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

• wheelerwj 7y ago
  Some of those are really funny, but the one by adw nailed it. >adw on Jan 1, 2010 [-] >Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political scalp. >That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of information are going to start being the kind of core liberal issue that environmental issues currently are.
  • adw 7y ago
    Thank you! There are still lessons to be learned from the early data journalism community, which is what got me thinking about this at the time; Craigslist eating classified advertising and Facebook eating display created this kind of apocalyptic burst of desperate creativity which didn’t save news but pointed in a bunch of important directions which haven’t been fully followed up.
    • mdgrech23 7y ago
      wow crazy you found this comment.
• gregdoesit 7y ago
  What a fun read! The one that ended up being the most off in the thread: > I predict (and hope for) a major turn back to simplicity in technologies. Multimillion-line software will go extinct like dinosaurs. Existing programming languages and platforms will gradually be replaced with ones so simple and elegant that one software component will be written and maintained by one to three developers and art designers and not a whole software company packed with managers and other unnecessary staff. Oh, and managers along with poeple who "understand" "software business" but not software will hopefully go extinct too. If I can predict anything for 2030 based on this, it will be software being even more complex, with even more frameworks and abstractions.
  • zozbot234 7y ago
    I'd say that this prediction is describing current developments quite well. Newer programming languages (Go, Rust) and development tools are making the "software as lean independent components" vision more relevant than it ever was.
    • bordercases 7y ago
      Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels of performance to get all of this to work. Performance comes from optimizing the usage of state against hardware, modularity comes from code satisfying the properties of composition which is best left stateless (and high levels of modularity must come from abstraction and conventional practice, incurring further debts on the programmer and machine.) It's a tension that I haven't seen fully resolved but I'm very very very open to being wrong. Many languages seem to be experimenting in this space with some preference for one side of the equation for another.
      • zozbot234 7y ago
        > Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels of performance to get all of this to work. We know how this works, at least in broad theoretical terms. Zero-cost abstractions are quite feasible within a self-contained module/component, but their scope is ultimately limited by ease of building and deployment. Nevertheless the performance impact of having to support high levels of abstraction across modules/components is quite reasonable, even if not literally "zero" cost.
        • bambataa 7y ago
          Do you have any resources on this you could recommend?
        • bordercases 7y ago
          I'm thinking supercompilation might be another part of the equation as long as we're talking extended composition of modules and types whose behavior is totally closed. Having a pipeline that can supercompile when systems are pushed in production even if some compilation time is traded for performance at development (maybe "local" supercompilation for subsystems relevant to a development team?) would be an interesting thing. But I don't know.
• ra7 7y ago
  A lot of doom and gloom for Microsoft in that thread. But Microsoft has fared much better than anyone expected.
  • thrwaway69 7y ago
    betcha if there were prediction thread for another decade, people will post how Google will be turned into former bell labs and eventually seize to exist.
    • wyre 7y ago
      I can see that happening in the second half of this decade as Google continues to grow and absorb more and more of the Internet.
    • bobbiechen 7y ago
      Guessing you meant cease to exist here, but also seizing the intellectual property of Bell Labs seemed to work out in the 1956 consent decree: The Bell System was obligated to license all its patents royalty free, and it was barred from entering any industry other than telecommunications. ... Although the 1956 consent decree was not effective in ending market foreclosure, it permanently increased the scale of US innovation. https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur-innovation https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur...
  • sumedh 7y ago
    > But Microsoft has fared much better than anyone expected. Its probably because they picked the right guy to lead after Ballmer.
    • RedBeetDeadpool 7y ago
      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.
• haunter 7y ago
  IsaacL nailed it the best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D
  • 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
    I thought ericb did very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787 "not [electronically] tracking your kids will be considered somewhat negligent"
    • dnautics 7y ago
      we're not really quite there yet. Give another 10 years.
      • onefuncman 7y ago
        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
        • switch007 7y ago
          If you're tracking them, so are other people. (Though, as we all know, the real, proper privacy fix is not having a phone.)
          • Dravorek 7y ago
            "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with your kids position data is a good guy with your kids position data" :P
        • arpa 7y ago
          Hey, does your child have rfid implant for easy id and tracking?
  • 7y ago
• sandov 7y ago
  Where is the thread for this decade?
  • crazygringo 7y ago
    Someone just started one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278
• wtvanhest 7y ago
  > motters on Jan 1, 2010 [-] > Also, this decade sees the beginning of the "pension bomb" - the demographic bulge of post-war baby boomers crossing the threshold into retirement. It's fairly easy to predict that there will be pensions scandals, with some pensions companies going bust or paying out far less to recipients than had been originally advertised. Also I predict the beginning of large supermarket scale retirement homes/complexes/compounds, where economies of scale can reduce costs of elder care. Both predictions were 100% correct. Many pensions were cut dramatically or eliminated. AMR is one that comes to mind immediately, but the pension benefit corp could only do so much for many others. Also, this problem now seems like an imminent problem for many companies and public entities. This is only going to get worse. The Villages in Ocala, FL fit the second point, and I'm confident other places exist like it.
  • chrisco255 7y ago
    Yeah basically the entire state of Florida. The Villages is pretty exceptional though.
• keyle 7y ago
  Oh man this is fun. So many prediction we blew past and so many have had 0 progress.
• axaxs 7y ago
  Reading this made me a bit sad. So many people were optimistic, and many predicted exciting things... but few if any of that happened.
  • fudged71 7y ago
    I think everyone likes to predict contrarian things which are actually unlikely to happen, in the hopes that they will be the only one who predicted it... just like investing/gambling
  • kristianc 7y ago
    Hey, it wasn’t a terrible decade. We got the iPad!
    • cortesoft 7y ago
      10 years before that one commenter guessed!
  • deleted 7y ago
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• gaukes 7y ago
  So many predictions about driverless cars. All wrong :( My guess is full self driving on high ways by 2030 with some semi-autonomous trucks. Removing a driver won’t happen until 2040-50.
  • HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    I'm going to go out on a limb and say 2035 at the earliest for full self-driving partly because A) software engineers never feeling quite done, B) the underlying software, firmware, and hardware won't be proveably safe enough and C) because something political will make self-driving EV's much more difficult.
