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Ask HN: Predictions for 2021?
262 points by rvz on Dec 31, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 430 comments
What are your predictions for 2021? It's clear that 2020 was somewhat of a false start into this decade and has arguably completely changed everyone's lives for the long term. (If not permanently).

This time, it seems that my crystal ball is lacking inspiration for 2021 due to the uncertainty caused by this year.




Historical

2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596

2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988

2017: none?

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723

2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370

2013: none?

2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201

2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023

2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681


Also this massive thread from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278.

(Note that large threads are still paginated and you have to click More at the bottom of the page to see the rest.)


Click the link for 2020

cmd-f 'virus': 0 results

Predictions are hard


Even though Corona was already in the news at that time. Oh well, at least we weren't the only ones to get caught of guard.


That discussion was Dec 16, 2019. That was the day of Wuhan's first Covid-19 hospital admissions, so I don't think it was really in the news yet.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk

This is older


To be fair, there were only 8 responses


try ctrl-f


Funny how optimistic and tech oriented the previous ones are compared to 2021 - mostly politics, inequality and authoritarianism.


be the change you want to see


2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416530


Thanks for those links. I did a quick search for privacy predictions (something I'm interested in) and found some interesting ones - particularly the first one below - it seems to be predicting ClearView AI - but back in 2010. Wow!

2010

-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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787

2011 - none 2012 - none 2013 - none

2014

2) Security/privacy will become something normal people and businesses ask about, and ask fairly superficial questions about, during many transactions (e.g. people are going to stop being fucking morons and just relying on "the cloud" for sensitive data without questioning it; they may still end up using the cloud, but will want to make a more informed choice.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370

I'd like to believe that we'll be more privacy-conscious in 2014, but I don't actually think that will be the case. I'd like to see more scrutiny of the data companies collect about users, particularly because they are now collecting more data than ever before. Some companies like Google have staggering amounts of user data. They're probably salivating at the prospect of capturing even more precise user behaviour through an OS (Chrome) that potentailly captures everything you do online.

Far from the tech community (who you might hope would be most informed about this) actually raising concerns about the privacy implications of this, I think Google (and other companies) will continue to get away with barely any scrutiny at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6995005

2015

2. More hacking scandals come to light and they are used as cover to restrict privacy and empower the intelligence community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823311

Privacy still will be a target to crush for governments, and so any activity/communication media/etc that could affect that main objective.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823103

- Privacy will become more mainstream. After apps like DarkMail are introduced, Google and the other players will start to reconsider privacy and we, the people will gain.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8823303

2016 - none 2017 - none 2018 - none 2019 - none 2020 - none 2021 - none


* 50% of all US currency is printed between now and the end of 2021

* 1 Bitcoin will cost over $100k on Dec 31, 2021

* An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge

* FB releases a thin virtual reality headset https://research.fb.com/blog/2020/06/holographic-optics-for-...

* Austin Tx or Seattle Wa succeeds Silicon Valley as the next major tech hub. San Francisco and its century old Victorians become the Detroit of the tech world

* Section 230 doesn't get repealed

* WFH and quarantine continues until the summer

* A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge

* A Reddit competitor emerges and wins majority marketshare

* 2021 will be the year of punk and rock n' roll


>Austin Tx or Seattle Wa succeeds Silicon Valley as the next major tech hub. San Francisco and its century old Victorians become the Detroit of the tech world

Over the long term (more like decades), a prediction like yours might eventually take place but it's not going to happen in the next 365 days.

Yes, old Venice eventually lost its 13th century financial supremacy to New York and London, and New York City lost its film industry to Hollywood California. Therefore, Silicon Valley's dominance won't last forever but they'll still be the #1 tech hub in December 31 2021.


* FB releases a thin virtual reality headset

Currently being tested in Seattle! Had a conversation tonight about it. I hear there’s a ray-ban branding partnership. And the product is supposed to be way less creepy than google glass, but similar.

Can’t recall if this was spoken to me in confidence. Alcohol. Happy New Years!


I'd be impressed with anything coming from Facebook being less creepy than Google, as low of a bar as that is


I saw the presentation from the oculus reveal. If anything, it's way more creepy than google glass.


> 50% of all US currency is printed between now and the end of 2021

I don't see why the Treasury and Mint would start making more paper money and coins.

