~75% - Queen Elizabeth reigns for her Platinum Jubilee (February) marking 70 years on the throne, but abdicates before year end due to ill health. - Big tech

~75% - Queen Elizabeth reigns for her Platinum Jubilee (February) marking 70 years on the throne, but abdicates before year end due to ill health. - Big tech gets bigger, no large impactful legislation is introduced either sides of the Atlantic affecting any of the major players. One specific exemption is Roblox, which sees a major legal challenge relating to concerns over being unsafe for children. - World Cup in Qatar will go ahead despite COVID and new boycotts. England will reach knockout stages but go out on penalties. - A major tech company releases an AR/VR headset to a tepid consumer response. - New, less severe, COVID variant spreads. Most Western governments don't lock down, most companies don't delay return-to-office plans, life resumes mostly to normal for the general population. ===== ~50%ish - Reddit IPOs, a combination of increasing advertising and a new user influx pushes older users and communities away, several reddit-style alternatives pop up aimed at specific communities. Stock price initially pops and then steadily decreases to year end. ====== ~25% - James Webb Space Telescope makes front-page global news with a new discovery on exoplanets. (Scientific operations start summer 2022 so the timeline is tight, I might have to copy and paste this for 2023) - HN finally implements a dark mode option - US is hit by a major cyber attack affecting key infrastructure e.g. electrical grid - [NOTE: Spoilers for Neal Stephenson's Fall or Dodge in Hell] An unknown activist/hacker/state-sponsored group stages a large-scale multi-vector "prank" convincing a large section of the US population something awful has happened (similar to the "nuking" of Moab in the aforementioned book). Motivation is to further divide society and spread distrust. Threads on discussion about it are the most commented and upvoted in the history HN. Even months after there exists heated debate between "truthers" and others if the event really happened or not.