13 ms·

What is going to happen in 2015

195 points by kernelv 12y ago

zxcvcxz 12y ago
I hope the US de-schedules weed.
- waterside81 12y ago
  The Feds won't have to - if each state continues to make it legal/regulated, it's the same effect as descheduling it. It's kind of ingenious, actually, on the part of the Federal government.
  - Alex3917 12y ago
    There is still a lot of stuff that depends on weed being legal at the federal level, beyond just the consumer not getting arrested for buying small amounts. We're never going to see serious investment in the space until sellers can access bank infrastructure, there is no longer a risk of DEA raids, state laws are aligned with federal laws, etc. It's not going to happen in 2015 though, unless it gets tacked onto some other crazy spending bill, which is unlikely. It'll probably happen sometime between 2016 and 2024.
    - sophacles 12y ago
      Question for the historically minded folks here - Has there ever been a situation where a bunch of states decided that making something legal (or conversely illegal) against the federal government's position, cause a change in federal policy? How did that work? Can lessons from that apply now to the marijuana debate, amongst others, in the US?
      - forsaken 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Development_of_the_prohibition_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_State...
      - ghaff 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law When the US passed the 55 mph speed limit, it was generally ignored by motorists and wasn't really enforced by a lot of states--and it was eventually repealed. Key difference though is that the feds never had enforcement authority unlike the case with the DEA.
    - hawkice 12y ago
      Also, there are concerns with Alaskan towns only reasonably reachable by boat, which means the coast guard can legally prohibit any marijuana from entering the island under national law. Considering Hawaii leans pretty far left in most elections, they might legalize soon, and that's when you get really weird things happening with border control vs. state law. I'm not sure there are a lot of direct flights from marijuana-legal states to Hawaii.
      - refurb 12y ago
        Why couldn't Hawaii just growtheir own marijuana? Why does it need to be shipped? Even the islands in Alaska could grow marijuana indoors.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- toephu2 12y ago
  how can one invest in this?
  - Klinky 12y ago
    Show up in OR, WA & CO with a briefcase full of money?
andyl 12y ago
Fred predicts Chinese companies will make a big entrance to the US market in 2015. At the same time, China restricts US companies in their markets (Gmail blocking being the latest example) Why do we (in America) allow this asymmetry? Is it a mistake to give Chinese companies an open door?
- fredwilson 12y ago
  that is a great question. there are two sides to this argument. one side says if they block you, you should block them. the other side says blocking trade backfires and that open markets create more opportunity even if you can't sell into their market
  - wslh 12y ago
    You can also block them or negotiate a better deal later once Xiaomi is well positioned in the US market.
- api 12y ago
  There is serious money in labor arbitrage for the top financial and executive class. We've had decades of heavy lobbying for these kinds of asymmetries to break the back of domestic labor and smaller competitors.
  - avanishgiri 12y ago
    What does labor arbitrage have to do with protectionism in favor of domestic firms? e.g., RenRen over Facebook or Baidu over Google
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retra 12y ago
      Those two companies spread mostly by word-of-mouth, so I don't see how either of those applies.
api 12y ago
The "death of the file" is a really mixed bag. The replacement is walled gardens with no privacy, control and perhaps even ownership of your data, questionable security, and the potential that your data could vanish if one is acquires or goes under.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I don't see the death of the file, rather more of them than fewer of them. Underneath all that pretty eye candy it's still files. What I would love to see is the death of the walled garden, but then again that's probably a pipe dream. I don't care if I'll be the last guy on the planet to self host his stuff but I can't see moving my email, my files or anything else off into the cloud. Outsourcing responsibility over my digital storage seems like asking for trouble.
  - vram22 12y ago
    >I don't see the death of the file, rather more of them than fewer of them. Yes, I don't either, unless some radical invention comes along - maybe memristor based PCs from HP as was in the news some time ago - google "hp memristor computer" - so that there is no separate RAM and disk, just one kind of storage. Even then, naming of data objects will be needed, so it may still be something like a file. Plus, there is a huge existing software investment in code to handle file names and file naming conventions - it must be something on the order of magnitude of the {m|b}illions of lines of COBOL code that still exist in production, maybe an order less ... But many of these big revolutionary announcements (e.g. memristor-based PC) turn out to be vaporware, though some of them do end up in at least some spinoff tech that is of use. Time will tell.
- gaius 12y ago
  I have a friend who had a Kodak camera that, you plugged it into your PC and it uploaded straight to Kodak's photo hosting (this was before we called such things "cloud storage"). If you wanted your own copies of your own photos you would need to go onto said site and right-click download them one at a time. One day Kodak decided they weren't going to run this site anymore, and just deleted the whole lot. She was heartbroken. And I look at all these guys selling similar solutions, and I got to wonder at what point did they knowingly cross the line to exploiting and victimising ordinary users?
chubot 12y ago