It really bugs me when people incorrectly talk about the money supply as 'currency'. Currency is printed by the US Mint/Treasury. Money appears out of thin air when banks make loans.


I am struck by how unrealistic many of these predictions are. My personal take, response.

* Accelerating inflation perhaps leading high single digits low double digits in the next several years.

* Stocks continue to rise as a function of inflation.

* Unemployment measured by workforce participation rate stays high or increases.

* Full self drivering cars are no closer.

* 50% chance of Bitcoin crash like in 2018, 50% chance of further price appreciation but I think $100,000 is absurd for a commodity that has close to zero intrinsic value...

* Major urban areas see falling rents as WFH continues.

* Silicon Valley loses some of its prominence as a function of WFH but I doubt a wholesale shift could happen in a year.

* 50 % chance of major social unrest in the USA as Trump diehards refuse to accept Biden.

* Tech advertising bubble begins to collapse. Tech bubble begins to collapse by year end. AI, self-driving vehicles discredited.

* Amazon reduces its own shipping service as a money loser increases use of UPS and USPS.

* Subscription web services (rather than ad funded) services begin to emerge.

* Reddit continues to decline in quality but no clear alternative emerges.

* Open source, distributed alternative to Facebook emerges, or linked-in subscription based competition.

* 25% chance major world leader dies

* 25% - 33% chance of major armed conflict, especially involving China.

* 20% chance of well attested "alien" contact.

* 20% chance of second novel pandemic in addition to Covid-19

* 20% chance of extra solar "asteroid" like Oumuamua

* >50% chance of Middle East Peace agreement between Arabs and Israel

* Large chance of abnormal oil price volatility.

* Brexit results in deep recession in UK, Boris Johnson is out.


> 50% chance of Bitcoin crash like in 2018, 50% chance of further price appreciation but I think $100,000 is absurd for a commodity that has close to zero intrinsic value

"$100 is absurd for a commodity that has close to zero intrinsic value"

"$1,000 is absurd..."

"$10,000 is absurd..."

At this point, the burden of proof is on sceptics to show why a commodity with zero "intrinsic" value trends upward despite those sceptics' predictions during the last ~10 years.


>A Reddit competitor emerges and wins majority marketshare

So many have tried and failed already. I would really wish that to happen though.


What's wrong with Reddit?


Went from being a niche community based platform to an astroturfing and advertising platform disguised as a content aggregator.


I don't like the way the site is trying to force you to use the mobile app.


Mostly the way in which moderation (doesn't) work giving birth of just toxic microcommunities


Go to www.reddit.com/r/all and sort by new. It's all trash. And porn.


I mean, new was always trash, and porn has been on Reddit since practically it’s inception, but the content (that makes it out of new) and discussion quality has unequivocally declined significantly.


> A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge

Yew look like they’re trying to be that alternative.

https://github.com/yewstack/yew


> * 2021 will be the year of punk and rock n' roll

Count me in! That would definitely make this year happy for me.


Count me in too!


And me!


> * 1 Bitcoin will cost over $100k on Dec 31, 2021

Glad to see we are learning from the mistakes of John McAfee


Learning from the mistakes of Hacker News would be better.


Which year's?


$Current_Year


LOL at the deliberate push for btc bullshit surrounded by common-sense and very popular points.


> * A React competitor that compiles to WASM with promises of perf and space gains will emerge

Or from react itself that compiles into WASM, similar with react native.


> * An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge

It's happening https://ruffle.rs/


More something like this I guess:

https://www.wickeditor.com


Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator, not an animation tool for creating animations.


> * An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge

Happy New Year 2021!

AnimationCPU is probably an alternative to Flash. Here is the project site https://animationcpu.com/ and Twitter with demos https://twitter.com/acpustudio

Join to TestFlight!


There's also Adobe Animate, which is a rebranding of Flash that can output HTML/JS


> React competitor that compiles to WASM

Those who are better informed than me, who are the main movers here?


Flutter, probably, with the added benefit of the same code base (including UI) working on iOS and Android.


VR headset: how would this be different from what vuzix offers today?


* An animation tool rivaling Adobe Flash for the web will emerge

It’s already here https://gif.com.ai


Software Bill of Material (SBOM) will become more of a thing - where you must list the dependencies and their hash you used for supply-chain security and vulnerability management.