• haecceity 7y ago
  Fun read but humans are not very good at making predictions.
  • crimsonalucard 7y ago
    I beg to differ, humans are the best at making predictions. There is nothing better than a human.
    • thatsenough 7y ago
      We’re the best, but we’re still not good.
• justinzollars 7y ago
  Wow! The quality of hacker news back then was amazing. So much concentration on technology! So much positive energy. And the predictions were nailed.
• darzu 7y ago
  > Functional programming / dynamic languages will go out of fashion. Glad this didn't happen. Also it's weird to me to equate functional & dynamic like that.
  • ordinaryradical 7y ago
    Elixir is off chortling somewhere...
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • lostcolony 7y ago
    That read to me like someone who views programming paradigms as simply fashion choices, rather than having actual pros and cons to them.
  • crimsonalucard 7y ago
    The majority of programming today is not functional at all. I think Functional programming became sort of a tertiary elitist buzzword similar to drunken style kung fu. The effectiveness of the style is well known among practitioners and those that don't practice it look upon it as if it was a foreign and strange art. What people don't realize is that functional programming is mixed martial arts. The art of combat brought down to the science of combat. I think there is little chance FP will become mainstream. MMA didn't become popular because it was the most effective art, it became popular because it was packaged up into entertainment.
    • dnautics 7y ago
      > The majority of programming today is not functional at all. That's probably true. > I think there is little chance FP will become mainstream That's demonstrably not, as React has basically gone full FP. I would argue that the majority of bootcamp students are now taught functional programming.
      • crimsonalucard 7y ago
• joaomacp 7y ago
  by DrJokepu: > Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else. Sad, but accurate.
• anderspitman 7y ago
  To me the interesting question is: What cool things were predicted and still don't exist, but could if someone from that thread had spent the past 10 years trying to make it happen?
• elfexec 7y ago
  My favorite from 2010 : "President-Elect Graham to Appoint Sam Altman to Cabinet"... Not too far off. I checked and nobody predicted a Trump presidency in 2010. So no time travelers amongst us sadly.
  • sjg007 7y ago
    He will win 2020 unfortunately.
• wcoenen 7y ago
  Nobody saw Bitcoin coming. (The first block had already been mined at the start of 2009, but there was no real exchange trading until later in 2010.)
  • umanwizard 7y ago
    If someone saw it coming in 2010 they are extremely rich now :)
    • ionwake 7y ago
      You forget how hard it is to look after it. Bitcoin is like fairy dust , nearly impossible to grasp.
      • mc3 7y ago
        Printing the keys and sticking them a safe would have done the trick - but you'd need the foresight to know that not touching it for 10 years is the plan.
        • genidoi 7y ago
          That's the gotcha. If bitcoin hits $1M by 2030, the people reading your comment from the 2030 repost of this thread will have a good snicker. Bitcoin's entire value, literally all of it, is just an index for how widely and strongly felt HODLology is across the globe. The sale of a bitcoin is a cult member leaving, the purchase is a baptism, however transiently intended the purchase is, because the purchase represents the new recruits own belief in HODLology.
          • WA 7y ago
            Ok I make a prediction here for 2030: Bitcoin won't be at $1M at all, very far from it. Bitcoin will be between $0 and the cost of mining a single coin. Right now, this is around $7,000. Could be similar or less in 2030. I don't expect it to go anywhere. It seems to have a niche purpose, but will never gain mass adoption. I make another prediction: By 2030 not a single cryptocurrency will be used mainstream / have replaced fiat currency. The strongest will still be Bitcoin, but it'll be as weak or non-existent for normal people like it is now.
• geuis 7y ago
  My takeaway from reading the top voted 2010 predictions is that people are terrible about predicting what's going to happen 10 years later. A few of them are correct (cheapish high density displays, commercially successful ebook readers, self-driving cars) but most are terribly inaccurate. Left the same comment but with some fun, probably wrong predictions, over on the other post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941512.
• hirundo 7y ago
  > if there is a way to work Elon Musk in there somewhere that would be good, I have a feeling he's going to make some big waves in the next 10 years but I haven't a clue how. -- jacquesm https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025811
  • lalos 7y ago
    The Roadster got delivered on 2008, right but not a crazy prediction based on those times.
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    • tashoecraft 7y ago
      Roadster was an extremely niche car for millionaires. Spacex had yet to have a successful launch I believe. So while not a crazy prediction, still impressive that I doubt many people who have bet on
      • lalos 7y ago
        Model S got unveiled on 2009, the Gov invested/lent in them in 2009 and I remember the whole buzz of having a Tesla. Seems like a lot of people betted on them (pre-orders, government, investors, etc). Quick search result in that time frame https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2009%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F1%2F2010&tbm= https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1...
      • jp42 7y ago
        Space successfully launched their first rocket on 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Fourth_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Fourth_flight However spacex workhorse Falcon9's first flight was in mid 2010.
• mNovak 7y ago
  > Google will be the Microsoft of 1990-2000: scary, dominant, and increasingly hated (by nerds at least). That one strikes a certain chord..
• DevKoala 7y ago
  > Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political scalp. That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of information are going to start being the kind of core liberal issue that environmental issues currently are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703 This poster saw it.
  • adw 7y ago
    I was working on things adjacent to data journalism at the time, which helped! If anything, this has come much more true than I anticipated. I hadn’t got as far as Cambridge Analytica.
  • dnautics 7y ago
    > Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political scalp. Who's scalp was it? I don't know any politician who has been taken to task over network analysis and data mining. Fore sure not Obama, whose staffers have quietly chortled that they did far worse than Cambridge Analytica ever did. Definitely not Trump, his numbers are as even as they haev ever been. Maybe Zuckerberg? But he's still CEO of his company.
    • IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
      I believe the "taking the scalp" could also be a reference for its intended offensive power, not just the scandal of using it. In that light, the answer is obvious: Hillary Clinton! (And before someone complaints, which someone will definitely still do: Given the extremely close election, it is possible, even likely, that any single one of maybe a dozen issues had the potential to change the outcome: Just being a bit better as a candidate would have been enough. That e-mail "scandal" getting the same attention as the dozens of carbon copies of it since revealed in the Trump Cabinet, i. e. none, would have sufficed. Defences against Russian interference, or even just widespread knowledge of the attacks, could have been enough etc. etc.
    • arrosenberg 7y ago
      Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign claims their data operation is how they won in the Rust Belt.
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• sakopov 7y ago
  Fully immersive VR tech will become the future of gaming.
• bhouston 7y ago
  Lots of demographics problems in the western world and hopefully we get ahead of it, unlike our track record with climate change.
• theboywho 7y ago
  If something can be predicted, or if many people agree with you, then it's not that revolutionary. ctrl+f "bitcoin" returns 0 results. Disruptive ideas take humanity by a storm few people believe it's coming, the rest can only connect the dots looking backwards.
  • EpicEng 7y ago
    Not sure what sort of disruption btc and the like have caused thus far. Just another speculator's market.
    • ianai 7y ago
      Over priced an entire generation of computer gaming culture. Probably didn’t help getting to 4k content either.
  • nothrabannosir 7y ago
    To be fair, when I ctrl+f Bitcoin in my actual life there’s also 0 results.
    • fyfy18 7y ago
      I feel that overall much didn't change in the past decade in the tech world. Bitcoin is a great example of that, there was a big bubble where you could raise money just by mentioning Blockchain, and then just as quickly it faded away. AI isn't much different at the moment, it feels much more like a marketing buzzword than something that has changed my life. Compare this to developments happening outside the computing-tech world (like Musk is doing) and the rise of green building tech. Today it is more than feasible to build a house that generates more energy than it consumes over the course of a year, even in cold climates like Northern Europe. The only thing preventing this from being more common is knowledge (builders keep building what they know) and it costs a little more upfront.
• fullstackchris 7y ago
  before anyone makes some new ones for 2020 - 2029, i urge you to read this great article: http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-blindspot-rp http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-futurism-has-a-... it has something special somehow, I always come back to it
• dang 7y ago
  All: this thread is about predictions that HN users made 10 years ago. Note the year in the title above. If you want to make a new prediction, a new thread has gotten started: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278.
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• scarface74 7y ago
  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 popular ereader but more importantly, the Kindle platform is still dominant. - Google still hasn’t managed to diversify from its ad business and YouTube is still dominant for video. - Netflix is still the dominant streaming platform. - Microsoft is doing better than ever.
  • npo9 7y ago
    I think Microsoft was the biggest surprise. In 2010 MacBooks were starting to become very popular, and it looked like Microsoft’s monopoly on consumer computing was coming to an end. It was common to think Microsoft was on a long decline in 2010.
    • koboll 7y ago
      It's interesting how none of the commenters envisioned Microsoft repositioning itself to adapt to technological and business trends. Everyone seems to have thought they would either fight them and lose, or contract to becoming an IBM-like consulting business.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        Also, look how much things changed between 2000 and 2010 compared to 2010 to 2020. Facebook didn’t exist. Apple was “beleaguered”. Google was in its infancy and Yahoo was still dominant (before the crash) Microsoft was seen as unassailable. Amazon was mostly just an interesting book seller. They were just getting into CDs and hadn’t even made the deal with Toys R Us yet. Netflix was struggling against BlockBuster renting DVDs. AOL was still dominant.
        • npo9 7y ago
• echelon 7y ago
  2020's 2030 prediction thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278
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• zamadatix 7y ago
  Somebody hit up tlrobinson on Twitter and let him know https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748
• wyxuan 7y ago
  Jacquesm's comment on Musk is quite accurate " Edit: if there is a way to work Elon Musk in there somewhere that would be good, I have a feeling he's going to make some big waves in the next 10 years but I haven't a clue how. "
• contingencies 7y ago
  This one came true: The post-PC decade. The evolution of SmartPhones, set tops, cloud computing and other mobile devices is going to make the PC redundant for most people. By the end of this decade I could see the PC being exclusively a business tool or power user tool. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022
  • nearbuy 7y ago
    It's trending that way, but this decade still sold more PCs and laptops than the previous decade. 2018 sales were around the same level as 2006 or 2007.
• chubot 7y ago
  HN will split. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709 Didn't happen! Kudos to @dang and the HN staff for keeping the site going for a decade !!
  • surround 7y ago
    Well, there is lobste.rs
    • omegabravo 7y ago
      lobste.rs is invite only which makes it hard for people like me to sign up
      • gerikson 7y ago
        Feel free to provide me an email at @gerikson on Twitter (DM) and I will send you an invite!
    • pushcx 7y ago
      Yep, but my guess is that Lobsters is probably around 1/100th the size of HN on any dimension you care to measure (some recent stats: https://lobste.rs/s/8yumgi/killed_by_google#c_ugdtol https://lobste.rs/s/8yumgi/killed_by_google#c_ugdtol). We explicitly have a narrower scope and are not interested in trying to dethrone/replace/etc HN. But ultimately, "split" is too vague a prediction to be judged as accurate or inaccurate. (Context: I am the admin of Lobsters.)
• cambalache 7y ago
  It is going to be expected that most of these predictions were going to be wrong, that is OK. What surprises me is how almost ALL of them were. This is not better than how the average Joe in the street or the proverbial monkey with the typewriter would have fared. Well, perhaps they would have done it a little bit better.
• suyash 7y ago
  Wow reading all those predictions sound so foolish! Most were way off, goes to say why long term predictions is so hard.
• dgzl 7y ago
  I think the country is going to become very, very divided.
  • ianai 7y ago
    I wish we’d have a moment where the extremity forces people to snap back and cooperate with one another.
    • dgzl 7y ago
      Like some kind of justified war?
    • ashleyn 7y ago
      I figured climate change would be that moment but we have an entire side of the political aisle essentially denying it's even happening.
