Ask HN: What are your 2014 Predictions?

* There will be a major regulatory crackdown on Bitcoin in most countries due to money laundering concerns.

* It will become apparent that Apple's history is repeating itself. As mobile becomes commoditized, they will refuse to lower their prices and become a luxury niche player sliding slowly into irrelevance.

* Google will announce Go (golang) for Android.

* The U.S enonomy will grow fast at the start of the year and treasury yields will spike making the stock market and ultimately the economy crash. Next recession starting Q4 2014.

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I'm never on Facebook anymore, but I'm not too keen on switching to Google+ either. I want an ADN for Facebook.

Regarding #3, I'm pretty sure Snowden only had clearance for NSA-related materials. Those examples would be intelligence outside of the NSA's area.

A lot of predictions here with a US or tech perspective:

Like the Economist I see the EU succeed in putting more pieces of its banking union in place. This means large EU banks fall under ECB regulation rather than national regulation. This severs one link that exacerbated the € crisis but stops short of full fiscal transfers between regions which means more pain for the less resilient economies.

In Europe and the US inequality will continue to grow as nothing has been put into place that reverses the socialism-for-the-rich policies and the part-capture of politics by finance. There will not be another Occupy movement but with unemployment holding stubbornly steady and people unsure whether this is down to the 1% or tech automation expect to see undirected anger at the wealthy and the tech industry.

The centre of economic activity continues to shift to the far east. China stays on course to become the world's largest economy within five years. Chinese companies become more visible globally following the lead of Japan and Korea.

It becomes obvious that higher learning is being radically re-shaped by online courses and content. The current education players (publishers/universities) that do not embrace this new landscape will face hard times. Institutions will only be limited by linguistic boundaries, not (geographical) national ones. Primary and secondary learning unchanged because kids must go to school while parents work and must go to school locally. Pretty good chance that computer programming is adopted as a core skill by more and more regions.

Areas of activity in 2014 will be Space, Solar, Gas, Biotech, Cybercurrencies (rivals to BTC will emerge this year), and the FOSS gets serious about federated (anonymous/pseudonymous/real name) social networks and secure private chat platforms.

In terms of conflict I think we'll get more of the same. War of attrition continues in Israel, settlement activity continues, no progress on peace. No significant development in Syria unless China/Russia do a volte face. Possible internal turmoil in North Korea due to purge and defections - N. Korean regime will eventually collapse as no malevolent dictatorship or tyranny has ever survived as such but calling when is impossible. As the Arab Spring has everything to do with the spread of enlightenment ideals and very little to do with internet technologies expect to see more demonstrations around the region and concessions like allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia and things like this but no government being overthrown. Iran pushes forward with its nuclear program (as do other petroleum states) and finds US/Israel to be implacable, as US withdraws from Afghanistan the likelihood of boots on the ground in Iran increases.