+1 for 2015 being a tough period after the hype for VR and wearables. They will both be a thing, but people always overestimate progress in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. +1 for cybersecurity budgets exploding. How would one make a financial bet on this fact? It doesn't seem doable through a "normal" brokerage firm; it seems you need to be a VC or early investor.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Be prepared to see a lot more teeth coming to the current CFA laws. The law will either be amended with stiffer sentences, and higher minimum sentencing guidelines or you're going to see a rash of federal laws regarding hacking. Yes, the businesses will react, but you can bet lawmakers are keen to start hammering hackers, making it even more dangerous to be doing this stuff.
- larrykubin 12y ago
  If you want to invest in some larger publicly traded companies, there is a new cybersecurity ETF, ticker symbol HACK. You could buy some shares of the ETF or shares of some of the individual holdings. A list of holdings can be found here: http://www.pureetfs.com/etfs/hack.html http://www.pureetfs.com/etfs/hack.html
  - chubot 12y ago
    Hm it sounds interesting. But I'm wondering if the managers of this fund have actual computer security knowledge, or are "general investor" types: http://www.pureetfs.com/about.html http://www.pureetfs.com/about.html Partnering with "world class industry experts" is a bit too vague for me. It sounds like they are spread across many verticals, so it's hard to judge their expertise in a particular vertical. I think most current security solutions aren't very good. There's a really big problem with information asymmetry, in that the customers of security products have less knowledge than the vendors. If that's true, then I imagine that most of the value created in the security space in the next 10 years will be from new companies. Would you buy this fund yourself? Just trying to be a bit critical :) Thanks for the information.
rjurney 12y ago
Having tried an Oculus Rift generation 3, where the tracking is PERFECT and the resolution is adequate, I think VR will do better in 2015 than he suggests.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Does Oculus Rift have any plans to make this an online product where you can play with other Oculus players? I haven't seen any information about any plans to create an online gaming presence, but I can definitely see a lot of great commercial applications for it already.
  - Kiro 12y ago
    Do you mean like Steam? Oculus Rift is just a monitor so of course there will be multiplayer games if that's what you're speaking of. Anyone can develop a game for it and there already are ports of Quake etc out there. No need for Oculus themselves to be involved.
- GraffitiTim 12y ago
  I assume you're referring to the Crescent Bay prototype, and I agree. The Gear VR will help too, as will potentially their acquisition of Nimble VR (more robust hand-tracking than the Leap). That said, 2015 is just the beginning of the VR explosion, and Fred Wilson's prediction is phrased vaguely enough that he could probably claim it to have been accurate at the end of 2015 either way.
- Morphling 12y ago
  At first Oculus seemed like a cool idea, but you can really only play "simulator" games with it, games where you sit in a vehicle otherwise it ruins the VR feel and you might as well just play on a monitor. Only other thing I've seen was some sort of sculpting thing, but I'd imagine the novelty would wear out there pretty fast. More I think about whole VR thing the less I think it will actually be a thing. I'm sure when Oculus Rift comes out for reals a lot of people are going to buy them, but I don't really see a lot of value for developers supporting them in most games, but someone comes up with killer app/game for it.
julianpye 12y ago
Why Xiaomi uses its own Android flavour for the Chinese market is clear. But I don't believe they will push their own Android flavour to the US and EU markets, but rather use Playstore-enabled versions. Their first goal is to compete against Samsung in handset price. And Samsung has shown that it is very hard for an Asian manufacturer to introduce their own OS flavours and apps into a Western market.
- proveanegative 12y ago
  Speaking of Samsung, what ever happened to Tizen?
  - JarrettGoetz 12y ago
    Seems like they're changing all their 2015 model TVs to Tizen...
  - on_and_off 12y ago
    Samsung and Software ... let's just say that it is not the best association ever. They wanted to launch a Tizen phone 'Samsung Z' before the end of 2014. Even by their own standards it was not good enough so it has been delayed. The decreasing sales of the Galaxy line has also prompted a (long overdue) shake up. I don't know if Tizen will continue to play a role in the upcoming lineup or if Samsung will realize that creating a new mobile OS is not that easy. They are still pushing Tizen as their smartwatches OS (except for the ones that run Anrdroid). I have been able to test the Galaxy Watch 3 a couple of months before its release and I have to admit that I have been favorably impressed. It does not transform smartwatches into must-own gadgets (but to be fair, IMO neither do Apple or Google), but it i nice, has cool features (always on hear-monitor) and is almost exempt of the samsung mega feature creep.
- unsigner 12y ago
  They can't make Playstore-enabled versions; Google doesn't allow you to make both Google- and non-Google Android devices. It's either all Google or no Google.
dguido 12y ago
