6 ms·

What happened in 2017

romanovcode 9y ago
Do you have predictions for 2018? It was funny reading how you got so many things wrong in your 2017 predictions!
fairpx 9y ago
It’s always interesting to read these and how different technologies go through a chain of events to rapidly gain mass adoption. Looking forward seeing what the next 12 months will bring us. Space? Breakthrough in AI?
thisisit 9y ago
> We are addicted to our phones, fed information by algorithms we don’t understand, at risk of losing our jobs to robots. This is likely to be the narrative of the next thirty years. How does someone predict a particular narrative for next 30 years? If anything I predict people will be disillusioned trying to pump AI/ML in everything imaginable. And data collection just for the sake of collection will be looked down upon as spam. Soon we might need adblock like plugins to stop companies from trying to gain data on us.
- derwiki 9y ago
  > Soon we might need adblock like plugins to stop companies from trying to gain data on us. The popular adblockers I'm aware of also block analytics calls made thru external JS (ga.js, segment.js come to mind)
- leresidue 9y ago
  >> How does someone predict a particular narrative for next 30 years? You won't anymore. Predicting a particular narritive is akin to decide what will happen. The more you force the future, the more the future tries to become the past. If the future is the past, then there is no progress made. No progress made, and you have a loop.
devmunchies 9y ago
I'm sick of hearing about white males. Just because they dominate leadership roles doesn't mean that all, or even most white males have power. It's gotta be less than 1% of white males who have a position of influence. It's not a collective group.
- aioprisan 9y ago
  Yes but as a percentage of population, those while males have a disproportionate amount of power compared to any other group, all things equal.
  - frozenport 9y ago
    No. To the folks in power, you are the "other". You are a completely different group - even if your skin color is white. They can tell by your mannerisms, priorities, and dress you're not one of them. Indeed, they might say you don't work as hard as them, and call you "white trash" for shopping at Walmart. Even what I though was my high paying CS job was for the working class, no more a person than an MRI machine.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying. Power is often inherited, and America was historically a predominantly white male-dominated nation in the near past. What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-white racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening. People are acting like all white males are the issue when they're not. They're applauding affirmative action while ignoring the fact that white men are now a minority in universities nowadays. They sneer at men embracing their masculinity while applauding women embracing their femininity. They push for equality in high paying fields while ignoring these inequalities in lower-paying ones. We really should reconsider our methods of facilitating change. It's a double standard, and will be met with cultural and political backlash.
    - aioprisan 9y ago
      > The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying. We've got a few thousand years of racist history that shows us just how worried we should be about mostly white men holding power vs representative populations of those leadership groups. > What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-white racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening. This is where you lost me. Do you have any proof that this is taking place and at which rate? At which point is the discomfort of white males OK for society given the vast injustices and imbalances created to make white males more comfortable at everyone else's expense?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hackcrafter 9y ago
> The Tech Backlash If there is a tech backlash, I don't see how more tech is the solution. I downloaded WeCroak, after reading an Atlantic article about it being an anti-app to remind you about your impending death, and it works as advertised. By which I mean, after reading a quote about death, I feel less inclined to pick up my phone for a couple hours!
athinggoingon 9y ago
"The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male dominance." "[Trump] is the epitome of white male dominance. An unapologetic (actually braggart) groper in chief. I think it took something as horrible as the election of such an awful human being to shock the US into deciding that we could not allow this behavior any more. Courageous women such as Susan Fowler, Ellen Pao, and many others came forward and talked publicly about their struggles with behavior that we now deem unacceptable." I thought it was Harvey Weinstein revelations that was the turning point.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  Susan Fowler has gone on the record as saying Trump's election played a major role in coming forward, and all of that happened 7 months before Weinstein.
  - mathattack 9y ago
    Yes. Not sure it’s a tech bias, but I think she deserves credit for starting the movement.
isaac_is_goat 9y ago
Stopped reading at "beginning of the end of white male dominance". Identity politics does not belong on HN.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  I think it does.
Red_Tarsius 9y ago
> The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male dominance. This is not a tech story, per se, but the tech sector was impacted by it. We saw numerous top VCs and tech CEOs leave their firms and companies over behavior that was finally outed and deemed unacceptable. I don't care about the writer's credentials. This article being on the front page is an embarrassment to Hacker News. Whiteness is associated with being a predator, that is, an enemy of women. Divide and conquer.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  You're aware that the writer is a white dude right? That's not a credential, that's a fact.
  - Red_Tarsius 9y ago
    Believe it or not, a white man doesn't speak for all white men.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
derwiki 9y ago
> Computer literacy for everyone. That means making sure that everyone is able to go into GitHub and read the code that increasingly controls our lives and understand what it does and how it works. The last stat I can find on US literacy is 86% (1985). Based on anecdotal evidence I suspect "math literacy" is much lower than that (couldn't find statistics). I had other _really smart_ engineer/science friends in undergrad who struggled writing and reading code. I'm not sure how realistic this is.
- mathattack 9y ago
  I thought the same. Give everyone access to APIs with their private info? Then again, there was a time when driving must have seemed too complex for the masses.
  - buitreVirtual 9y ago
    Which highlights how important it is to invest in making computing more approachable for the masses. It's how we democratize tech today.
- temp987654 9y ago
  I don't think it's realistic at all. Most people get bored when they look at code. It's a 'living in the bubble' sort of thing to think this will happen, imho.
- buitreVirtual 9y ago
  Maybe it's not a realistic goal today, but computer literacy needs to be in everyone's mind today.
jimmies 9y ago
The how do we cope with it list is wishful at best with the "understanding code," "Github" and "open source." I am all for computer education and open source (more like /g/ Stallmanism FOSS, but that's not relevant), but I can't imagine any year being the year of Linux on the Desktop. It has been that way for 30 years now. The thing I think will be a big deal in the next couple of years to come will be about trust, or more precisely trustless. It has been shown that you can trust a protocol/scheme without trusting anyone in the system. The rise of Bitcoin is the prime example of that. Or look at how Contactless discovery happens in Signal. Now imagine that happening in your spam abuse (imagine spammers can't spam due to effective rate limiting), email service (you store encrypted emails on the server you don't trust, and know when someone decrypts your mail), social networks (you can safely store your information on a social network without trusting it), responsible decryption (you can store top-secret data in your phone and not having to trust the software provider - i.e. FBI Apple iPhone case), reproducible software builds. Technologies are slowly enabling those dreams to come true. I think that trust in trustless systems is extremely important, because it enables the mass to have privacy and protection without having to resort on everyone understanding the code and more importantly, trusting the integrity (whatever that might require) of the cloud operator or of your peers. Several important papers have been published in this area. To get a grasp of what's possible, you could read "Making Decryption Accountable" by Ryan, "Private contact discovery for Signal" by moxie0. I'm planning to do something practical with those ideas in 2018 :). Wish me luck guys.
ty0ki 9y ago
it seems to me that white males are more powerful than the illuminati hmm...
tareqak 9y ago
Techmeme summary: Fred Wilson / AVC: Three interrelated macro themes dominated this year in tech: the breakout of crypto, beginning of the end of white male dominance, and the backlash against tech Could those who downvote this comment please explain why you did so? I try to provide extra context for those who come across this submission, which I get from Techmeme.

