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Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

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361–370 of 462 posts

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people tend to make optimistic predictions. A lot of predictions were correct, and many of them were right on subject, but predicted the positive instead of the negative turn of things. Interesting views regardless, but i cant help to notice that tech progress was nothing like 2000->2010.

I feel like enormous cultural and technological hardware advancements were made between 1990-2010 that affected people on a national or global level. The advances were revolutionary. I have a hard time associating the last decade the same way. To me, the 2010-2020 decade has been stagnant. My overall sentiments, more or less: 1990->2000 we went from very few people owning personal computers to wider adoption of PCs a…

There is a tendency to undervalue recent advancements because they haven't had the same amount of time to demonstrate an impact on the world.

I would point to the 2010's as the rise of two phenomena:

- Social networking and meme culture

- Explosive growth of software

These will prove to be just as important as the developments of the 2000's, but haven't had the time for other developments to build on them.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#362
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though. I think this basically describes AI.

I thought about virtual assistants and deep fakes

Neither virtual assistants nor deep fakes can be considered "the next big thing". They're in their infancy.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#363
post #341
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking that exact same thing. Rails was hitting its peak in 2010, and the idea that programmer time is more valuable than CPU time suggested dynamic languages were the future. I mean, that’s not entirely wrong — Besides JS, Python is arguably the most dominant language across all domains. Python is also faster than Ruby, though, and 3.x added static-like features to the language. It doesn’t seem like there’s…

I don’t think one can say that python is faster than ruby: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/... I think the perception is there because of python’s scientific and ML libraries that have a lot of c bindings, perhaps? Both are drastically faster than they were a decade ago, so 2010-era python or ruby are still the high-water mark.

afaict until the 25 Dec 2019 ruby 2.7.0 release you probably could "say that python is faster than ruby".

fwiw

    ruby 2.6.3p62
    ruby 2.7.0p0

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Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're not really quite there yet. Give another 10 years.

are you saying you have a child with a cell phone or tablet that has location services explicitly turned off ? i dunno, seems negligent to me

Hey, does your child have rfid implant for easy id and tracking?

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#365
post #185

The most striking thing about the thread is how little of current importance was even mentioned: - Bitcoin would become the decade's best investment by far - the President of the US would conduct foreign policy through Twitter - electric scooters would become a billion dollar business (Bird, Lime, etc.) - the sharing economy would threaten the taxi and hotel industries (AirBNB and Uber) - escalation of school shootin…

> escalation of school shootings Bubble thought. School shootings are down from previous highs and are actually very rare [0]. COVERAGE and willingness to use any incident to promote a very specific narrative are up. [0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...

I don’t think this should be downvoted. The facts are the facts. It’s also the case that even 1 shooting is a tragedy and should give us pause for how we can fix it (whether that is gun control or something else).

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#366
post #33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though. I think this basically describes AI.

No, definitely Bitcoin

definitely Bitcoin/Blockchain. I wouldn't say it will actually disrupt traditional banking empires, but it was the next big thing and 'experts' definitely came out of nowhere and its still pretty cool.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#367
post #28
post #4

A lot of doom and gloom for Microsoft in that thread. But Microsoft has fared much better than anyone expected.

> But Microsoft has fared much better than anyone expected. Its probably because they picked the right guy to lead after Ballmer.

Thinking back to Satya Nadella's book, I still think its incredible that he was selected, and even after it was incredible that he the impact that he had. I guess where I'm getting with this is that to have been able to see and recognize that he had the potential to take Microsoft in the right direction and that he actually was able to take them there is pretty awesome. They could have hired someone from outside, or someone who might fit the look / character of a mega corp CEO but they took a risk with him and I'm glad that it paid off.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#368

What’s amazing is how little changed. - Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that matter and they are still in relatively the same position. iOS still controls the high end where the money is and Android has the market share but the OEMs are not making any money. - Facebook is more profitable and popular. - Amazon is still the number one online retailer, the Kindle is still by far the most…

> - Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that matter and they are still in relatively the same position. iOS still controls the high end where the money is and Android has the market share but the OEMs are not making any money.

You're badly misremembering or recontextualizing with hindsight bias. At the start of 2010, iOS had 32%, Android had 4.5%, and there were at least 5 other mobile OSs with >4% market share. Start of 2020 and we're looking at Android with 74%, iOS with 24%, and zero other OSs with >1% market share. These are very different situations!

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that thought, is there any way to prevent shootings without making guns harder or impossible for citizens to own? Seems many will not disarm in the US, so should we be exploring other options rather than repeatedly saying the US should be more like other countries?

Is it so bad to make guns as hard to own as a car? Simple licensing would go a long way to reduce the risk of guns. https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20861019/gun-solution-backgrou...

> Is it so bad to make guns as hard to own as a car?

The ONLY people that say this are the ones that would be (fucking) horrified if we treated guns like cars.

Ok. You are proposing I should be able to buy any gun I want whenever I want regardless of size or capacity, automatic, or loud or silenced for cash without any checks or regulations at all? That the only requirement to use it in public is that I need a license - BUT - that carry license is good in all 50 states?

... that sounds good to me! Let’s do it.

Yours is an argument based entirely in ignorance of gun laws. And maybe car laws too.

Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)

#370
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one also surprised me. Are school shootings up? Or is the media peddling violent news more aggressively?

There's a weird thing that happens here with language: school shootings mean multiple things. So, if someone is shot at a school at an after-hours drug deal gone awry, that counts just as much as parkland, even though there is a very distinguishable difference between the two.

That’s exactly what the lists of “4375 school shootings this year!” are actually made of.

Someone in New Jersey shot a rat 2 blocks from a school - school shooting.

Drive by between rival gangs near a college - school shooting.

Resource officer discharges his gun in his car - school shooting.

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