• impendia 7y ago
  > Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods, with close to 100% coverage across the civilized world. A significant fraction of ordinary consumer goods simply won't work in "dark" zones. I'm glad that this remains mostly false (as well as "all high street bookstores go bust"). Sure, you can get a wi-fi enabled toaster or coffeepot, but the basic versions are still available for sale. I chose to live without wi-fi at home, and with no smartphone, for the past four months -- just to see how my life went without the distraction. Now the experiment has run its course, and I plan to order wifi again. But basically life went on as normal, and I feel I could do another four months if I chose. I wonder for how long into the future such a choice will remain realistic.
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• im3w1l 7y ago
  Kinda weird how no one saw Cannabis liberalization coming.
• monksy 7y ago
  RMS owes someone money. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025795
  • hatsunearu 7y ago
    I don't think it's the RMS
• kick 7y ago
  I ranked all of these, and gave the rate of correct predictions. I might have missed one or two, though. ----- Winners: 'icefox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026549 ChromeOS. Based on Linux kernel. Entirely different security system/deployment/upgrades, no legacy applications. 3/3 percentage correct: 100% 'jaquesm https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025696 Pretty sure all are correct, though can't find statistics for the first on hand. 5/5 percentage correct: 100% 'jacquesm https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709 laarc, though laarc failed. 1/1 percentage correct: 100% 'adw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703 No explanation needed. 1/1 percentage correct: 100% 'slashed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025702 1/1 percentage correct: 100% No explanation necessary. 'jeromec https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026044 Correct. Would have been incorrect if U.S. didn't come back into Iran to start another war. Details a bit blurry. 1/1 percentage correct: 100% 'jsz0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022 No explanation needed. 2/2 percentage correct: 100% 'antirez https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025765 No explanation needed. 1/1 percentage correct: 100% 'rms https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025758 This happened, despite being far away. 1/1 percentage correct: 100% 'slvrspoon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025943 Progress with cancer happened, wasn't a big thing. Growth of a Chinese middle class with a voice and independence didn't happen. Nuclear detonation didn't happen. Achievements in energy tech happened. Wi-fi data collection on everything happened, though not main change. Internet and software a snore; happened. Privacy did become an issue for the common user. 4/7 percentage correct: 57% 'IsaacL https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093 Facebook successful. Facebook IPO happened in time allotted. Twitter became profitable. Microsoft didn't go anywhere. Microsoft grew, claim of shrinking denied. Desktop market shrunk. Internet Explorer went away. Point denied. Mobile phones have more or less replaced computers for most average users. Point denied. Mobile phones did cause most of the big changes during this decade. More successful startups. Startups with Facebook/YouTube proportions didn't happen. Point denied. Huge startups built on phones and web tech did happen. Startup ecosystem has gotten worse. Point denied. "Startup instead of college" has gotten more intense. Languages slower than Ruby caught on. Was not because of Moore's Law but because developers have the attention span of small rodents. Point denied. Moore's Law is dead. Deal to limit warming did happen, though it was in six years, not five, and far less than what is claimed here. Point denied. Traditional retail gave way to delivery; large shops weren't impacted as much as small, and the incentives were wrong. Point denied. China made no attempt to become democratic. Rule of law in China got stronger, though civil liberties did not increase. Point denied. Internet crackdowns have continued and increased in China. 12/21 percentage correct: 57% 'iamwil https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025885 Eugenics dating service from Harvard students was announced just a few days ago. 1/2 percentage correct: 50% 'DaniFong https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026260 Solar and wind are now cheaper than alternatives. Is not sold to customers "when they want it, how they want it." 1/2 percentage correct: 50% 'bioweek https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026279 Ubiquitous free internet did happen, wasn't a meshnet. 1/2 percentage correct: 50% 'borism https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025861 Web did not cease to be the delivery platform of choice for applications, it's gotten worse. Point denied. Internet has become more restricted. 1/2 percentage correct: 50% 'zitterbewegung https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025906 PMCs have gotten more prevalent. Have not gotten more popular. 1/2 percentage correct: 50% 'brfox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025855 Gene-therapy did become slightly more commonplace. Genome sequencing for chronic conditions is now commonplace (wouldn't have counted this if 'brfox didn't elaborate on the prediction in same thread). 2/5 percentage correct: 40% 'tommorris https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025771 GNU/Linux on the desktop didn't really happen, but Linux on the desktop did (ChromeOS). Widespread adoption of LISP by developers sort of happened (Clojure), despite much adoption, still limited reach. Cheaper hardware happened, and is the only thing I'm giving a full point for. The rest didn't really happen. 1/6 percentage correct: 16.7% ----- Losers: 'varjag https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025740 Didn't happen. 0/1 percentage correct: 0% '10ren https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026574 Nothing right, though first two slightly mirror events that happened ("you inside" = VR; mobile devices have specialized processors like "organs in the body," though multi-core is far from dead). 0/4 percentage correct: 0% 'erikstarck https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088 Nothing accurate barring possibly the Google example, though not even it is really right. 0/3 percentage correct: 0% 'mojuba https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025706 Entirely wrong, unfortunately. 0/a-bunch percentage correct: 0% 'lallysingh https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025783 No substantial change in political bases, slight left-swing for demographic mentioned. 0/1 percentage correct: 0% 'artagon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025790 Entirely wrong. 0/6 percentage correct: 0% 'andrewcooke https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025727 None of this was correct, though AMD did make steps in that direction, and so did IBM/Sony. 0/2 percentage correct: 0% 'samuel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025853 It hasn't yet. 0/1 percentage correct: 0% ----- Honorable mentions: 'paraschopra https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025736 Half-point given because tablets rose to prominence and serve as partial e-Book readers, though they also killed dedicated ones. .5/1 percentage correct: N/A 'Scott_MacGregor https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026255 1. His company failed. 2. Didn't happen. 3. Half-point given; free for everyone, usually privately-funded. 4. It's gotten worse. 5. No explanation necessary. 6. Didn't happen. 7. It's gotten worse. .5/7 percentage correct: N/A 'zacharypinter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025867 All claims basically correct, though flawed. Not taking into final % calculation or ranking for that reason. 4/5 percentage correct: N/A 'motters https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025738 Both predictions correct with large picture, both wrong on most details. Half-point awarded for each. 1/2 percentage correct: N/A 'motters https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025817 Problems with pensions happened, were not as bad as claimed. .5/1 percentage correct: N/A
• mortenjorck 7y ago
  > the end of 32 bit computing. By itself hardly a bold prediction, but the top reply makes a caveat about mobile devices, which gets some nods about mobile taking much longer to transition to 64-bit. Few might have imagined Apple would ship its first 64-bit phone only three years later, and a version of iOS before the decade was over that ended support for 32-bit phones!
