megabytes of storage space for the text information.
If your computer system already has the base meme file on it rather than sharing the entire file to you it could just share the text overlay to your computer and decrease transmission file sizes and time as well.
That exists. And we could probably even make something that recognizes small changes like added text on the image and save the data accordingly, probably using some kind of neural network as you later mentioned. The issue is just that that would be extremely computationally expensive, so companies usually choose to just buy a shitload of HDDs. Maybe something like this might be more feasible with quantum computing at some point.
What makes you think that? An NFT is basically just an ID card with extra steps. I don't see how NFTs relate to the problem you described at all. Just because most NFTs the public heard about were somehow tied to images or videos, doesn't mean that NFTs are a technology for detecting duplicate images/data in general.
I mean nft's basically serve as a identifier for a file. So if you can identify the file then you can set it as a base image and then cross compare with that identifier. Idiots are using it to like have some sort of weird digital ownership of something but that's not its ideal use case
NFTs are non-fungible tokens. They are literally made for claiming some sort of weird digital ownership of something. There isn't really another feasible usecase for that technology, even if I agree that that hasen't been done in a meaningful way yet. If you want to identify the files in that anti-duplication system of yours you are better off using just a regular incremental integer or GUID or something. No need for all the extra steps to the ID card
what a hero you would be
Your smartphone probably has a comparable amount of processing power to some of the earlier mining farms. May as well just mine the bitcoin
Win the Powerball more than once and someone will be doing an investigation.
Oh yeah, definitely. I’d take all the numbers because I’d assume at some point history would change such that the record wouldn’t be perfect forever.
I’d win one that is over a billion. Then quit.
A healthy 21 body and 1999? Fuck taking over the world, and I don't need your stinking backpack, just tell me where to get that ticket and where to show up, I'm not going to miss this! I'm taking a cyanide pill though when 2020 rolls around; I'm not doing this shit again.
So prevent it from happening!
One of the reasons why the coronavirus vaccine was created so quickly was that the work was already 90% done.
If you orchestrated things that you would be a billionaire by the 2010s, you could purchase the company that designed the vaccine and make sure that they are appropriately funded so that the vaccine for coronavirus would already exist at the time the pandemic struck.
And billionaires didn't have to isolate in a studio apartment.
Grays Sports Almanac
An entire offline copy of Wikipedia up to Jan 1 2024 on a tablet. Having all the world events up to that date available to consult at my fingertips, I could use it in so many ways.
Don't forget a charger, otherwise you'll be screwed for awhile
USB 1.1 was already around in 1999, USB 2.0 being released in 2001 with Mini-A/AB/B being available in 2001, and the standard Type-A as early as 1996.
Take one of those USB Type-A to USB-C and you're good enough until circa-2008 when USB-C starts to get around
USB-C wasn't designed until 2014. So yeah you'll need a charging cable regardless
Even nowadays USB-C devices aren't the de-facto yet(specially true in 3rd world countries like mine), Mini-B and Micro-C are still fairly common(tho really limited compared to USB-C), so depending on the devices being taken, it might not be that much of a trouble
But the old USB chargers didn't have high speed charging (2+amps) until much later. Most cell phones can't charge effectively from the original 0.5A standard USB.
Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there's several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.
Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.
Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.
Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.
Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.
Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.
And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can't get their patents in them.
Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.
It's a really smart way. Very interesting, and I agree. It would probably be the best course of action.
I only wonder how quick the butterfly effect would have effects on your "future" documents.
For example, helping Al Gore win could drastically change the imminent future.
That's why most of the stuff is technical or scientific information for the researchers; things that aren't subject to change, just technical info. The money stuff I would hope to manage in less than 6 months from my arrival, because even in that short time I'd expect a lot to change by the end of it.
It'd just be a question of getting that initial funding off the ground with which to set up my research institution. After that, the few things I don't release for free should cover expenses.
Sidenote since I didn't address it in the original reply, taking over the world is impractical even with future knowledge, but as the person in charge of this outfit that would quickly be the world's most advanced research tank, I'd probably have a lot of influence, which is the best anyone can practically hope for, I imagine. A lot more than the last 25 years of advancement would be needed to actually take over I figure.
What use is that? Without the asml duv lithography machine, no one could duplicate it. And you'd have no motherboard to plug those chips into.