Do you have predictions for 2018? It was funny reading how you got so many things wrong in your 2017 predictions!

It’s always interesting to read these and how different technologies go through a chain of events to rapidly gain mass adoption. Looking forward seeing what the next 12 months will bring us. Space? Breakthrough in AI?

thisisit 9y ago

> We are addicted to our phones, fed information by algorithms we don’t understand, at risk of losing our jobs to robots. This is likely to be the narrative of the next thirty years. How does someone predict a particular narrative for next 30 years? If anything I predict people will be disillusioned trying to pump AI/ML in everything imaginable. And data collection just for the sake of collection will be looked down upon as spam. Soon we might need adblock like plugins to stop companies from trying to gain data on us.

derwiki 9y ago
> Soon we might need adblock like plugins to stop companies from trying to gain data on us. The popular adblockers I'm aware of also block analytics calls made thru external JS (ga.js, segment.js come to mind)
leresidue 9y ago
>> How does someone predict a particular narrative for next 30 years? You won't anymore. Predicting a particular narritive is akin to decide what will happen. The more you force the future, the more the future tries to become the past. If the future is the past, then there is no progress made. No progress made, and you have a loop.

devmunchies 9y ago

I'm sick of hearing about white males. Just because they dominate leadership roles doesn't mean that all, or even most white males have power. It's gotta be less than 1% of white males who have a position of influence. It's not a collective group.

aioprisan 9y ago
Yes but as a percentage of population, those while males have a disproportionate amount of power compared to any other group, all things equal.
- frozenport 9y ago
  No. To the folks in power, you are the "other". You are a completely different group - even if your skin color is white. They can tell by your mannerisms, priorities, and dress you're not one of them. Indeed, they might say you don't work as hard as them, and call you "white trash" for shopping at Walmart. Even what I though was my high paying CS job was for the working class, no more a person than an MRI machine.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying. Power is often inherited, and America was historically a predominantly white male-dominated nation in the near past. What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-white racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening. People are acting like all white males are the issue when they're not. They're applauding affirmative action while ignoring the fact that white men are now a minority in universities nowadays. They sneer at men embracing their masculinity while applauding women embracing their femininity. They push for equality in high paying fields while ignoring these inequalities in lower-paying ones. We really should reconsider our methods of facilitating change. It's a double standard, and will be met with cultural and political backlash.
  - aioprisan 9y ago
    > The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying. We've got a few thousand years of racist history that shows us just how worried we should be about mostly white men holding power vs representative populations of those leadership groups. > What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-white racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening. This is where you lost me. Do you have any proof that this is taking place and at which rate? At which point is the discomfort of white males OK for society given the vast injustices and imbalances created to make white males more comfortable at everyone else's expense?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hackcrafter 9y ago

