Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

Sure. I predict that there will not be a fully autonomous vehicle widely available for sale to the public and allowed to function in FA mode on all roads, as of Dec 31, 2029.

("widely available for sale to the public": at least as available as a Tesla is right now.)

On the other hand, I predict that lots of cars will have emergency auto-assist features: collision avoidance warnings, lane-keeping assistance, seatbelt tighteners, and perhaps a last-action feature that evaluates whether it's best to slam on the brakes, veer sharply (and in what direction?) or try to accelerate out of danger -- and then applies that action without driver input.

First Human will land on the Mars and we will have permanent presence after it.

1. Merging of mobile/desktop OS (i.e. iOS and MacOS becoming one and the same).

2. A Microsoft first-party Android device is launched, following a similar attack strategy they are currently starting with Edge on Chromium: fork, improve, destroy.

3. ARM takes over... actually, a more bold prediction: x86-64 remains king, and ARM is not able to conquer beyond the mobile market, despite present-day feelers.

4. Self driving cars master 95% of driving scenarios but struggle with enough "uncommon" scenarios that it winds up in a PR nightmare (youtube searches for "AutoPilot accident" lands results with millions of views) and doesn't revolutionize much except pizza delivery and long-haul trucks.

5. Theater chains push hard for Movie-pass style subscriptions (I mean, harder than they already have). Netflix purchases a small theater chain that shows its own films for free to subscribers, with excellent snacks for purchase. (or has this already happened?)

6. Disney Plus struggles with choosing consolidating the Disney "family friendly" brand and the sort of Game of Thrones gore-fest content demanded by millions of subscribers, leading to either a rebranding or an off-shoot for "adults" a la "Adult Swim" or "Nick at Night".

7. At least one of the big streaming services (Cockatoo or whatever NBC has?) throws in the towel and merges with another.

8. Hong Kong remains in turmoil for all of the 2020s.

9. Rust becomes the poster child of systems programming (or has it already), and goes from relatively niche to a must-have for new hires in just about any software industry.

10. Working remotely is still a pipe-dream heralded by a lucky subset of HN posters.

11. A battery breakthrough revolutionizes mobile devices and elevates electric cars to make combustion engines even more obsolete.

edit:

12. Extremely accurate diagnoses by AI makes healthcare cheaper (but not cheap), faster (but not fast), and a group of clueless people (think anti-vaxx) will refuse to ever be diagnosed by a machine and instead demand a "real doctor".

1. Pension bomb — as you see, is about to go off in Europe. US is a bit safer in that regard as a younger country, and less generous expectations for pension in general. China... yep, lights off on that. 2. Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods — just about to happen

3. 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

4. Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be downhill for them (at least for the rest of the decade). — spot on

5. Chinese-American co-dependency crumbles like a bitter divorce — a bitter marriage doesn't simply crumble suddenly one day, it takes a life on its own and keeps biting you for years on: see Brexit

6. Brexit — no comments needed

7. mobile devices is going to make the PC redundant for most people — somewhat true

8. PMC's will become much more prevalent and popular — true, but not American ones

9. IE6 will hang around for a few years, but may die very rapidly in workplaces when some killer enterprise web application stops supporting it. It will remain widespread in East Asia — it is 2020, and IE6 is still there in China...

10. Mobile phones won't replace computers, but increasing penetration amongst the poorest in developing countries, and increasingly capable handsets in developed countries (and developing countries) will make them a colossal juggernaut. Many of the really big changes, especially social changes, will be caused by mobiles — spot on

> very few desktop applications will exist, they will have moved to web assembly powered browser applications

Oh, I hope you're wrong about this one. That would render computers largely worthless to me due to a lack of software.