For the past 13 years I have been sending emails to my future self via @futureme: one for each day of the year 2020. Today, I sent the final email, to Dec 31, 2020. The first email, sent from 2007, arrives tomorrow. I'll share excerpts from the best emails in this thread. :)
In 2021 I'm allocating $100/month towards sponsoring programmers and other content creators.
Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed it took me this long. For years, I've enjoyed directly supporting artists on Bandcamp; this is an extension of the same principle.
Growing up in the 2000s, piracy felt like a practical--and moral!--necessity. I wasn't able to buy the content I wanted, and even if I could, 90% of it would go to some giant faceless record company or bloated game studio anyway. So why bother?
Thankfully, today we have many ways to pay creators directly. And once you have the option of doing so, the morality of piracy flips: you're not sticking it to the man, you're biting the hand that feeds you.
I'm still sympathetic to people who truly can't afford to pay; I think "name your price" is the best model. But if you have the means to support artists, and you choose not to... well, you're kinda missing out, because it feels great!
A big day for me: my first "real" paper has been added to the ePrint Archive! If you're interested in Merkle trees, definitely check it out: eprint.iacr.org/2021/038