> 10/ cybersecurity budgets will explode in 2015 as every company, institution, and government attempts to avoid being Sony’d. VCs will pour money into this sector in the same way they poured money into the rental economy. and, yet, the hacks will continue because on the open internet there is no such thing as an impenetrable system. This seems misinformed. You don't need perfect security to avoid getting hacked. And perfect security is, actually, an attainable goal if you care to work towards it and take heed of current research (see, for example: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ironclad/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ironclad/). Is Fred trying to say that all the money spent on security will be wasted? I could agree with that. IMHO security is a classic case of a lemon market where buyers are unable to determine the security properties/utility of wares before purchase. Buyer sophistication is low and nearly all are beholden to marketing (the same is largely true of VCs choosing investments!). Or maybe Fred is saying that it will take years for security investments to pay off. I agree with this too. "It can't/won't happen to us" is still a pervasive attitude, even in 2014, and it generally takes a major incident at each and every company to 1) wake them up and 2) inform them about what works and what is snake oil 3) drive adoption of new tech. (related problem: convincing management to divest themselves of old, broken tech that never worked in the first place to free up budgets.) People talk about the talent gap in security a lot, so we try to train more experts in this field. But the same gap is present elsewhere: I have yet to see many VCs with a sophisticated understanding of security. I'm not sure where they could learn if they wanted to. If I had to predict something, it's that new-money security experts from companies with acquisitions/IPOs in 2014 start funding security tech that actually works. In the meantime, DARPA continues to lead: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/ http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/
- tptacek 12y ago
  He's not saying it's a market for lemons, though it is. He's saying that even when big companies select the best vendors, the end results aren't meaningfully different. For a Fortune 500 enterprise, retaining the very best firms in the world and selecting the very most secure products does not foreclose on Sony-style outcomes. To accomplish that, enterprises need to rewire their entire internal IT processes to orient themselves towards security. Nobody does that, for the same reason that most modern software isn't built with processes (immutability, strong typing, pattern matching) that foreclose on bugs. There's a benefit to selecting security expertise carefully. But that benefit isn't "insurance against the Sony outcome". I'm unaware of a VC that's intelligent about security, but the expectation that they would have any security domain expertise misconstrues the job of a VC; it's a little bit like thinking that an energy options trader would have a significant understanding of mechanical engineering principles. It's much more important that they know how to evaluate addressable market size, go-to-market plans, and sales management.
jorgecastillo 12y ago
I more or less agree with everything except this points: >2/ Xiaomi will spend some of the $1.1bn they just raised coming to the US. This will bring a strong player in the non-google android sector into the US market and legitimize a “third mobile OS” in the western world. The good news for developers is developing for non-google android is not much different than developing for google android. The "third mobile OS" is Windows Phone and even if something else takes this spot, it's still not that great to be third. >3/ More asian penetration into the US market will come from the messenger sector as both Line and WeChat make strong moves to gain a share of the lucrative US messenger market. I doubt those companies will be more than marginal players in the us market next year, maybe later? >11/ ... patients treating patients (p2p medicine) ... This seems kind of insane! I didn't understand the following very well, if someone can explain or point me elsewhere, I'd really appreciate it: >8/ The horrible year that bitcoin had in 2014 will be a wakeup call for all stakeholders. Developers will turn their energy from creating the next bitcoin (all the alt stuff) to creating the stack on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Real decentralized applications will start to emerge as the platform matures and entrepreneurial energy is channeled in the right direction. I don't see the point of bitcoin or any other virtual currency? To me nothing beats legal tender currencies.
- btown 12y ago
  > patients treating patients (p2p medicine) The startup that immediately came to mind here is CrowdMed: http://readwrite.com/2013/05/08/crowdmed-wants-to-crowdsource-your-medical-care http://readwrite.com/2013/05/08/crowdmed-wants-to-crowdsourc... . Crowdsourced diagnoses are a regulatory and liability minefield, but the upside to patients is huge and (in my opinion) worth the risk - instead of an impersonal WebMD, you get individual attention by experts to specific cases, with oversight from other community experts in the form of powerful downvotes. N.B. CrowdMed's spend-reputation-to-answer "prediction market" methodology (in contrast to the free-to-answer StackOverflow/Quora model), described a bit in the article, might be of interest to other HN'ers. I would expect it to drive away potential contributors, but in the case of CrowdMed, it seems that the potential contributors with other incentives to contribute are also the higher-quality contributors (namely people who want to do good with their answers and are confident in their expertise) so it tends to weed out only the bad actors. It's a dynamic that's worth considering for anyone starting a Q&A site of any kind.
datashovel 12y ago
My prediction for 2015. Something related to machine learning / AI will hit the consumer market that will truly amaze, and feel like it's ahead of its time. I don't know what this "something" will be, but it will be obvious when it happens.
- datashovel 12y ago
  And if not 2015, I think we're certainly only a few years away from some groundbreaking stuff in that space.
7Figures2Commas 12y ago