Honestly, I don't know for sure since I'm not an expert; my reasoning was the hope that being able to examine the entire line of advancement would allow the necessary technical knowledge to be extracted and duplicated. I knew that just bringing the latest one would definitely do nothing.
If looking at a 5nm chip was all that was needed to make a copy, China would already be selling RTX 4090 clones.
I would have no inclination to take over the world. But if I could go back to that date, I would make a million different decisions over the next few years to steer my life in a much wiser direction.
Information is power. A simple smartphone loaded with major historical decisions, sports results is enough to make you a billionaire. Take some tech textbooks to stay ahead of the game, maybe some newly developed medicine.
Given that the AIDS epidemic was still in full swing at the time, just being able to teach medicine makers how to make pRep would make you a billionaire just from the licensing fees.
What's that? Profilactic?
You can just take back the experimental vaccine and save some people.
Prep is an anti-hiv pill.
If you engage in practices likely to expose you to HIV you should use prep.
If you have pRep in your system and you are exposed to HIV there is a high likelihood that the pRep will destroy the HIV and prevent the infection from ever taking hold.
Of course, it won't do anything to protect you from the other potential negative consequences of risky behaviors that would expose you to HIV, but considering that it helps protect you from one of the worst potential outcomes it's essentially a godsend.
Just thought Kiwix seems like it'll be handy here, it lets you download Wikipedia and some other websites, and they have an Android app to view them.
(They have a web version too, which I actually selfhost for if the world ends or something /s)
Greys. Sports. Almanac.
The only correct answer.
Probably a backpack full of smart phones, go sell them and retire.
Then cry that it'll be a long time until I can use USB C again.
That's a good idea but I wonder if anyone would buy them? Obviously the technology inside of it would be a quantum leap for any tech company that could get their hands on it. AT&t or ma Bell or Motorola would all easily fall over themselves to hand you several million dollars for it just so that they could have their top researchers reverse analyze the equipment.
The downside to that issue though is that it would be very difficult to get in contact with the right people to sell these devices at the right price.
Any current smartphone would be the best digital camera that exists by a mile, even if they didn't have Internet access.
That kind of technology is hard to get any value from. Nothing in modern phones is innovative, and most of it would be an obvious evolutionary step to any specialist in their field.
Mostly, though, the phones would be useless. Cellular networks were in their infacy, and none of the standards or technology existed to charge them. Reverse engineering anything in them would be hugely expensive, for little return.
Smart phones would be interesting, but far less interesting than the existance of a person who has access to future technology. I think op would dissappear into a government facility not long after trying to pawn their goods.
I mean I could always post photos on Twitter and... Oh wait.
Invent Apple Google and Amazon all at once. Yes, I know they all existed at that time but I would just do their best ideas before them.
New Pied Piper
Why not go with original ideas like Facebook, Uber, Bitcoin, YouTube and
RedditLemmy?stock data
Bitcoin has outperformed stocks by about 100,000-fold. All you need is a fiver to invest at the beginning.
Note that that return is only for the early investors. If you are incredibly lucky and we have a very flush couple of years you might triple an investment in by 2030 now. But you are also very likely to just lose it All
I've got no motivation to take over the world, nor am I sure it's really possible in a life time. I don't really have a non-boring answer to this hypothetical.
If the ticket is available anyway I'd happily take it, I'm single at the moment with no dependents and being younger and healthier would be huge. There are lots of ways to make money with the knowledge of future history, even if it'll change when you start impacting it, and any one of them could make me wealthy enough to never have to work again in my life and do so wherever I please.
I've never really understood the need of the rich to continually amass wealth or how they spend it.
The bag is full of post-1999 MTG cards that I will trade for pre-1999 MTG cards.
A person of culture, I see.
I would bring Wednesday 6th January 1999's winning lottery numbers, five books chronicling the last 25 years of British history, history of businesses, history of the tech industry between 1998 and 2023, modern military history, and the history of Blackrock. Also I would choose a healthy 21-year-old body.
The plan is... win the lottery for some immediate starting capital, make well-informed investments, effectively become the Warren Buffet of Britain and weasel my way into the world elite, befriending figures like David Cameron, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, etc. I would make timely investments into new startups like Facebook, Twitter, etc, jump on the Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum bandwagons early and make it my aim to become the richest man in the world. With that wealth I'd then buy more shares in Blackrock, Blackwater and Lockheed Martin, seemingly be at the top of my game as head of a PMC. I would assist in conflicts that maintain the status quo as best as I could.