> The Tech Backlash If there is a tech backlash, I don't see how more tech is the solution. I downloaded WeCroak, after reading an Atlantic article about it being an anti-app to remind you about your impending death, and it works as advertised. By which I mean, after reading a quote about death, I feel less inclined to pick up my phone for a couple hours!

athinggoingon 9y ago

"The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male dominance." "[Trump] is the epitome of white male dominance. An unapologetic (actually braggart) groper in chief. I think it took something as horrible as the election of such an awful human being to shock the US into deciding that we could not allow this behavior any more. Courageous women such as Susan Fowler, Ellen Pao, and many others came forward and talked publicly about their struggles with behavior that we now deem unacceptable." I thought it was Harvey Weinstein revelations that was the turning point.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
Susan Fowler has gone on the record as saying Trump's election played a major role in coming forward, and all of that happened 7 months before Weinstein.
- mathattack 9y ago
  Yes. Not sure it’s a tech bias, but I think she deserves credit for starting the movement.

isaac_is_goat 9y ago

Stopped reading at "beginning of the end of white male dominance". Identity politics does not belong on HN.

tzakrajs 9y ago
I think it does.

Red_Tarsius 9y ago

> The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male dominance. This is not a tech story, per se, but the tech sector was impacted by it. We saw numerous top VCs and tech CEOs leave their firms and companies over behavior that was finally outed and deemed unacceptable. I don't care about the writer's credentials. This article being on the front page is an embarrassment to Hacker News. Whiteness is associated with being a predator, that is, an enemy of women. Divide and conquer.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
You're aware that the writer is a white dude right? That's not a credential, that's a fact.
- Red_Tarsius 9y ago
  Believe it or not, a white man doesn't speak for all white men.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

derwiki 9y ago

> Computer literacy for everyone. That means making sure that everyone is able to go into GitHub and read the code that increasingly controls our lives and understand what it does and how it works. The last stat I can find on US literacy is 86% (1985). Based on anecdotal evidence I suspect "math literacy" is much lower than that (couldn't find statistics). I had other _really smart_ engineer/science friends in undergrad who struggled writing and reading code. I'm not sure how realistic this is.

mathattack 9y ago
I thought the same. Give everyone access to APIs with their private info? Then again, there was a time when driving must have seemed too complex for the masses.
- buitreVirtual 9y ago
  Which highlights how important it is to invest in making computing more approachable for the masses. It's how we democratize tech today.
temp987654 9y ago
I don't think it's realistic at all. Most people get bored when they look at code. It's a 'living in the bubble' sort of thing to think this will happen, imho.
buitreVirtual 9y ago
Maybe it's not a realistic goal today, but computer literacy needs to be in everyone's mind today.

jimmies 9y ago

The how do we cope with it list is wishful at best with the "understanding code," "Github" and "open source." I am all for computer education and open source (more like /g/ Stallmanism FOSS, but that's not relevant), but I can't imagine any year being the year of Linux on the Desktop. It has been that way for 30 years now. The thing I think will be a big deal in the next couple of years to come will be about trust, or more precisely trustless. It has been shown that you can trust a protocol/scheme without trusting anyone in the system. The rise of Bitcoin is the prime example of that. Or look at how Contactless discovery happens in Signal. Now imagine that happening in your spam abuse (imagine spammers can't spam due to effective rate limiting), email service (you store encrypted emails on the server you don't trust, and know when someone decrypts your mail), social networks (you can safely store your information on a social network without trusting it), responsible decryption (you can store top-secret data in your phone and not having to trust the software provider - i.e. FBI Apple iPhone case), reproducible software builds. Technologies are slowly enabling those dreams to come true. I think that trust in trustless systems is extremely important, because it enables the mass to have privacy and protection without having to resort on everyone understanding the code and more importantly, trusting the integrity (whatever that might require) of the cloud operator or of your peers. Several important papers have been published in this area. To get a grasp of what's possible, you could read "Making Decryption Accountable" by Ryan, "Private contact discovery for Signal" by moxie0. I'm planning to do something practical with those ideas in 2018 :). Wish me luck guys.

ty0ki 9y ago

it seems to me that white males are more powerful than the illuminati hmm...

tareqak 9y ago

Techmeme summary: Fred Wilson / AVC: Three interrelated macro themes dominated this year in tech: the breakout of crypto, beginning of the end of white male dominance, and the backlash against tech Could those who downvote this comment please explain why you did so? I try to provide extra context for those who come across this submission, which I get from Techmeme.