> Capital markets will be a mixed bag in 2015. Big tech names will continue to access capital easily (see 1/), but the combination of rising rates and depressed prices for oil will bring great stress to global capital markets and there will be a noticeable flight to safety around the world. Safety used to mean gold, US treasuries, and blue chip stocks. Now it means Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. So several of the biggest momo plays of an extended bull market are now safety stocks? Notwithstanding the fact that anyone who has even a modicum of knowledge of the public equities markets will cringe at the notion that GOOG, FB, et. al. are the new Treasuries (they're not), it's worth pointing out that Google's shares were basically flat last year and Amazon's shares lost more than 20% in 2014 as investors started to question the company's strategy in light of the fact that some of its big investments clearly aren't working. That Wilson lumped these two names in with FB and AAPL, which had excellent years, tells you how informed this prediction is.
- dualogy 12y ago
  > Safety used to mean gold, US treasuries, and blue chip stocks. Now it means Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Hahaha, OK folks Wilson just called the top of the bubble right here.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
After a big year in 2014 with the Facebook acquisition of Oculus Rift, virtual reality will hit some headwinds. Agree, but I think that Augmented Reality will really breakout in 2015. VR and AR are complements, and the press from Oculus and VR over the last year really helps people understand AR. Because of the potential practical applications, I think AR will become more widely adopted and help to spread AR/VR adoption.
wslh 12y ago
I would add Microsoft will leverage their position in the open source / cloud space with .NET for Linux. Reddit use and value will increase.
richardwhiuk 12y ago
Xiaomi will spend some of the $1.1bn they just raised coming to the US I doubt that. Most of the $1.1bn would be spent defending against IP lawsuits that operating the US would make them vulnerable to. Xiaomi's phones look like a better rip off of Apple than Samsung was able/willing to do, and Apple will sue them if they enter a market with good IP protection.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
The oculus rift purchase was listed as a major factor in football predicted revenues in the next few years in an impressive book I read over Xmas I was knocked sideways by a book this Xmas - "The secret footballers guide to the modern game". It's a really good read especially for those of us who thought / think brains and insight vanish at the boundary of real life and sports. It's written by a top class footballer with current links to top flight commercial and sporting people. And he mentions Facebooks acquisition of Oculous Rift. It's part of how the current commercials are tipping in favour of clubs and how leagues will stop dancing to the needs of TV schedules Expect one club in 2015 to do a Louis CK - put out a self published "view from the pitch" via oculus rift and make more money directly than they would from traditional TV rights. Then everyone else will follow once contracts expire.
arihant 12y ago
Xiaomi's MIUI is not much different from other OEMs offering their own layer of UI over Android. It is in no way a third OS. I doubt here if Fred ever used a Xiaomi phone. If not, it is weird at best that a comment about it's future is second on his list. Moreover, Xiaomi's international versions come with Google Play services and all Google apps installed, just like any other phone. You do not get Xiaomi's app store (similar to Kindle store) in international versions. You get Google Play store. It is really just another Android phone, from an OS standpoint. They have fixed a lot of things bad with Android, like permissions control and integratedness. But that doesn't mean that it is a different OS.
zevyoura 12y ago
> 3/ More asian penetration into the US market will come from the messenger sector as both Line and WeChat make strong moves to gain a share of the lucrative US messenger market I get that it's very hot right now, but is the US messenger market actually lucrative? Who is making significant money from it? My understanding is the leader in the sector as far as revenue goes is WhatsApp, which last I heard was on track for ~30M in 2014[0]; doesn't seem like enough of an incentive for a bunch of Chinese players to enter the market aggressively. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/
- 2pasc 12y ago
  First of all - nobody has been serious about monetizing messaging yet in the US apart from Tango. Kik, Snapchat and FB Messenger have barely started doing anything. Second of all, I think that there is some kind of hope from Fred Wilson (who is an investor in Kik) that one of the Asian player buys Kik so that he has a big exit there. I doubt he other thoughts than that: WeChat has spent millions of $ trying to get users in the US without much traction to show for it...
- sanxiyn 12y ago
  Line's revenue in 2014 was ~600M, which is 20x higher than WhatsApp. http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/chat-app-lines-revenue-doubles-year-on-year-to-reach-192-million-in-q3-2014/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/chat-app-lines-revenue-doub...
jacobsimon 12y ago
God I hope people don't start using "n/" and other silly twitterisms in their normal writing.
- onedev 12y ago
  To be fair it's just a bullet point.
- Jonovono 12y ago
  Why? How does that upset you more than people using n.?
bendyBus 12y ago
8/ A new generation of apps redefining work habits is well overdue. The obvious driver I see is that people's expectations for software usability/design are set by consumer apps. Also millenials are entering the workforce, and they have never had to take a course to learn how to use a piece of software. Any tool which requires training is arcane in their eyes, and probably rightly so. Add zero downtime, access-and-share from any device, auto sync & backup, beautiful UI to the list of requirements. Some of these are being addressed by office 365 and the like, but unbundled web-based productivity software looks ripe to dethrone mircosoft as THE enterprise productivity software vendor.
on_and_off 12y ago
I hope that he is right on point 7. I plan to emigrate to the USA and the H1-B route is just insane. I am a skilled engineer in a field where there is a lot of demand, it should be extremely easy for me to move there.

