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 (m

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.