  • rsynnott 7y ago
    32bit died on phones much quicker than on the desktop, in fact (though of course it died on servers first). Arguably, this should have been predictable; legacy software was a much smaller problem on phones.
    • jlokier 7y ago
      I find that a little surprising, because one of the side effects of 64-bit address spaces is a lot of redundancy in pointer representations stored in RAM. 64-bit pointer-based data structures have more redundant zeros. Much of the energy in a computer goes on communication between chips, so increased memory use means increased energy use. As well as more going on inside the CPU transferring all those redundant pointer bits around And phones are notably sensitive to energy use.
      • zozbot234 7y ago
        You don't have to use full 64-bit pointers for your "pointer-based data structures". You can store indexes into an arena allocation. This is common in languages such as C++ and Rust, and will become increasingly so as 32-bit is less and less used.
      • rsynnott 7y ago
        I believe ObjC and Swift on 64bit machines use the upper section of the pointers to store reference counts. I'd guess that Android Java uses pointer compression like normal Java does, though I don't know for certain. The 64bit transition on ARM also allowed an arch overhaul, with extra registers etc. ARMv8 cores were usually a good bit faster than their immediate predecessors, but it wasn't much to do with 64bitness. This also happened with x86, of course.
• bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  > JulianMorrison on Jan 1, 2010: Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods, with close to 100% coverage across the civilized world. A significant fraction of ordinary consumer goods simply won't work in "dark" zones. The gap between 1st and 3rd world countries will widen as a result - take a modern computer into backwoods Africa and it's a paperweight. It's not wrong. But I guess he didn't foresee the Internet of Useless Shit. It matters if you tablet doesn't work without Internet, but doesn't matter if it's your refrigerator, or so we hope. > Electric cars become fairly common. A destructive feedback loop starts for gasoline fuel: lower demand, lower profit, vendors go bust, less availability, monopoly prices, lower desirability. The gasoline economy is brittle because it has high fixed costs, a complex supply chain, and its power source isn't fungible. As with film versus digital cameras, the result is an exponential crash in the desirability of gasoline cars Exponential crash? Didn't see it yet. > Driverless cars will appear. As they move down from the high end to the mainstream, they'll make taxis cheap enough that private car ownership starts to become quaint. Eventually, driving your own car will be considered selfish risk-taking, and banned on public roads. Not yet. > DrJokepu on Jan 1, 2010: Still no fusion power. Haha! > During the second half of the decade, the Chinese bubble will burst. This will be a quite heavy shock. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. A younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China. The unsustainable early economic growth has came to an end and there was an economic crisis, but there was never a major "burst". And the power was not assumed by a younger group, but a more conservative group. Not sure if's populist or not though. > Hugo Chavez & his friends will be removed from power in Venezuela. Still not completely fulfilled, but probably soon. > Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be downhill for them (at least for the rest of the decade). Accurate? > Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else. Accurate! > adw on Jan 1, 2010: Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political scalp. That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of information are going to start being the kind of core liberal issue that environmental issues currently are. Accurate. > jacquesm on Jan 1, 2010: [...] the end of 32 bit computing for consumer pcs and server platforms. So all mainstream machines not being mobile or embedded devices will be 64 bits by the end of the decade (and plenty of those will be too, but you are right, not all of them). Accurate. > artagnon on Jan 1, 2010: [...] 3. By 2020, Chrome and Firefox each have 35% market share. Internet Explorer becomes insignificant. It's wrong, it's more like Chrome has 66% and Firefox has 33% (just an example, the "real" number shows Firefox's market share is even less than that). While the death of Internet Explorer was certain, it was hard to imagine that Google Chrome would be a monopoly.
• ganonm 7y ago
  - The JVM running on a unikernal is the most ubiquitous backend deployment. Kotlin is the most popular backend language. - Server-side rendering is ubiquitous. Previously, motivations for client side rendering were to minimise network bandwidth requirements and to avoid server-side statefulness, reducing RAM and CPU requirements. By 2030, memory and compute resources are so cheap that the inherent advantages of server side rendering make it a no brainer for the most part. - Discovery of extraterrestrial life will occur in mid to late 2020s, most likely in the form of Martian microbes. The James Webb Space Telescope will likely acquire strong evidence of organic lifeforms on multiple exoplanets. Even more surprising discoveries may be made in this area. - Anti aging therapies become mainstream. By 2030, people in developed countries can expect to live an additional 10-15 years in good health. Reaching 'actuarial escape velocity' becomes a serious possibility for many people alive now. Governments realise the time will come when they will have to step in and bail out pension funds who have unwittingly sold annuities. There will be a group of people who were old enough to get an annuity before they became prohibitively expensive/unavailable and who were young enough to reach actuarial escape velocity. They will be labelled 'the luckiest generation ever'. This may not become totally apparent until 2030s or 2040s. - Real time ray tracing becomes standard by late 2020s. Games are indistinguishable from reality. A murder case where defendant claims 'they thought they were ingame' makes the news headlines. - Spacex's Starlink constellation is a massive commercial success. Partly due to this, and partly due to ubiquitous aerial drone-based delivery, it becomes not only possible, but increasingly desirable for many people to live in remote areas. - Development of space based industry is slower than people hoped. Full exploitation of cheap launch capabilities provided by SpaceX won't be seen until 2030s. Blue Origin will catch up with Spacex's capabilities by mid 2020s. Private space launch industry will no longer be a one horse race. - Electric cars overtake ICEs in developed nations. Several incumbents who don't react in time will go bankrupt and be acquired by electric car manufacturers. As such, the brands won't disappear, the executive boards however will be out of a job. - Cryptocurrency will remain off the radar for most of 2020 until, due to major war involving a wealthy, developed country, millions of people will rush to buy Bitcoin to save what they can of their wealth. Price of one Bitcoin will quickly exceed $100,000 during this period. - People will become increasingly afraid to post their physical likeness (appearance and voice in particular) on the internet due to a surge in deep-fake powered identity theft. - North Korea will not collapse. The West will reluctantly accept it as a nuclear armed state. It will gradually normalise relations with the outside world and may even follow the same path China took, becoming a prosperous country in the process.