195 points by kernelv 12y ago

zxcvcxz 12y ago

I hope the US de-schedules weed.

waterside81 12y ago
The Feds won't have to - if each state continues to make it legal/regulated, it's the same effect as descheduling it. It's kind of ingenious, actually, on the part of the Federal government.
- Alex3917 12y ago
  There is still a lot of stuff that depends on weed being legal at the federal level, beyond just the consumer not getting arrested for buying small amounts. We're never going to see serious investment in the space until sellers can access bank infrastructure, there is no longer a risk of DEA raids, state laws are aligned with federal laws, etc. It's not going to happen in 2015 though, unless it gets tacked onto some other crazy spending bill, which is unlikely. It'll probably happen sometime between 2016 and 2024.
  - sophacles 12y ago
    Question for the historically minded folks here - Has there ever been a situation where a bunch of states decided that making something legal (or conversely illegal) against the federal government's position, cause a change in federal policy? How did that work? Can lessons from that apply now to the marijuana debate, amongst others, in the US?
    - forsaken 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Development_of_the_prohibition_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_State...
    - ghaff 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law When the US passed the 55 mph speed limit, it was generally ignored by motorists and wasn't really enforced by a lot of states--and it was eventually repealed. Key difference though is that the feds never had enforcement authority unlike the case with the DEA.
  - hawkice 12y ago
    Also, there are concerns with Alaskan towns only reasonably reachable by boat, which means the coast guard can legally prohibit any marijuana from entering the island under national law. Considering Hawaii leans pretty far left in most elections, they might legalize soon, and that's when you get really weird things happening with border control vs. state law. I'm not sure there are a lot of direct flights from marijuana-legal states to Hawaii.
    - refurb 12y ago
      Why couldn't Hawaii just growtheir own marijuana? Why does it need to be shipped? Even the islands in Alaska could grow marijuana indoors.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
toephu2 12y ago
how can one invest in this?
- Klinky 12y ago
  Show up in OR, WA & CO with a briefcase full of money?

andyl 12y ago

Fred predicts Chinese companies will make a big entrance to the US market in 2015. At the same time, China restricts US companies in their markets (Gmail blocking being the latest example) Why do we (in America) allow this asymmetry? Is it a mistake to give Chinese companies an open door?

fredwilson 12y ago
that is a great question. there are two sides to this argument. one side says if they block you, you should block them. the other side says blocking trade backfires and that open markets create more opportunity even if you can't sell into their market
- wslh 12y ago
  You can also block them or negotiate a better deal later once Xiaomi is well positioned in the US market.
api 12y ago
There is serious money in labor arbitrage for the top financial and executive class. We've had decades of heavy lobbying for these kinds of asymmetries to break the back of domestic labor and smaller competitors.
- avanishgiri 12y ago
  What does labor arbitrage have to do with protectionism in favor of domestic firms? e.g., RenRen over Facebook or Baidu over Google
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retra 12y ago
    Those two companies spread mostly by word-of-mouth, so I don't see how either of those applies.

api 12y ago

The "death of the file" is a really mixed bag. The replacement is walled gardens with no privacy, control and perhaps even ownership of your data, questionable security, and the potential that your data could vanish if one is acquires or goes under.

jacquesm 12y ago
I don't see the death of the file, rather more of them than fewer of them. Underneath all that pretty eye candy it's still files. What I would love to see is the death of the walled garden, but then again that's probably a pipe dream. I don't care if I'll be the last guy on the planet to self host his stuff but I can't see moving my email, my files or anything else off into the cloud. Outsourcing responsibility over my digital storage seems like asking for trouble.
- vram22 12y ago
  >I don't see the death of the file, rather more of them than fewer of them. Yes, I don't either, unless some radical invention comes along - maybe memristor based PCs from HP as was in the news some time ago - google "hp memristor computer" - so that there is no separate RAM and disk, just one kind of storage. Even then, naming of data objects will be needed, so it may still be something like a file. Plus, there is a huge existing software investment in code to handle file names and file naming conventions - it must be something on the order of magnitude of the {m|b}illions of lines of COBOL code that still exist in production, maybe an order less ... But many of these big revolutionary announcements (e.g. memristor-based PC) turn out to be vaporware, though some of them do end up in at least some spinoff tech that is of use. Time will tell.
gaius 12y ago
I have a friend who had a Kodak camera that, you plugged it into your PC and it uploaded straight to Kodak's photo hosting (this was before we called such things "cloud storage"). If you wanted your own copies of your own photos you would need to go onto said site and right-click download them one at a time. One day Kodak decided they weren't going to run this site anymore, and just deleted the whole lot. She was heartbroken. And I look at all these guys selling similar solutions, and I got to wonder at what point did they knowingly cross the line to exploiting and victimising ordinary users?

