What are your predictions for 2021? It's clear that 2020 was somewhat of a false start into this decade and has arguably completely changed everyone's lives for the long term. (If not permanently).
This time, it seems that my crystal ball is lacking inspiration for 2021 due to the uncertainty caused by this year.
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596
2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988
2017: none?
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723
2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370
2013: none?
2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201
2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023
2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681
(Note that large threads are still paginated and you have to click More at the bottom of the page to see the rest.)
cmd-f 'virus': 0 results
Predictions are hard
This is older
2010
-People become more privacy aware after an image search engine with facial recognition is popularized and they realize that any picture ever posted of them by anyone is in the search result for their name. People become less willing to let others take compromising pictures as if they become posted, the link back to them will be made.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787
2011 - none 2012 - none 2013 - none
2014
2) Security/privacy will become something normal people and businesses ask about, and ask fairly superficial questions about, during many transactions (e.g. people are going to stop being fucking morons and just relying on "the cloud" for sensitive data without questioning it; they may still end up using the cloud, but will want to make a more informed choice.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370
I'd like to believe that we'll be more privacy-conscious in 2014, but I don't actually think that will be the case. I'd like to see more scrutiny of the data companies collect about users, particularly because they are now collecting more data than ever before. Some companies like Google have staggering amounts of user data. They're probably salivating at the prospect of capturing even more precise user behaviour through an OS (Chrome) that potentailly captures everything you do online.
Far from the tech community (who you might hope would be most informed about this) actually raising concerns about the privacy implications of this, I think Google (and other companies) will continue to get away with barely any scrutiny at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995005
2015
2. More hacking scandals come to light and they are used as cover to restrict privacy and empower the intelligence community.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823311
Privacy still will be a target to crush for governments, and so any activity/communication media/etc that could affect that main objective.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823103
- Privacy will become more mainstream. After apps like DarkMail are introduced, Google and the other players will start to reconsider privacy and we, the people will gain.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823303
2016 - none 2017 - none 2018 - none 2019 - none 2020 - none 2021 - none
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* 1 Bitcoin will cost over $100k on Dec 31, 2021
* An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge
* FB releases a thin virtual reality headset https://research.fb.com/blog/2020/06/holographic-optics-for-...
* Austin Tx or Seattle Wa succeeds Silicon Valley as the next major tech hub. San Francisco and its century old Victorians become the Detroit of the tech world
* Section 230 doesn't get repealed
* WFH and quarantine continues until the summer
* A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge
* A Reddit competitor emerges and wins majority marketshare
* 2021 will be the year of punk and rock n' roll
Over the long term (more like decades), a prediction like yours might eventually take place but it's not going to happen in the next 365 days.
Yes, old Venice eventually lost its 13th century financial supremacy to New York and London, and New York City lost its film industry to Hollywood California. Therefore, Silicon Valley's dominance won't last forever but they'll still be the #1 tech hub in December 31 2021.
Currently being tested in Seattle! Had a conversation tonight about it. I hear there’s a ray-ban branding partnership. And the product is supposed to be way less creepy than google glass, but similar.
Can’t recall if this was spoken to me in confidence. Alcohol. Happy New Years!
I don't see why the Treasury and Mint would start making more paper money and coins.
It really bugs me when people incorrectly talk about the money supply as 'currency'. Currency is printed by the US Mint/Treasury. Money appears out of thin air when banks make loans.
* Accelerating inflation perhaps leading high single digits low double digits in the next several years.
* Stocks continue to rise as a function of inflation.
* Unemployment measured by workforce participation rate stays high or increases.
* Full self drivering cars are no closer.
* 50% chance of Bitcoin crash like in 2018, 50% chance of further price appreciation but I think $100,000 is absurd for a commodity that has close to zero intrinsic value...
* Major urban areas see falling rents as WFH continues.
* Silicon Valley loses some of its prominence as a function of WFH but I doubt a wholesale shift could happen in a year.
* 50 % chance of major social unrest in the USA as Trump diehards refuse to accept Biden.
* Tech advertising bubble begins to collapse. Tech bubble begins to collapse by year end. AI, self-driving vehicles discredited.
* Amazon reduces its own shipping service as a money loser increases use of UPS and USPS.
* Subscription web services (rather than ad funded) services begin to emerge.
* Reddit continues to decline in quality but no clear alternative emerges.
* Open source, distributed alternative to Facebook emerges, or linked-in subscription based competition.
* 25% chance major world leader dies
* 25% - 33% chance of major armed conflict, especially involving China.
* 20% chance of well attested "alien" contact.
* 20% chance of second novel pandemic in addition to Covid-19
* 20% chance of extra solar "asteroid" like Oumuamua
* >50% chance of Middle East Peace agreement between Arabs and Israel
* Large chance of abnormal oil price volatility.
* Brexit results in deep recession in UK, Boris Johnson is out.
"$100 is absurd for a commodity that has close to zero intrinsic value"
"$1,000 is absurd..."
"$10,000 is absurd..."
At this point, the burden of proof is on sceptics to show why a commodity with zero "intrinsic" value trends upward despite those sceptics' predictions during the last ~10 years.
So many have tried and failed already. I would really wish that to happen though.
Yew look like they’re trying to be that alternative.
https://github.com/yewstack/yew
Count me in! That would definitely make this year happy for me.
