Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

Politically:

- No meaningful regime change in places like Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Burma, United States.

- A meaningful regime change will occur in a boring autocracy that catches everyone by surprise (like Tunisia did a decade ago).

Economically:

- There will be a major recession in the 2020s.

- In 2030 itself, there will be a simmering row over tariffs for carbon emissions. Between whom, I am not going to speculate.

Technologically:

- IPv4 is still around.

- Self-driving cars (Level 5, if we're still using NHTSA's terminology) do not exist.

- Quantum computers are "just around the corner."

- The phrase "deep learning" causes people to take a few seconds to remember what it means.

- Exactly one of the following companies will no longer exist (due to bankruptcy or being acquired): Amazon, AMD, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google (aka Alphabet), Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung, Tesla, TSMC, Xilinx.

Things I believe will stay the same:

* Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple will have roughly the same dominant positions.

* Bitcoin will play roughly the same role it plays today (store of value, more like gold than money, similar mkt cap) * Machine learning continues to grow in usage and capability, but there will be no "revolution" in AI.

* Nobody on Mars

* No serious alternatives to advertisements will emerge for industries where ads have traditionally driven profits.

* Climate change is not adequately addressed, but by the end of the decade it is widely recognized as an existential threat (not just amongst wealthy people as is the case today).

* Vim + tmux + make is still the best "IDE" ;)

Things I believe will change:

* There will a tech company worth >$100B delivering new, completely bogus healthcare through a smartphone.

* Huge advances in astronomy, physical chemistry, biotech, and computational physics driven by better data processing software. No big advances in any theoretical field.

* Tech illiteracy of young people becomes an economic problem, with political debates and movements centered around fixing the "tech education gap" between people born after 2000 and everyone else.

* Cryptocurrency goes mainstream in super boring ways. Banks probably use it for transfers and various apps use it for payments, especially in China.

> A younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China. — Well, and even older, and more populist group of politicians have claimed power in China, and no, no bubble burst yet

Keep an eye on news on Taiwan towards the end of January. We're about to see if the youth are committed to what they started when they rejected the KMT (the "pro-chinese" party) back during the sunflower protests in 2013.

I think one way or the other, the "Taiwan question" will be answered this decade, which very well could pop the China bubble if pro-democratic propaganda (from Taiwan and the falun gong) can overcome pro-PRC (from the Party and possibly KMT).

I know mainlanders convinced there will be war if Green isn't voted out, I know Taiwanese that are convinced it's going to be business as usual for the foreseeable future.

Huh, not any hilarious predictions yet?

- Artificial life forms and pet becomes mainstream.

- First experimental artificial wombs for human babies put to test.

- Current HIV becomes curable mainstream but another mutation will take its place. It will come from US or Europe.

- War will break out in different parts of the world and first AI use for the purpose of killing people.

- On demand AI therapist using a wearable on your wrist as suicide rates will go up in developed countries. It will be recommended by doctors.

- Linux on desktop finally becomes mainstream. This time, for sure.

- Biohackers will grow in popularity and it will be a mainstream trend to experiment with kits from new startups. Super soldiers, no sleep brian and hairy (cat girls yay) stuff will emerge.

- There will be companies awarding trophies and money for sterilizing people.

- Something like ransom ware but alive (self aware AIware) will take out half the internet for a short duration.

- New porn startups raking in billions using ml generated on demand pornography and self aware toys, perhaps actual testing of sex robots. It could be a new genre of porn too.

- Catastrophic economic collapse. UBI goes live in many countries.

- A huge portion of teachers will get replaced by interactive digital rooms.

- Deep[insert] takes over and becomes a major weapon to tackle and defend against.

- Average tech user becomes dumber than current average.

- Rust becomes top choice for development and Javascript will become legacy codebase.

- Thousands of people will die protesting against surveillance states and right to privacy but with very little progress.

- We will see companies putting their own os in the browser using wasm and delivering their apps inside that.

- There will be a "Hack Your P*nis" post on HN.

Yes, you who is looking at this and thinking "woah this guy predicted almost everything right"

edit: added more.

Facial recognition will be used in all stores in order to determine how happy you are about your purchases.