chubot 12y ago

+1 for 2015 being a tough period after the hype for VR and wearables. They will both be a thing, but people always overestimate progress in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. +1 for cybersecurity budgets exploding. How would one make a financial bet on this fact? It doesn't seem doable through a "normal" brokerage firm; it seems you need to be a VC or early investor.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
Be prepared to see a lot more teeth coming to the current CFA laws. The law will either be amended with stiffer sentences, and higher minimum sentencing guidelines or you're going to see a rash of federal laws regarding hacking. Yes, the businesses will react, but you can bet lawmakers are keen to start hammering hackers, making it even more dangerous to be doing this stuff.
larrykubin 12y ago
If you want to invest in some larger publicly traded companies, there is a new cybersecurity ETF, ticker symbol HACK. You could buy some shares of the ETF or shares of some of the individual holdings. A list of holdings can be found here: http://www.pureetfs.com/etfs/hack.html http://www.pureetfs.com/etfs/hack.html
- chubot 12y ago
  Hm it sounds interesting. But I'm wondering if the managers of this fund have actual computer security knowledge, or are "general investor" types: http://www.pureetfs.com/about.html http://www.pureetfs.com/about.html Partnering with "world class industry experts" is a bit too vague for me. It sounds like they are spread across many verticals, so it's hard to judge their expertise in a particular vertical. I think most current security solutions aren't very good. There's a really big problem with information asymmetry, in that the customers of security products have less knowledge than the vendors. If that's true, then I imagine that most of the value created in the security space in the next 10 years will be from new companies. Would you buy this fund yourself? Just trying to be a bit critical :) Thanks for the information.

rjurney 12y ago

Having tried an Oculus Rift generation 3, where the tracking is PERFECT and the resolution is adequate, I think VR will do better in 2015 than he suggests.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
Does Oculus Rift have any plans to make this an online product where you can play with other Oculus players? I haven't seen any information about any plans to create an online gaming presence, but I can definitely see a lot of great commercial applications for it already.
- Kiro 12y ago
  Do you mean like Steam? Oculus Rift is just a monitor so of course there will be multiplayer games if that's what you're speaking of. Anyone can develop a game for it and there already are ports of Quake etc out there. No need for Oculus themselves to be involved.
GraffitiTim 12y ago
I assume you're referring to the Crescent Bay prototype, and I agree. The Gear VR will help too, as will potentially their acquisition of Nimble VR (more robust hand-tracking than the Leap). That said, 2015 is just the beginning of the VR explosion, and Fred Wilson's prediction is phrased vaguely enough that he could probably claim it to have been accurate at the end of 2015 either way.
Morphling 12y ago
At first Oculus seemed like a cool idea, but you can really only play "simulator" games with it, games where you sit in a vehicle otherwise it ruins the VR feel and you might as well just play on a monitor. Only other thing I've seen was some sort of sculpting thing, but I'd imagine the novelty would wear out there pretty fast. More I think about whole VR thing the less I think it will actually be a thing. I'm sure when Oculus Rift comes out for reals a lot of people are going to buy them, but I don't really see a lot of value for developers supporting them in most games, but someone comes up with killer app/game for it.

julianpye 12y ago

Why Xiaomi uses its own Android flavour for the Chinese market is clear. But I don't believe they will push their own Android flavour to the US and EU markets, but rather use Playstore-enabled versions. Their first goal is to compete against Samsung in handset price. And Samsung has shown that it is very hard for an Asian manufacturer to introduce their own OS flavours and apps into a Western market.

proveanegative 12y ago
Speaking of Samsung, what ever happened to Tizen?
- JarrettGoetz 12y ago
  Seems like they're changing all their 2015 model TVs to Tizen...
- on_and_off 12y ago
  Samsung and Software ... let's just say that it is not the best association ever. They wanted to launch a Tizen phone 'Samsung Z' before the end of 2014. Even by their own standards it was not good enough so it has been delayed. The decreasing sales of the Galaxy line has also prompted a (long overdue) shake up. I don't know if Tizen will continue to play a role in the upcoming lineup or if Samsung will realize that creating a new mobile OS is not that easy. They are still pushing Tizen as their smartwatches OS (except for the ones that run Anrdroid). I have been able to test the Galaxy Watch 3 a couple of months before its release and I have to admit that I have been favorably impressed. It does not transform smartwatches into must-own gadgets (but to be fair, IMO neither do Apple or Google), but it i nice, has cool features (always on hear-monitor) and is almost exempt of the samsung mega feature creep.
unsigner 12y ago
They can't make Playstore-enabled versions; Google doesn't allow you to make both Google- and non-Google Android devices. It's either all Google or no Google.