• PlasticTank 7y ago
  well after today's news I'm going with war
  • ianai 7y ago
    I fear you may be right.
• sambroner 7y ago
  At least this guy was wrong > I predict lots of people will make predictions, but we'll never go back to check and see if they were right. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748
  • real-hacker 7y ago
    We would never know if he is right
• vendiddy 7y ago
  It's common to own a laptop, iPad, a Kindle, and sometimes even a drawing tablet. They are have a tablet form factor, so these devices will probably converge into a single one. Once the tech becomes good enough, it'll no longer make sense to own all these devices.
• deleted 7y ago
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• namewink 7y ago
  TikTok is gonna go down in flames by dec 2023
• mc3 7y ago
  No one saw Trump coming.
  • mark-r 7y ago
    Scott Adams did, but not quite 10 years in advance. Check out his blog about a year before the election. Edit: here's just one example. It goes earlier than this. https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/09/23/the-reason-for-trumps-success/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/09/23/the-reason-for-tru...
• deleted 7y ago
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• stretchwithme 7y ago
  I predict by 2029 Hacker News will be overrun with AI bots and nobody will be to identify them.
  • mark-r 7y ago
    Are you sure it hasn't happened already?
    • stretchwithme 7y ago
      I suppose an army of inept bots could throw me off.
• Archit3ch 7y ago
  Still no Duke Nukem Forever.
  • Archit3ch 7y ago
    Edit: I meant that they got that wrong, but it wasn't an unreasonable prediction.
• michrassena 7y ago
  Predictions are a fun mental exercise, but they read an awful lot like horoscopes. They're just too subjective to be truly interesting. It's not really all that different than predicting the weather ten years out. It'll be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Things will be pretty much the same but different.
• abraxas 7y ago
  Moore’s law will peter out and everyone will be forced to squeeze out more performance out of existing hardware. The tide will turn hard against “the cloud” when companies figure out their cloud spend is many times worse than their own data centres cost them. There may be a new wave of “lean” cloud systems. Fast programming languages will be in vogue again once the wastefulness of things like Ruby/Erlang is finally understood.
• HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  People will start moving en masse to EV's. There will be a spectacular fire because of an improper electrical install that will become a huge news media event with people asking whether or not EV's are actually safe (despite ICE vehicles having gas tanks) There will be a major continent-wide power outage either because of a natural disaster or a highly sophisticated and coordinated attack against the poorly secured power stations that at least span NA. Valve will beat the ever-living daylights out of everyone else in the cloud gaming space.
• aazaa 7y ago
  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 shootings - the explosive growth of quantitative easing - negative nominal interest rates on sovereign debt - revelations of mass surveillance by the US government - streaming video services would begin to produce content rivaling major studios in quality - Amazon would become the everything company - DNA testing would become a major recreational activity with numerous judicial and social implications - the US would approach energy independence, driven largely by a boom in oil extraction technologies Also interesting to consider how all of these ideas would have seemed more or less ludicrous in 2010.
  • tim333 7y ago
    "C'est la vie", say the old folks It goes to show you never can tell
    • martincmartin 7y ago
      For those who don't recognize the reference, it's the chorus of a song made famous by Chuck Berry: https://genius.com/Chuck-berry-you-never-can-tell-lyrics https://genius.com/Chuck-berry-you-never-can-tell-lyrics
      • jonahx 7y ago
        Obligatory: https://youtu.be/WSLMN6g_Od4?t=85 https://youtu.be/WSLMN6g_Od4?t=85
  • newguy1234 7y ago
    Now just to predict what will be the big thing in 2030 so I can get rich :)
  • spectramax 7y ago
• deleted 7y ago
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• m0zg 7y ago
  Prediction: in 10 years we _still_ won't have self-driving cars on common roads nationwide. Tesla will refund the money charged for "full self driving capability" that was supposed to arrive "later this year" in 2019.
• kbrannigan 7y ago
  Africa... starvation and primitivity There are some African countries richer than Eastern European countries. This sucks...
• FlyingSideKick 7y ago
  By 2030: 1. Nigeria and/or Kenya's GDP will surpass that of the UK. 2. Global births will rapidly decline in all but the poorest nations. Data will show that "Peak Child" is near and will occur around 2040. 3. 4 day work weeks for salaried employees will be commonplace amongst large corporations. 4. A new search engine disrupting our commonplace search behaviors will be on its way to disrupting Google 5. The average Bachelor of Science degree in the USA will cost >$180,000 at a public university
• lawrenceyan 7y ago
  > The world falls into war, inclusive of even the most pacifist, post-military states. On the upside, a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter moves anthropogenic global warming to the back burner and spawns a generation of Mad Max-style entrepreneurs among the ten-million or so human survivors. Surviving software engineers relish the opportunity to rebuild lost infrastructure "the right way this time"---including a transactional, secure, well-formed, rule-based, semantic world-wide-web---while the less-gifted turn to secondary issues like clean water, shelter, food, energy, medicine, and transportation. > Internecine fighting erupts amongst the software clans over whether certain symbols are separating or terminating and whether or not the name of the god of modification is spelled with two letters or five. The dehumanized masses turn on the dithering software clans and their IT crowd supporters, demanding to have their souls restored from failed exchange, facebook, gmail, and twitter servers. A small nomadic clan clad in denim and mock turtlenecks seeks the legendary Cupertino Stone in the wasteland of New Gorgoroth (mostly between the 85 and the 280), but finds only the unpublished "Objectivist-C Manifesto" and shiny discs inscribed "Dylan DR1".
