What Will Happen in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#331

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

jsmonkey wrote: post #37

andrepd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China will fall >Saudi will have a violent revolution Very very unfortunately, this sounds more like wishful thinking than a reasonable prediction. The ways in which modern states can maintain power and suppress their people is overwhelming. China can and has built perhaps the most oppressive totalitarian state ever to have existed. Saudi is diversifying its absurd wealth to resist downturns in oil, and the "first w…

Yep, and the thing is that most Chinese don't even mind the high level of control for the time being. I don't see any significant large scale instability as long as the material quality of life continues to improve for the average Chinese.

This is probably pretty normal historically. People start rebelling not just because of restrictions on freedom, but usually because their quality of life sucks. See what's happening in Hong Kong: they don't like the increasing Chinese oppression, sure, but they also have some serious quality-of-life complaints too, namely with housing prices.

When people are fat and comfortable, they tend not to rock the boat too much for vague ideals.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#332

Post by booleandilemma » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

This kind of reads more like a wishlist than a list of predictions.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#333

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #54

throwlaplace wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. China will fall to internal strife of some kind. Still may maintain power, but famine and mass executions / disappearances will occur. >6. Saudi Arabia will have a violent revolution why do people make these kinds of predictions. they're so uninformed it's beyond the pale. china and SA are two of the most authoritarian and simultaneously well-funded (effective and efficient) governments on the planets -- we're no…

Many were alive when the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain fell. That makes such large upheavals believable. The weakness of authoritarian regimes is that by their nature dissention is hidden. Those in charge aren't really aware of how far they're overshooting until it's too late to release some of the pressure. I don't understand Chinese culture or their current situation enough to say whether or not they're in dang…

The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries were in many ways the opposite of modern China. They were not efficient at all, and their economies were absolutely terrible. China has its problems, but a moribund economy is not one of them.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#334

Post by magduf » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #83

Aperocky wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they’ve never been to China but simultaneously think they knew a lot about China because the news they were fed. Particularly that Chinese people want democracy like Iraqis under Saddam (note: both are untrue).

While I haven't been to China, I think you mean Han Chinese. Uighurs and Tibet are less excited about being part of China.

The Han Chinese are, by far, the majority. Uyghurs are a small and unliked minority. What makes you think they're going to destabilize that nation? Did the poor treatment of black people in the US cause it to collapse? It did lead to a civil war at one point, and to some turbulent times a century later, but that's only because people in the US actually cared about human rights. I don't see any evidence that most of China's population is too concerned with the treatment of Uyghurs, unfortunately.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#335

Post by cesarb » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

FreeHugs wrote: post #62

PaulAJ wrote: post #32

Any prediction of decentralisation of the Internet, or anything built on it, needs to explain how this will overcome the economies of scale (1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little ones) and the network effects (everyone buys and sells through Amazon because thats where you find the most buyers and sellers).

1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little ones There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time. Utilizing them might very well be cheaper then building and maintaining a new datacenter. everyone buys and sells through Amazon because thats where you find the most buyers and sellers Not everyone. Not even the majority. Even in the USA which is Amazons biggest market, their market share is l…

> There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time. Utilizing them

That used to be popular (for instance, distributed.net) back when the processors used the same power whether they were idle or not. Nowadays, there is a huge difference in power usage and heat output between an idle or mostly idle processor, and a fully loaded one.

(My first desktop had a processor without a fan or even a heat spreader, and came with an operating system which had a busy loop as its idle loop.)

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#336

Post by jackcosgrove » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

jaggirs wrote: post #328

jackcosgrove wrote: post #325

I too dream of a decentralized internet and especially decentralized cloud resources, but I can't find a way around the question of how you securely host a database on some random person's idle computer/"spot instance". If that data is compromised, who do you sue? The random person who has no assets? Data security ultimately depends on secure physical access to the hosting hardware. Not everything can or should be pu…

1. Data Redundancy 2. Encryption

You need to decrypt the data somewhere, which requires holding the key in memory. What's to prevent a nefarious node in the distributed cloud from extracting your key?

I could see a solution where every user has their own key, served by a securely hosted (non-distributed) server, and decrypting the data client side, but that doesn't cover all cases where you might need to aggregate or share data across users.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#337

Post by Baeocystin » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #327

Baeocystin wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How's life in soviet russia?" "Can't complain!" This is the mistake you're making regarding China. Source: grew up there

"How's life in China?" "Great!" Source: I live there! This is the mistake you're making regarding stuff you have no idea of.

>Source: grew up there

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#338

Post by alasdair_ » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #313

Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse because less and less countries will want to do business with China due to it’s human rights violations. Regarding plan based diets, I agree but I think that eating meat will be seen as babaric. I believe that the way way we treat animals now will be seen similarly as we see slavery now. Regarding, decentralized internet and crypto currencies. I don’t…

People are more than happy to deal with the Saudi’s despite appalling human rights records. So long as they have something people want, countries don’t care about human rights.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#339

Post by ironarm » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #325

I too dream of a decentralized internet and especially decentralized cloud resources, but I can't find a way around the question of how you securely host a database on some random person's idle computer/"spot instance". If that data is compromised, who do you sue? The random person who has no assets? Data security ultimately depends on secure physical access to the hosting hardware. Not everything can or should be pu…

I think it's very possible to decentralize databases. Not to sound like I'm jumping off the deep end... What if each set of decentralized data was verified by each user on... a block chain. Using a proof of work/stake model that each existing copy verified each new copy or propagated update. If the hashes didn't match with the greater pool then data would be considered corrupt and ignored. Even cooler is people could simply fork their data sets and create a new blockchain for their project. Truly free data.

I'm iffy on the cryptos but it's appearing less and less of a solution looking for a problem and more a solution for many problems dealing with decentralization.

For an interesting existing solution sans blockchain check out [gundb](https://gun.eco/).

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#340

Post by qaq » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

bransonf wrote: post #209

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

China is good at things we are really bad at: building up modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for election cycle driven politics in other countries).