dguido 12y ago

> 10/ cybersecurity budgets will explode in 2015 as every company, institution, and government attempts to avoid being Sony’d. VCs will pour money into this sector in the same way they poured money into the rental economy. and, yet, the hacks will continue because on the open internet there is no such thing as an impenetrable system. This seems misinformed. You don't need perfect security to avoid getting hacked. And perfect security is, actually, an attainable goal if you care to work towards it and take heed of current research (see, for example: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ironclad/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ironclad/). Is Fred trying to say that all the money spent on security will be wasted? I could agree with that. IMHO security is a classic case of a lemon market where buyers are unable to determine the security properties/utility of wares before purchase. Buyer sophistication is low and nearly all are beholden to marketing (the same is largely true of VCs choosing investments!). Or maybe Fred is saying that it will take years for security investments to pay off. I agree with this too. "It can't/won't happen to us" is still a pervasive attitude, even in 2014, and it generally takes a major incident at each and every company to 1) wake them up and 2) inform them about what works and what is snake oil 3) drive adoption of new tech. (related problem: convincing management to divest themselves of old, broken tech that never worked in the first place to free up budgets.) People talk about the talent gap in security a lot, so we try to train more experts in this field. But the same gap is present elsewhere: I have yet to see many VCs with a sophisticated understanding of security. I'm not sure where they could learn if they wanted to. If I had to predict something, it's that new-money security experts from companies with acquisitions/IPOs in 2014 start funding security tech that actually works. In the meantime, DARPA continues to lead: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/ http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/

tptacek 12y ago
He's not saying it's a market for lemons, though it is. He's saying that even when big companies select the best vendors, the end results aren't meaningfully different. For a Fortune 500 enterprise, retaining the very best firms in the world and selecting the very most secure products does not foreclose on Sony-style outcomes. To accomplish that, enterprises need to rewire their entire internal IT processes to orient themselves towards security. Nobody does that, for the same reason that most modern software isn't built with processes (immutability, strong typing, pattern matching) that foreclose on bugs. There's a benefit to selecting security expertise carefully. But that benefit isn't "insurance against the Sony outcome". I'm unaware of a VC that's intelligent about security, but the expectation that they would have any security domain expertise misconstrues the job of a VC; it's a little bit like thinking that an energy options trader would have a significant understanding of mechanical engineering principles. It's much more important that they know how to evaluate addressable market size, go-to-market plans, and sales management.

jorgecastillo 12y ago

I more or less agree with everything except this points: >2/ Xiaomi will spend some of the $1.1bn they just raised coming to the US. This will bring a strong player in the non-google android sector into the US market and legitimize a “third mobile OS” in the western world. The good news for developers is developing for non-google android is not much different than developing for google android. The "third mobile OS" is Windows Phone and even if something else takes this spot, it's still not that great to be third. >3/ More asian penetration into the US market will come from the messenger sector as both Line and WeChat make strong moves to gain a share of the lucrative US messenger market. I doubt those companies will be more than marginal players in the us market next year, maybe later? >11/ ... patients treating patients (p2p medicine) ... This seems kind of insane! I didn't understand the following very well, if someone can explain or point me elsewhere, I'd really appreciate it: >8/ The horrible year that bitcoin had in 2014 will be a wakeup call for all stakeholders. Developers will turn their energy from creating the next bitcoin (all the alt stuff) to creating the stack on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Real decentralized applications will start to emerge as the platform matures and entrepreneurial energy is channeled in the right direction. I don't see the point of bitcoin or any other virtual currency? To me nothing beats legal tender currencies.

btown 12y ago
> patients treating patients (p2p medicine) The startup that immediately came to mind here is CrowdMed: http://readwrite.com/2013/05/08/crowdmed-wants-to-crowdsource-your-medical-care http://readwrite.com/2013/05/08/crowdmed-wants-to-crowdsourc... . Crowdsourced diagnoses are a regulatory and liability minefield, but the upside to patients is huge and (in my opinion) worth the risk - instead of an impersonal WebMD, you get individual attention by experts to specific cases, with oversight from other community experts in the form of powerful downvotes. N.B. CrowdMed's spend-reputation-to-answer "prediction market" methodology (in contrast to the free-to-answer StackOverflow/Quora model), described a bit in the article, might be of interest to other HN'ers. I would expect it to drive away potential contributors, but in the case of CrowdMed, it seems that the potential contributors with other incentives to contribute are also the higher-quality contributors (namely people who want to do good with their answers and are confident in their expertise) so it tends to weed out only the bad actors. It's a dynamic that's worth considering for anyone starting a Q&A site of any kind.

datashovel 12y ago

My prediction for 2015. Something related to machine learning / AI will hit the consumer market that will truly amaze, and feel like it's ahead of its time. I don't know what this "something" will be, but it will be obvious when it happens.

datashovel 12y ago
And if not 2015, I think we're certainly only a few years away from some groundbreaking stuff in that space.