• tedsanders 7y ago
  "Tech is changing faster than ever." What changed in tech from 2010 to 2020? My take below. Hardware: Phones got way better and changed the face of modern human life. 3D TVs fizzled. VR has fizzled so far. AR fizzled. CPUs improved, but more slowly. HDDs improved, but more slowly. SSDs got cheap. Displays got way cheaper. Cars got better infotainment systems and other features, but never drove themselves. Wireless power didn't happen. Mesh networks didn't happen. Ultra cheap RFID didn't happen. Robots didn't happen. Telerobots didn't happen. T Dynamic pricing didn't really happen. Drone delivery didn't happen. Flexible electronics didn't happen. Nanotechnology didn't really happen. Graphene didn't happen. Ubiquitious computing didn't happen. Non-silicon based solar didn't happen. Silicon solar costs plummeted and installations went gangbusters. Wearable electronics didn't happen, except for smart watches. eReaders grew. FPGAs never took off. Chips are still mostly silicon. The top CPU makers are still Intel and AMD. The top GPU makers are still NVIDIA and AMD. The top video game console makers are still Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft. Home internet remained mostly cable, not fiber. Computers remained x86, phones remained ARM. Software: The dominant search engine is still Google. The dominant computer operating systems are still Windows and Mac OS. The dominant phone operating systems are still Android and iOS. The top video streaming site is still YouTube. The top map site is still Google Maps. The dominant office software is still Microsoft Office. The dominant social network is still Facebook. The top online retailer is still Amazon. The top cloud provider is still AWS. Internet Explorer died, and Chrome grew in share. Websites are lot better and slicker. Phone apps got way, way better. Cryptocurrencies didn't take off. MMOs didn't take off. Web anonymization didn't happen. Web identity didn't happen. Malware still exists. Spam still exists. Lag still exists. Functional programming didn't take off. Telepresence didn't take off. Remote work didn't take off. Mass outsourcing of software jobs didn't happen. Linux didn't take off. Prediction markets didn't happen. Video calls didn't really take off, but they happen. Most of what was growing in 2010 continued to grow, most of what was shrinking in 2010 continued to shrink. What else happened? What narratives do you construct?
  • Eduard 7y ago
    Good writeup! But for my situation and requirements, SSDs still didn't get cheap.
• aylmao 7y ago
  > Facebook will be the Google of the decade. > Google will be the Microsoft of the decade. > Microsoft will be the IBM of the decade. The "decade" timeline doesn't quite fit but to be honest this wasn't a bad prediction [1]. > Facebook will be the Google of the decade. This feels very accurate, down to the people. There's plenty of ex-Googlers at Facebook, including Sheryl Sandberg, who essentially built Facebook from "a really cool site" to the profitable ad business it is now. Google bought YouTube in 2006, and now it's a huge economy of content creators. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, and it's now a growing economy of influencers. There's plenty of differences of course, but in the ad-tech space it's Google then Facebook, in Machine Learning it's Google and Facebook. What big companies are releasing cool open source software, adopted by millions of developers? Google and Facebook. Miss-information, hate speech, political controversy and issues with publishers? Facebook and Google/YouTube. In terms of data-tracking only Google is comparable to Facebook— or rather only Facebook is comparable to Google? Virtually complete dominance of a key-part of the web? Google and Facebook. Number of users? I could argue only Android and Facebook are at point where they have to provide free internet to people to gain more users. Diversification into hardware? First Google, then Facebook. The list goes on. Facebook is (perhaps too ruthlessly, and "breaking too many things") largely another "Google" in many ways. Not sure if this is what the prediction was getting at, but it's interesting to think about. > Google will be the Microsoft of the decade. Right now it feels like this is happening. Right now, Google is ubiquitous and feels unbeatable like Microsoft. It also has (1) platform dominance in web and OS and key services, (2) an incredibly diverse set of products and (3) anti-competitive behavior stemming from this dominance. It also has (4) a thick layer of middle-management fighting for relevance leading to (5) lots of product churn, worsened by (6) lack of focus due a "vision" vacuum in upper-management. I'd suspect the next few years without Page or Brin will be interesting. It'll also be interesting to see if Google 1. Can pull of hardware (Pixel was a good start, but the latest iteration has a lot of reviewers disappointed) 2. Can focus (Android, Chrome OS or Fuchsia? Will they commit to a messaging service?) and 3. Can deliver new products that stick. > Microsoft will be the IBM of the decade. Up until Satya Nadella took over in 2014 and his changes started materializing later in the decade this largely sounded like it was the case— old stagnant company, held mostly by slow-to-change enterprise customers, and little in the way of new products. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088
• aylmao 7y ago
  It's fun to see how some of these in general accurate, but others were very far off. For example: > Facebook will be gone in 5 years, just like MySpace. Half a dozen companies will rise and fall in replacing it. The web will churn even faster than it did before. [1] Love the reply to this one. "Probably the best prediction I've read on this thread." [2] There's also [3]: > * During the second half of the decade, the Chinese bubble will burst. This will be a quite heavy shock. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. A younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China. > * Functional programming / dynamic languages will go out of fashion. People still using them will be judged as incompetent programmers by the people who moved on to the new fashionable programming paradigm(s). At the same time, huge corporations will embrace functional programming / dynamic languages and third world universities will start focusing on them in their courses. > * Lady Gaga will be the new Madonna. To be honest I don't know about pop to know if this is true, but it sounds to me like Katy Perry might've out-Madonna'd Gaga. Even the original post has some that didn't turn out as expected: > - Major changes will happen in Iran, one way or the other. The current trajectory they are on does not seem sustainable for a decade. Little did they know, yes? Kind of, after the election of Hassan Rouhani and an eventual nuclear deal, although that particular milestone would be scrapped after a big change in government happened in the USA. > - Ubiquitous computing will finally arrive, with smart cards/RFID on our bodies seamlessly interacting with computers in our environment. As you walk up to your refrigerator, for instance, you're logged in and presented with a customized display. Same goes for the car or the entertainment surface at the Dentist's. Little did they know at the end of the decade this would be DOA after a series of scandals made people realize maybe privacy is way more important than logging into your refrigerator with a customized display. Also, as it turns out, dentist equipment churn, at least where I'm from, is incredibly slow and still lacking an "entertainment surface" beyond maybe a TV if you're lucky. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027153 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027260 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025770
• stevefan1999 7y ago
  I hope I will get a girlfriend who is in CS major and is better than what I did
• TheKarateKid 7y ago
  > * Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be downhill for them (at least for the rest of the decade). > * Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else. Unfortunately, both of these were spot-on.
