There are many ways of sending messages to the future.
I'd be far more interested in ways of sending messages to the past.
Ask HN: How to send a message to someone 20 years into the future?
31–35 of 35 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to send a message to someone 20 years into the future?
#32A smart contract blockchain will allow you to deploy time and person-bound programs (though using exact-future-date as on-chain conditions is non trivial). An example is time-locked wallets. [1] Messages, files, money: you can put it all in there (big files won't be cheap). My best bet is on Ethereum still being around in 20 years as it so entrenched.it'll be there for you. As long as people want to pay for using a b…
How would you send a message on ethereum that would be encrypted before hitting the chain, and could be decrypted after some amount of time, without being decryptable before that? Any straightforward approach seems like it'd just rely on an off-chain decryption key, which doesn't really make it any better than putting letters in envelopes with the dates at which they should be opened.
Sarcophagus looks like the closest thing available right now, but it's still unproven enough that I wouldn't really count on it working 20 years from now: https://sarcophagus.io/
Time-locked wallets solve the potential issue of transferring value at some point after death, but can't be used to transfer messages.. not ones which aren't readable at the time you send them anyway
Re: Ask HN: How to send a message to someone 20 years into the future?
#33As a father of a five year old, let me send some advice back in time to a dad with a zero year old! I know this isn’t exactly what you were asking for — apologies please let me suggest changing your goal slightly to try and give your kid a message every year, not just all at once at twenty. More than that let me suggest you do this activity with your kid and not alone. I’ve seen my child change so fast and I promise…
Thanks a lot for your kind words and advice!
Re: Ask HN: How to send a message to someone 20 years into the future?
#34Typed and printed in your language of choice.
Put it into a safety deposit box.
Create a will mentioning said box explicitly, just in case something happens.
For the techy solution, in addition to above, create emails with the big 3, Apple, Google and Microsoft. Send the emails to them. Include passwords in the safety deposit box.
Re: Ask HN: How to send a message to someone 20 years into the future?
#35Use the AWS free tier.
Add the message to a DynamoDB table with a send date. Create an Eventbridge rule that runs every month and calls a Lambda function. Have the Lambda function query the DynamoDB table and email you the message using SES if the time stamp is reached.
Assuming AWS doesn’t change their free tier in the next 20 years, this should be free.