Glad to see we are learning from the mistakes of John McAfee
Or from react itself that compiles into WASM, similar with react native.
It's happening https://ruffle.rs/
https://www.wickeditor.com
Happy New Year 2021!
AnimationCPU is probably an alternative to Flash. Here is the project site https://animationcpu.com/ and Twitter with demos https://twitter.com/acpustudio
Join to TestFlight!
Those who are better informed than me, who are the main movers here?
It’s already here https://gif.com.ai
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New law enforcement techniques using DNS and other Intel techniques will be used to track, seize and tax cryptocurrency - which will cause increased popularity of Ethereum.
A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments. GPT4 and other ML models (maybe even with a neuro-feedback loop) will radically change entertainment for Gaming, movies, books, and music.
Smart Cities will start emerging ( and some cities which will ban the technology) with ML models and Intel systems capable of identifying all kinds of hazards (fires), threats (terrorists) and crime at scale.
A new “shadow net” will emerge from new mesh-networking protocols and massive amounts of compromised IoT devices- allowing users to bypass core internet routers and ISPs with the “shadow net”
XR with depth field scanning and smart tailoring with drastically change the fashion industry ( shoes and clothes). So people can virtually try on clothes and order perfectly tailored clothes from their home.
A bit different from your example, but a small group of us started a "Bill of Models" project for our department. We spent too much time failing to manage complexity with fancy tools. We ended up writing our own simple tool for reading custom BOMs to create and manage simulations.
Virtually trying on clothes would be cool but I don't think there's any way you could get actual tailoring, but maybe adding a few intermediate sizes from the standard s m l?
My prediction for fashion change would be more towards ideas like NTWRK. I hate the false scarcity 'drops' trend, but doing a cool digital launch experience is fun and chunking out a season like Jacquemus seems to build anticipation.
https://qz.com/quartzy/1539036/the-zozosuit-has-been-an-expe...
DNS? Not sure how that's relavent. And furthermore why would a crack down lead to more popularity?
> A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments
Well that would be good for researchers, there are basically 0 applications so i'm not sure why it would generate imvestment excitement (who needs QKD when you have public-key crypto?)
Quantum internet is different than QKD. The best analogy I can give is its like the difference between Morse code and the internet. Things like quantum teleportation, superdense coding and distributed quantum computing through a quantum internet will be revolutionary.
Unlikely. Biden once said to putin directly that "he had no soul".
To me, BTC looks like an inefficient way to partially solve a problem that doesn’t exist — the problem of trust.
It’s only a partial solution because it only deals with the money in a transaction and not the goods/services.
In addition, it also exists purely by consensus and is therefore just as vulnerable to majority demands for inflation (the limit of 21 million is a choice, not a fundamental constraint).
Furthermore, I do not believe that there is a real problem of trust to be solved, not because governments never mess up currencies (of course they do), but because right now they are not messing up currencies — the stability of most major currencies demonstrates that they are broadly trusted, and conversely the value of BTC fluctuates wildly compared to fiat or resource-backed currencies because it isn’t broadly trusted.
It’s also inefficient by design, being a proof-of-work that doesn’t solve real-world problems, and also limits itself to a really small number of daily transactions over all uses of the currency.
> "The new study by researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Munich suggests that Bitcoin mining was consuming 45.8 terawatt-hours of electricity per year as of November 2018.
That, in turn, produced estimated annual emissions of between 22 and 23 megatons of carbon dioxide, slotting the operations between the nations of Jordan and Sri Lanka in terms of greenhouse-gas pollution."
It creates more CO2 than entire nations. And that number most definitely has not decreased in the past two years. We may very well be up to or past 0.1% of all global CO2 emissions due solely to crypto mining, a number that will only increase as the value of bitcoin, etc increases.
What is the good that has been gained that offsets that?
- Terence McKenna becomes more relevant again; recordings of McKenna's talks such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijA5RHTJaV4 reach million views
- if we look back in 2030, we'll see 2021 being the year that marks the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance
- as a consequnce of this, more VC money will be poured into BCI research & meditation tech; I expect headspace to ipo
- not optimistic about neuralink's consumer debut though
As Stanislov Grof has said:
> Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy.
https://maps.org/news-letters/v21n3/v21n3-26_29.pdf
* more countries will have problem with clean water. Hopefully new technologies to make water purification easier or cheaper emerge
* given fall guys and among us success stories, there will be many more games aimed at that gameplay. Likely one or two of those will boom
* non code programming (drag drop, or similar to) will rise. Used to complement customization, not to replace code-based programming (dreamweaver for example)
* PWA or similar web-based app / installer will rise, while having more opposition from apple and google.
Solar energy is dropping in price like a rock, and desalination uses tons of energy. Desalination can run on intermittent energy, storing water in tanks for the periods without sun. So new technologies aren't required, just continuation of existing trends.
Google is the one pushing it, actually. And wasn't there a recent post on HN that Firefox devs are planning to remove PWA support?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25596401 ;-)
At work it seems anyone can habe Linux as long as they support it themselves and it generally feels a lot like when Mac broke through.
But whatever, 2021 it is then!
Hope to see som really good distro releases this year then and maybe one more vendor will officially supoort it? Or maybe we will see a MS Office for Linux beta release this year?
Microsoft has been flexing their muscles for years now to the point were my personal laptop has a dual-boot partition with official(!) Norwegian Nynorsk(!) language settings.
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