Rules:

  • The messages can go as far back as the beginning of the 7 day period (the moment you found out about your assassin is after you)
  • You can only send the messages if you have cell signal (maybe don’t hide in the woods, you assassin might be there, and you don’t get a do-over 🙃)
  • Your phone is immune to damage and malware (although spyware and keyloggers can still be on there, but they can’t affect the system, just on “read only” mode). Auto-updates are now disabled by default
  • If assassin got your phone, they could send false messages to trick your past self. (Don’t lose your phone!)
  • At the end of 7 days, the Assassin will just drop dead due to time travel limitations, time travelers cannot survive longer than 7 days in the past (yes, the assassin is a time traveler 😉)

[P.S: El Psy Congroo]

  • @Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
    35•9 days ago

    But how does that help? If I send past me a message, can past me change anything? What happens to the me that sent the message if past me receives it and changes stuff? Seems like you’re creating a classic time travel paradox.

  • @RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
    21•9 days ago

    “Oh, a text from future me? Let’s see what it says…”

    “FM: Ninja assassins are after you. You know what you must do.”

    shuts off phone nods solemnly “Set myself on fire.”

  • @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    18•9 days ago

    What time travel rules? See: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TemporalMutability

    Going with “overwriting the timeline,”

    • buy yourself an hour to live on the first day, should be easy enough

    • make fat cash with options trading in minutes

    • buy hella security

    • repeat until the seven days have passed

    I would also rig a “dead man’s switch” on my phone in case the assassin ever does get me, to reset things (by telling my past self of my current situation, so they can avoid it).

  • @vxx@lemmy.world
    15•9 days ago

    I wouldn’t warn myself because I don’t want to get caught in a groundhog day, butter fly effect scenario.

    • @throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      6•9 days ago

      I mean, you could just give your self a limit.

      Add a “Iteration 1” to the first message, and the 2nd iteration of you should append the message with “Iteration 2” and so on…

      If you still get warned of death in Iteration 500, then maybe then you can give up.

      At least try to survive for a few timelines.

      • @vxx@lemmy.world
        3•9 days ago

        I would’ve created 500 alternative timelines by then, and in all of them my peers would have to live through my death. It sounds selfish to put that burden on them for the chance of creating one timeline where we maybe live happy, instead of just accepting my fate and leave only one family behind.

        I might tell myself that it’s really important to live the next seven days if they were my last.

        Playing with time doesnt sound wise to me.

  • @Arkouda@lemmy.ca
    11•9 days ago

    Step one: I clone my phone allowing two phones to contact my past self.

    Step two: “Lose” one phone, after turning on find my friend on the lost phone.

    Step three: Send past self false information while keeping constant tab on the assassin who believes they have an edge.

    Step four: Hit the assassin before they hit me.

  • Dizzy Devil DuckyEnglish
    8•9 days ago

    First of all, if it’s my number sending messages back in time to myself, I could easily convince myself it’s me by sending a list of my passwords back in time.

    Second, tell myself that I’m screwed no matter what because there’s no way I could defeat a professional assassin (assuming it’s professional), especially one from the future, and to probably just hang myself or some other form of suicide in order to mock the assassin by not letting them get the kill.

    • SanguinePar
      7•9 days ago

      Turns out you were the assassin all along and sending yourself messages to prompt pre-emptive suicide was your method.

  • Berttheduck
    8•9 days ago

    I might be reading this wrong but I’m not convinced it helps. My read of this is basically we get 1 free go at surviving and can send messages back to the start point for the second go to try and survive.

    You could keep a running commentary of what you’re doing and where you’re going which would give you a little bit of notice of where and when you die but unless you can time loop and continually adjust the plan until you find something that works I don’t see how knowing 1 point of failure is enough to keep you alive.

    Maybe someone smarter than me has a better idea though, or I’ve got the prompt wrong.

    • @throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      5•9 days ago

      No, you get to send unlimited number of messages, but the furthest back is at the beginning of this 7 days. You could send it to day 2, day 3, or even exactly at 12:34 on day 4.

      • @VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        7•9 days ago

        OK, but what happens to current me if it sends a message that leads past me on a course that will not lead to it’s current state?

        Does it create multiple time lines? Might that lead to a near infinite amount of messages received at the beginning of the period?

      • @rollmagma@lemmy.world
        3•9 days ago

        But then that’s me sending a message to past me and the messages can only go as far back as today, so that’s like me writing a message right now and then reading it right now.

        So I need to be able to meet with the assassin and somehow send a message with location and date so that past me can avoid it. Repeat until the 7 days end.

        I guess I’m also not smart enough. Sigh… Past self, I tried, but I don’t understand the rules, so we’re dead now.

  • @untakenusername@sh.itjust.works
    7•9 days ago

    Id get the the hashes of the next few hundred blocks of Bitcoin and send back in time, my past self could use that to pre-mine tons of Bitcoin, with each block reward being ~3 BTC and the price arround 90k each, I could sell all that for millions and millions of dollars

    with all that money I’d just hire another assassin or something to kill the first guy. or just invest in a ton of security, body guards and stuff

    edit: actually on second thought I could use almost any financial mechanism to get tons of cash, this is just the first one that came to me

  • @MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub
    6•9 days ago

    Assuming you can change the future, you can send a message with your location history every x minutes to your 1-day (or more) ago self. You will have to encode it (and I guess this should be done outside the phone) in a way that the assassin can’t spoof a message. You’ll have to figure out that encoding as soon as you find out about the assassin since that’s your message travel limit anyway. When you start receiving messages you follow that location history and then stop following it when you stop receiving them because something went wrong there. Eventually some instance of you might make it 7 days.