Asklemmy

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.

1989 would be better. 2000s were pretty terrible.

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'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'd take the entirety of the USA's military hardware. Nobody said how big the backpack was.

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.

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:

• Investing is an obvious one which everyone else has also mentioned.
• I would download all the open source stuff, all leaked files, maybe even scour the dark web for stuff
• Buy NeXt to hire jobs as the CEO of my tech company (also any other corporations that I could buy back then, like Google)
• I'll create a note with ideas that were killed too soon or didn't last due to tampering by big corps, and products which got enshittified and implement them when there's no competition or wait for when I have enough money to not worry about people getting in my way.
• I'll create a note with mention of all the important events (multiple notes, encrypted, to prevent someone from using that information)
• Put an offline LLM and other AI on my phone (along with very reliable chargers and replacement batteries).
• (Kind of a sub point of above, but it got big) I'll try to take a phone with replaceable batteries and sturdy design. It would be great if it could fit in that time, I'll disable the touch screen to that effect and only use a stylus, and other changes to make it seem worse or maybe take a "bad" phone from the start. I'll also claim it's an experimental product if someone asks me about it.
• A list of my favourite recipes, so that I can be a food trailblazer
• Start my own music company and invest in artists which I know will be big in the future, give them better terms than my competition and use that roster to prepare for streaming. I'll already have Jobs and Ive to design iPod and take over that period.
• With RISC-V as my chip, I'll buy one of the fabs which went under back then and use it to establish myself as a chip manufacturer and once I have built up enough lead in the fab business with knowledge gathered before going back I'll open source RISC-V as an act of benevolence according to the world (I'll discuss the future fab knowledge with the researchers I will acqui-hire with the fab, they should be able to create something in a few years with whatever knowledge I can provide, I'll just have to act as a layman with more knowledge and if I go with my age they'll think I'm a smart kid)
• I didn't mention crypto because that might change with the chip info I bring back, so I'll see if that happens again and invest early and secretly to have enough of it to have a hand in that too.
• I'll also try to keep my identity hidden so that I can live the important parts of my life again as they were, and once I have lived those I'll consider if I need to be known to the world.
• I'll prepare media organizations to fight disinformation
• I'll bring back innovations in renewables that I'll slowly release into the world.