I would also do a tonne of work with African military forces, make loads of private investments in African firms and , and beat China to the punch.
With the exception of Blackwater, I would not aim to be a majority shareholder in any of these companies. I'd keep maybe... 5 to 10 percent of shares in the really successful companies, lose a bit of money in falls to not arouse too much suspicion, but I would otherwise climb to the top of the PMC ladder and put my fingers in as many NATO pies as possible.
That's what I'd do if my aim as a time traveller was to take over the world. In actuality, I'd rather just win the lottery, diversify my investments and retire comfortably. I don't desire world domination.
All the FLOSS software i could put my hands on (with source code), a couple awesome smartphones, wikipedia dump, sports almanac, and a stable-diffusion rig.
I'm curious how stable diffusion plays into taking over the world.
I don't know about stable diffusion but I know deep fakes would be handy. Being able to release videos to the public while retaining my privacy would be invaluable.
And if the CIA or the KGB decided to assassinate my alter ego they would have a hell of a time even finding the fucker and if they did find somebody that looked just like them and executed them that wouldn't have killed me.
A current download of Wikipedia.
A computer with lists of winning lottery numbers, stock prices by day of all major companies, archived copies of webpages or, preferably, scanned in newspaper articles of all world events from 1999 until now, and lists of every politician and individual with net worths over $300 million.
Also patents for LCD screens, the microchips in use in the 10's and now, the efficient solar panels China cranks out if I can get a hold of that information, modern efficient wind turbines, etc. Also important scientific papers written between then and now, especially for Ozempic and Wegovy.
Also, this might be the one practical use for dumb shit like Chat GPT and its ilk, so we're bringing along a couple of GPUs and copies of each major open source AI I can scramble up.
I use this information to:
Hopefully prevent 9/11
Become filthy fucking rich
Infiltrate the elite and start bumping off motherfuckers one by one Count of Monte Cristo style
Distribute my ill gotten gains to the masses and use the rest to stop climate collapse
#EatTheRich
Please don’t get rid of 9/11, without it we wouldn’t have WKUK
They are so talented they did not need 9/11 to have a hilarious TV show
9/11 was happening so they ran into a dorm room that could see the towers from the window
That room ended up being Timmy’s
Okay, if it's that important just throw a party and introduce them that way.
If you need them to trauma bond, kidnap the fuckers, pistol whip them a little bit and then let them escape from their own ingenuity.
:O I could never hurt Timmy Weems
If you put it on a scale between bruising Timmys face with the butt of a pistol and saving 3,000 lives on one day and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives in the interim between due to the post 9/11 increase in American policing and military actions in other countries, then not pistol whipping him would be a crime against humanity for which you should be tried at the Hague and hung.
A Lenovo P series with deepfacelab. I would work public perception of Dubya (and Jeb) to avoid the decades of war crimes.
A modern desktop PC full with top of the line deep learning graphics cards.
I will flood the internet with helpful comments, exploits, anything that will take down the banking grid. I will sway online and print media discourse towards progressive politics. I will take down Murdoch media and ensure that he never again makes a cent spreading his rhetoric.
I will start a consulting company using my AI models as my employees and make unspeakable amount of money, whilst ensuring that large contracting firms never take off.
I will buy up large linear strips of country, and build railroads and rail stations everywhere, whilst building free accommodation above and below the tracks to ensure that the homeless always have somewhere to sleep, and to ensure that buy-to-let landlords can never return much on their investment.
I will crash weapon trading stock markets, exploit the emails of corrupt politicians and their billionaire donors. I will wage financial war on the 1% until the world gini index reaches 0.5
To take over the world? I'd take the records of every international technology and medical patent. And, a cell phone. I'd get the local news interested in my new handheld PC, find the least scrupulous tech company which reached out to me, and hatch a plan to create a trillion dollar tech empire.
Pingy Putty and Reaganism would all still be in heavy effect, I can't think of a way any one person is going to bring down 3 nuclear super-war-states. We don't have any anti nuke tech eminence in shadow but nice writing prompt for potential suffering trying.