• robomartin 7y ago
  The first thing that comes to mind when I look back at these kinds of predictions is what is being said today (or during the last few years) about how AI is going to enslave and destroy humanity. The other one is how robotics (+ AI) will lay waste to human employment. Some of the people championing doomsday scenarios ought to be humbled by the reality of not being able to predict almost anything ten years out. Until someone invents a real crystal ball...
• clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
  > -People become more privacy aware after an image search engine with facial recognition is popularized and they realize that any picture ever posted of them by anyone is in the search result for their name. People become less willing to let others take compromising pictures as if they become posted, the link back to them will be made. Not an image search engine as much as whole governments but this rings eerily true.
  • kelnos 7y ago
    The sad part is that I don't think this has caused people, on average, to become all that much more privacy-aware. Or, if they are, they still don't really care.
    • jlokier 7y ago
      I think it's more like learned helplessness. People don't have alternatives to using the internet, to their smartphones, and to electronic money, that let them still participate in interesting modern society. I think deep down, anyone who thinks about it knows everything they do with their devices may be tracked, is probably being tracked and analysed, but the tools are too essential to life, so they can't afford to worry. That said, I mentioned to someone recently that web servers keep a log of every request and the person was shocked! (Imagine if they could see the details kept by modern analytics and observability tracing!)
    • clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
      Privacy awareness is certainly not mainstream, if you see someone not using any Google service or so they'll probably be assumed paranoid and labelled a cypherpunk. Funnily enough, my Dad asked me about what happens with data in the cloud the other day so that was interesting.
• clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
  I'm glad we proved this guy wrong today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748
• hising 7y ago
  > Lady Gaga will be the new Madonna. Wow. Nailed it.
• CommieDetector 7y ago
  We need to solve the rampant leftist problem killing the west
• bronz 7y ago
  almost all of the predictions were totally wrong, mostly intellectual masturbation, and the one comment that was nearly bang-on was one of the least up-voted. nothing has changed.
• swerfot 7y ago
  It is NOT a new decade yet: https://www.timeanddate.com/counters/mil2000.html https://www.timeanddate.com/counters/mil2000.html
• MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  funny they didn't seem to talk a lot about the cloud in these predictions, or did i miss anything?
• pezo1919 7y ago
  Rise of Dependent Types in general purpose programming: eg. Idris, later something like dependent js/ts.
• LMMojo 7y ago
  I predict that people will continue to incorrectly think the new decade starts with the X0 year rather than the X1 year.
• mam2 7y ago
  "Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else." yeah
• deleted 7y ago
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• thoughtexprmnt 7y ago
  Interesting to see that many of the predictions weren't far off. But one recurring prediction that was notably wrong was of Microsoft's declining prospects. It would have been difficult at the time to argue otherwise, but WOW did things turn out differently.
• nwsm 7y ago
  >Facebook will be gone in 5 years >>Probably the best prediction I've read on this thread.
• Apofis 7y ago
  - You still won't be able to talk to your fridge
• netcan 7y ago
  Quick listing some top predictions & my take on right/wrong Iran will Change : I’ll call it NO RFID-Everything : Basically NO… not in consumer-land, at least Cheap Flat Panel Displays : YES Ubiquitous & Wireless/Mobile: YES Ebooks Take Over & Pirates Win: NO. Surprisingly, the opposite happened. monolithic legal markets did really well. Electric Cars Event Horizon: ALMOST Driverless Cars Go Live: NO. Still No Fusion Power: CORRECT MSFT Declines: NO Chinese Bubble Burst: NO Lady Gaga is New Madonna: Yes. Good call! Google will Change for Worst: CORRECT on the moral point. INCORRECT on the financial one Pension Bomb Problems: No Habitable Planet Found: PROBABLY, but we don’t know which one it was. Data Mining Political Watershed: YES.
  • rjsw 7y ago
    > RFID-Everything : Basically NO… not in consumer-land, at least Contactless payment systems grew out of RFID, I would categorize that as a YES.
    • netcan 7y ago
      Ok, I'll call it a yes. Payments didn't come to mind. I guess contactless payment just didn't seem important to me, so I forget about it. Nifty, sure but blink and you miss it.
      • rjsw 7y ago
        I'm guessing that you don't live in Europe.
        • netcan 7y ago
          Actually do. Ireland. I do use it every day, and tapping is better than chip-n-pin. I barely remember scanning. But ultimately, it's not a huge change.
• deleted 7y ago
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• vjktyu 7y ago
  The next decade will be the decade of survelliance. Nearly dust size receivers will cost nothing and will be generously used everywhere: from concrete blocks to clothes. The US will come up with a clever use case so people will buy this themselves (finding a matching pair of socks will finally become a trackable problem, thanks to receivers in all socks), while authoritarian countries will implant these chips in lieu of passports and credit cards. Paired with 5G, this will be a perfect always online monitoring system. I don't think there will be any notable advancements in science: we won't create AI, we won't cure cancer and we won't switch to electric cars.
• worik 7y ago
  The first year was year 1, not 0. So the new decade begins next year in 2021
• jammygit 7y ago
  The death of C# and Java. It’s more of a wish than a prediction...
• hbbio 7y ago
  Funny how many independent comments predict a Microsoft demise in one form or another. In the context of 2009, Microsoft was obviously in disarray and most would just accelerate a current trend to make a prediction. Turns out many important changes in the decade were not predictable that way (although it applies for the success of the smartphone in several comments too).
• GnarfGnarf 7y ago
  2010 was not the beginning of a new decade. It was the last year of its decade. Ditto 2020. There was no year zero.
  • aesthesia 7y ago
    A decade is a span of ten years. Every year is the beginning of a new decade.