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Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

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181–190 of 456 posts

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#181
post #176

Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter will be beat up enough from anti-trust and legislation to shake investor confidence considerably. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft will emerge unscathed. The merits of this I will leave to the reader, but there has surely been a long-lasting shift in public opinion against social media due to the unrelenting assault of Trumpism. The irony of this assault being launched from twitter.com/reald…

Swap Apple with Twitter in your list. (What sort of antitrust anything has Twitter done? Have you seen their market cap and user base?)

Apple controls 50% of domestic US computing and has redefined the concept of a computer to be a highly taxed walled garden with mysterious, byzantine rules.

More companies like Epic will sue them and Apple will ultimately be forced to open up iOS to 3rd party apps.

Apple can't be a smartphone manufacturer, computer manufacturer, OS provider, services provider, Hollywood film studio, music studio, automotive company, etc. This is standard oil.

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#182
post #91
post #80

I predict that we'll see a sharp drop in real estate prices and rents in major cities. They are way beyond reasonable at the moment; my presumption is that the decline of small businesses will open up at lot of space. Given this and the radical shift to work from home, I presume that the cities will attract far less people (especially in high paid jobs) and therefore the apartment searching madness we see right now w…

I'm assuming this is from a US perspective. Do people in other places with high rents around the world feel the same?

I only somewhat agree.

For example, Vancouver's real estate is pricey because it's one of the nicest places to live in the world. The rise of teleworking won't erase the mild weather all year round, the access to world-class mountain sports (hiking, climbing, cycling, skiing, etc.), the ocean with its views, great asian food, the rule of law, liberal culture, etc.

That's a very different scenario than, say, Winnipeg where it's -30 half the year and the other half the year the insects are so bad they send trucks around to fog pesticides. Plus you have conservative culture, no mountains nor ocean, little in the way of outdoor sports unless you like quad biking and fishing, or hockey.

I lived in Vancouver for a short while, and have visited Winnipeg several times for conferences and work trips. I can see reasons to live in Vancouver even if you didn't have to live there for work. I can see no reasons to want to live in Winnipeg unless someone was literally bathing me in money.

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#183
post #37

Software Bill of Material (SBOM) will become more of a thing - where you must list the dependencies and their hash you used for supply-chain security and vulnerability management. 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 increas…

> 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.

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?)

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#184

BABIES! So many COVID-induced lockdown babies! I've had so many people, many who were either done with having children, and those who weren't planning to for a while yet, announce their pregnancies. Wonder if there are any companies I can invest in to cash in on this?

That doesnt really seem to be the case so far https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/canada-s-population-gro... maybe when its all over we will have a baby boom with everyone being happy.

Atleast in Belgium, a mini baby boom is already a fact

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2020/12/29/tot-500-baby-s-meer-...

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#186
post #139

Daft Punk comes back, releases a single with album forthcoming. The political divide continues to grow in the US. Terrorist acts are attributed to alt-right ideology, and government starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites. Only a third of the country will be vaccinated by the end of Q2 2021.

>starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites Hate speech is free speech in the US, though. The government can only get involved if there's incitement of "imminent lawless action". I could see private companies trying to stomp out the sites (refuse to host them, etc.), but the government can't do anything except in the case I mentioned earlier.

the government seizes domains all the time. The idea of them shutting down websites because of terrorism isn't new. 'National Security' overrides free speech in the 21st century. The facilitating crimes angle can easily be used as well against a rowdy online community.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-seizes-domain-n...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-27...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/california-operators-my...

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#188

BABIES! So many COVID-induced lockdown babies! I've had so many people, many who were either done with having children, and those who weren't planning to for a while yet, announce their pregnancies. Wonder if there are any companies I can invest in to cash in on this?

I had my first during the first UK lockdown (ie planned before COVID). Tbh, I thought it'd go the opposite way - I wouldn't recommend having a baby during lockouts. You have to ask family to break rules just to get some occasional rest bite and we've had very little in the way of government or community support - my wife goes to 1 baby class a week, with reduced capacity, social distancing and masks. Being a father is great, but it would have been nice to start outside a pandemic.

Re: Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?

#189
* Many more droughts, floods, cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and other kinds of natural calamities.

* More pollution, global warming, rise of sea level, more health threats etc.

* Political and socio-economical instability, crisis and maybe a third world war?

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