Pingy putty? I've never heard of this before.
Putin and Xi Ping would still be serious threats to trying to take over the world even from 1999 perspective.
Also, nothing comes up when I search it on DuckDuckGo or start page
Eminence in Shadow? I only know the term from the anime. What does it mean here?
Trying to Isekai to 1999 to take over the world brain.
1989 would be better. 2000s were pretty terrible.
You have to prevent 9/11. Then you can still walk your grandma to the terminal when she flies to the Bahamas.
Prevent Gore losing
All you'd have to do is generate money with the information you brought back and then campaign for Gore in Florida like nobody's business. None of this hanging chads bullshit.
That and preventing 9/11 would completely and utterly change the world most likely for the better.
89 was a good year. I didn’t quite have bills yet.
I'm squashing my partner into a very large backpack and taking them with me.
I don't think I could take over the world so I choose love. But I can't resist the new body part which is why I'm not just staying here.
I read this as 'new part of the body' and was wondering what new part you'd get (like is it also an optional gender switch? Or perhaps you're an amputee?) but then I figured out oh, okay, you mean the part about the new body.
@squiblet yeah I could have worded that better!
Don't worry, they can get a ticket and a new body too, but between the two of you you can still only take one backpack.
@Bizarroland thanks, that's great!! I think we'll probably put a couple of reasonably modern computers, components, and drives containing information into it, and paper printout backups of the things I need most, and whatever pharmaceuticals I can get my hands on for retroengineering.
A 24 year jump on scientific and tech research might not help me take over but it could at least make the world a better place. ART for HIV in developing nations for starters.
I'm guessing the butterfly effect probably applies to lottery numbers, but the stock market's likely still good to go, and that can fund me (along with a few non essential drugs I can sell to pharma) so I can be more influential.
I was already an adult in 1999 so I will know my way around just fine.
My phone, laptop, charging cables, ethernet cables, tons of SSDs to use with said laptop, Kali, and a bunch of cyber-sec resources.
Having a $2000 2023 gaming/workstation laptop would be an insane amount of computing power in 1999. Being able to use modern-day exploits and discoveries in 1999 would probably allow me to gather as much intel as I needed from my targets while not being discovered. If something gets patched by a Windows XP service pack, I'll still have an endless list of exploits that work. Hell, I'd even have access to something like Spectre and Meltdown, and that's something that still must develop organically.
I assume I get ID for a person born in '78 if I choose the adult body? I was born, but very young.
Hard drives of data compatible with old computers, and a few modern laptops for good measure. Maybe some electronics equipment too in case I really need to interface with something obsolete or proprietary. Some period-appropriate cash to live on before my first "job". The 2000's won't know what hit them.
I'm not going to be able to take over the world (shit, even taking over Afghanistan proved to be too hard), but I sure as hell can be a shadowy hacker figure that steers the course of history. I'll probably avert 9/11 assuming I can get up and running fast enough, and try to steer China towards reform and detente with the West. Russia's probably intractable. I wonder if I could tip the Florida election towards Gore, in order to get global warming taken care of faster. Giving a bump to renewables research could also help things along.
Edit: So, there would be a lot of phases to this, as I gradually shift from being anonymous to a hot item. Once I reach some point at or after present day, I'll publish my archives so the world can decide for itself, and I'll leave proof early on that it's genuine, for example as hashes of data in things like newspapers that are well archived. Then I'll dismantle my cabal and retire.
I'd take the entirety of the USA's military hardware. Nobody said how big the backpack was.
You have to be able to walk 100 meters while holding onto the backpack, it has to be strapped to your back, and it has to be a commonly available backpack of a variety purchaseable in a store with the next 25 days.
No part of it can touch the ground, nor can anything attached to it other than your feet and shoes touch the ground, and everything that you have must be fully enclosed by the backpack, and you must cross through the portal on your own two feet.
Reflecting on my own actions and the folks I met on the way, taking a better attitude would help a lot. I was young and had good conversations with different types of people but did nothing with that for close to another 15 years.
We had much of the information then, IMO. And I remember talking with much older folks who were willing to listen to teens/young adults about a variety of topics. I just wasn't willing to say anything. Even to my peers.
I would take a better attitude.
Can I fill it with whatever I can think of or only things I actually have right now?