7Figures2Commas 12y ago

> Capital markets will be a mixed bag in 2015. Big tech names will continue to access capital easily (see 1/), but the combination of rising rates and depressed prices for oil will bring great stress to global capital markets and there will be a noticeable flight to safety around the world. Safety used to mean gold, US treasuries, and blue chip stocks. Now it means Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. So several of the biggest momo plays of an extended bull market are now safety stocks? Notwithstanding the fact that anyone who has even a modicum of knowledge of the public equities markets will cringe at the notion that GOOG, FB, et. al. are the new Treasuries (they're not), it's worth pointing out that Google's shares were basically flat last year and Amazon's shares lost more than 20% in 2014 as investors started to question the company's strategy in light of the fact that some of its big investments clearly aren't working. That Wilson lumped these two names in with FB and AAPL, which had excellent years, tells you how informed this prediction is.

dualogy 12y ago
> Safety used to mean gold, US treasuries, and blue chip stocks. Now it means Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Hahaha, OK folks Wilson just called the top of the bubble right here.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

After a big year in 2014 with the Facebook acquisition of Oculus Rift, virtual reality will hit some headwinds. Agree, but I think that Augmented Reality will really breakout in 2015. VR and AR are complements, and the press from Oculus and VR over the last year really helps people understand AR. Because of the potential practical applications, I think AR will become more widely adopted and help to spread AR/VR adoption.

wslh 12y ago

I would add Microsoft will leverage their position in the open source / cloud space with .NET for Linux. Reddit use and value will increase.

richardwhiuk 12y ago

Xiaomi will spend some of the $1.1bn they just raised coming to the US I doubt that. Most of the $1.1bn would be spent defending against IP lawsuits that operating the US would make them vulnerable to. Xiaomi's phones look like a better rip off of Apple than Samsung was able/willing to do, and Apple will sue them if they enter a market with good IP protection.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

The oculus rift purchase was listed as a major factor in football predicted revenues in the next few years in an impressive book I read over Xmas I was knocked sideways by a book this Xmas - "The secret footballers guide to the modern game". It's a really good read especially for those of us who thought / think brains and insight vanish at the boundary of real life and sports. It's written by a top class footballer with current links to top flight commercial and sporting people. And he mentions Facebooks acquisition of Oculous Rift. It's part of how the current commercials are tipping in favour of clubs and how leagues will stop dancing to the needs of TV schedules Expect one club in 2015 to do a Louis CK - put out a self published "view from the pitch" via oculus rift and make more money directly than they would from traditional TV rights. Then everyone else will follow once contracts expire.

arihant 12y ago

Xiaomi's MIUI is not much different from other OEMs offering their own layer of UI over Android. It is in no way a third OS. I doubt here if Fred ever used a Xiaomi phone. If not, it is weird at best that a comment about it's future is second on his list. Moreover, Xiaomi's international versions come with Google Play services and all Google apps installed, just like any other phone. You do not get Xiaomi's app store (similar to Kindle store) in international versions. You get Google Play store. It is really just another Android phone, from an OS standpoint. They have fixed a lot of things bad with Android, like permissions control and integratedness. But that doesn't mean that it is a different OS.

zevyoura 12y ago

> 3/ More asian penetration into the US market will come from the messenger sector as both Line and WeChat make strong moves to gain a share of the lucrative US messenger market I get that it's very hot right now, but is the US messenger market actually lucrative? Who is making significant money from it? My understanding is the leader in the sector as far as revenue goes is WhatsApp, which last I heard was on track for ~30M in 2014[0]; doesn't seem like enough of an incentive for a bunch of Chinese players to enter the market aggressively. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/

2pasc 12y ago
First of all - nobody has been serious about monetizing messaging yet in the US apart from Tango. Kik, Snapchat and FB Messenger have barely started doing anything. Second of all, I think that there is some kind of hope from Fred Wilson (who is an investor in Kik) that one of the Asian player buys Kik so that he has a big exit there. I doubt he other thoughts than that: WeChat has spent millions of $ trying to get users in the US without much traction to show for it...
sanxiyn 12y ago
Line's revenue in 2014 was ~600M, which is 20x higher than WhatsApp. http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/chat-app-lines-revenue-doubles-year-on-year-to-reach-192-million-in-q3-2014/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/chat-app-lines-revenue-doub...

jacobsimon 12y ago

God I hope people don't start using "n/" and other silly twitterisms in their normal writing.

onedev 12y ago
To be fair it's just a bullet point.
Jonovono 12y ago
Why? How does that upset you more than people using n.?

bendyBus 12y ago

8/ A new generation of apps redefining work habits is well overdue. The obvious driver I see is that people's expectations for software usability/design are set by consumer apps. Also millenials are entering the workforce, and they have never had to take a course to learn how to use a piece of software. Any tool which requires training is arcane in their eyes, and probably rightly so. Add zero downtime, access-and-share from any device, auto sync & backup, beautiful UI to the list of requirements. Some of these are being addressed by office 365 and the like, but unbundled web-based productivity software looks ripe to dethrone mircosoft as THE enterprise productivity software vendor.

on_and_off 12y ago

I hope that he is right on point 7. I plan to emigrate to the USA and the H1-B route is just insane. I am a skilled engineer in a field where there is a lot of demand, it should be extremely easy for me to move there.