Anything you can acquire, legally or not, and have in your possession on Jan 1, 2024.
If you end up incarcerated or dead between now and then, the ticket is null and void.
Oh well, so much for filling my backpack with rhodium.
I would bring a laptop with a good CPU and GPU, an ASIC Bitcoin miner and 10,000 in cash in case for some reason the miner broke or didn't work.
I would bide my time at pizza delivery jobs for 10 years paying rent living on ramen and buying small amounts of gold and silver coins. As soon as the first btc client was released by Satoshi I would start mining. I would be selling things on the cheap and performing services as much as humanly possibly. Id have a small gold and silver for BTC company, selling $50 gold coins for the equivalent of $25 in BTC at the time. I would not stop until I had at least 1,000,000 Bitcoin, or January 2017, whatever came first. As soon as the BTC rush of 2017 starts, I start selling my BTC en masse at the peak. Mail order, cash, in person, whatever. Claim what I need to on taxes. Sell the rest via an exchange before it's regulated as a security and needs to be taxed.
Now I am a big time multi-billionaire and no one even knows my name besides my financial advisors and closest friends from my pizza delivery days who now work for me doing "whatever the fuck they want" work for 100k per year.
I keep investing in companies who sell the most in online communications services (zoom, Microsoft, etc), mask production, hand sanitizer, laptops, gold and silver, and whatever else I can remember. As a ride out COVID, I've increased my 5-10 billion to 20-30 billion.
Now I live a happy "do whatever the fuck I want" life at roughly the same age I am now, only now I have total freedom and power because of "20 years of hard work and foresight -- I started as a pizza delivery boy, and you can too ;).”
A few useful books about electronics, devices and new inventions and all of the electronics I can fit into my backpack.
Like the other person mentioned their family, I would say that about my friends and other relations. I don't think it's possible for me to redo my life in a way that my decade old friendships would be the same (or even better) than what they became. I don't even know if I will feel the same about my friends if I decide to relive my life as memory is a precarious thing and I can't rely on how I feel about them to last until I meet them again and live life interacting with them while trying to change the world.
I could consider a 21yo body but as a millennial I would end up overaged for the people who were important in my life to have any meaningful relation with them.
I have considered the scenario of reliving my life, correcting my mistakes and maybe making some massive changes along the way, if I could somehow guarantee keeping the things that matter to me the same.
I forgot to write what things I would do, so here are some ideas:
Forgot to mention in the edit, so adding as a new comment:
I'll bring back my story ideas and complete them and publish them as books, it'll let me pretend that I have an active imagination as a writer and that I just got lucky with the lottery and used it to put money in tech that fascinated me and just was good at imagining tech.
I'll do a fast forward course of comp-sci to present RISC-V based on that and use common terminology to explain it as much as possible.
Winning lotto numbers for years.
Future weed.
That's true, a big sack of super dank 30% seeds would go a long way. Funny thing is we'd be just as happy with some of those old strains, so you could win again by freezing seeds from true NL5, Skunk #1 and so on in 1999.
Do the whole Back to the Future thing and take back a list of lottery winnings, stock picks, etc. Just keep slyly moving things around at the proper times and you'd have no trouble becoming the next Bezos.
Not a bottle of Vodka and Champagne, I mixed both of those to excess the last time around - never again
How the fuck do you take your self's place? You're either a your current age trying to identify as a baby or you're a baby which doesn't have the mental capacity to remember having the historical info.
I have some crazy news for you. Not everyone is 21. Believe it or not, but there are people who are older than that (I'm one of them! Boo!)
I misread OP. I was under the impression that you reset as a 21 yo
It's simple. Say for instance you were 30 years old in 1999. You would just slot into your 30-year-old self and have an opportunity to make new decisions loaded with information about a highly likely future.
However, if you were a baby in 1999, you probably would not want to take your own life over so you would choose the new body option, and lead a completely new life separate from your old one.
But how is there not a 24 year difference and 2 of you? Makes 0 sense
Have you ever seen the TV show quantum leap?
That's what I'm talking about. Your personality, the wave state of your brain that makes you "you" would take over your former selfs body.
Once again though, if that doesn't work for you, you could just have a new body.
If going back to 1999 would put you into you infant or toddler's self, then the appropriate choice would be to get a new body.
Ah so you basically reset your life. No thanks