New law enforcement techniques using DNS and other Intel techniques will be used to track, seize and tax cryptocurrency - which will cause increased popularity of Ethereum.

A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments. GPT4 and other ML models (maybe even with a neuro-feedback loop) will radically change entertainment for Gaming, movies, books, and music.

Smart Cities will start emerging ( and some cities which will ban the technology) with ML models and Intel systems capable of identifying all kinds of hazards (fires), threats (terrorists) and crime at scale.

A new “shadow net” will emerge from new mesh-networking protocols and massive amounts of compromised IoT devices- allowing users to bypass core internet routers and ISPs with the “shadow net”

XR with depth field scanning and smart tailoring with drastically change the fashion industry ( shoes and clothes). So people can virtually try on clothes and order perfectly tailored clothes from their home.


I hope the Bill of Materials concept spreads to more areas of software development.

A bit different from your example, but a small group of us started a "Bill of Models" project for our department. We spent too much time failing to manage complexity with fancy tools. We ended up writing our own simple tool for reading custom BOMs to create and manage simulations.


Do you have anything publicly available to read about this project? Or any background on what inspired you?


We wanted to do more simulations with Simulink models to help cut back on physical prototypes. We started tracking time spent to get the results of these simulations. Most of our engineers' time was spent finding the right models, setting them up, and configuring these simulations. They didn't have much time left to do modeling and testing work.

At first we just created some "Bill Of Models" to define systems and simulations. Slowly we've expanded the scope. Each BOM contains a system definition, components, subcomponents, interfaces, and some metadata. There's pointers to different repositories, parameter databases, and scripts to configure runtime environments. We have a small tool that reads BOMs and instantiates them as full simulations.

When someone wants to test a new system variant, they can usually just modify an existing BOM. If they have a new feature, BOMs give them an easy way to see and create every variant simulation to work with. We had to do a lot of standardization of our models, but that helped our efforts to move toward fully automated tests and CI/CD. We now have a web-based catalog of models and BOMs that are automatically generated, run, and tested. All of this has also helped get new people to use simulations for their work.


Thanks for the response, it is a very interesting approach, it sounds more practical than the typical MBSE way of building top down SysML diagrams and adding simulation models afterwards. Are your models liked to other product data in a PLM system or similar for traceability? I'm researching adjacent issues around the flexibility of product platforms and the integration of new technologies in later product variants and model-based approaches to decision making in that regard are fascinating.


I don't use any PLM software. Someone in the company might, but I haven't heard of any being used. All of our requirements are maintained in a company-wide tool though. Requirements get decomposed from customer requirements all the way down to subcomponent requirements. Departments/teams get requirements assigned to them. Engineers were spending too much time manually checking and signing off those requirements. Currently the model and BOM metadata includes related requirement IDs. We are working toward having generic tests for requirements. Our goal is to implement tests for a requirement and have an automated signoff of BOMs.

At this point, our group is actively pushing back on SysML, at least for our roles. Each group's system(s) has a well defined interface to the whole, and everything else is decided within the team. We've found SysML mostly just duplicated work for us. Our software is already written in Simulink so we just build models of our system in that, too. We don't get much value from SysML, and whenever someone else tries to use SysML (like an architecture team) they don't know enough of the details our system.

I don't claim to know much about this stuff, but that's been our experience. The speed and flexibility of our engineers has vastly improved. We've started catching integration issues months in advance, when they are still easily fixable.


I got the free zozosuit when it came out a while ago. It sounded really cool but it didn't have the iPhone AR at least that I can remember.

Virtually trying on clothes would be cool but I don't think there's any way you could get actual tailoring, but maybe adding a few intermediate sizes from the standard s m l?

My prediction for fashion change would be more towards ideas like NTWRK. I hate the false scarcity 'drops' trend, but doing a cool digital launch experience is fun and chunking out a season like Jacquemus seems to build anticipation.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1539036/the-zozosuit-has-been-an-expe...


Virtually trying on clothing has significant social hurdles in the fashion industry, primarily due to a complete lack of trust within the industry. Design theft is one of the most major concerns, and any system attempting to enable consumers to virtually try on clothing requires the clothing designs to be released to 3rd parties before the items are in the market - and that early information release is exactly what all social lessons from past interactions in their industry tell them never to allow.


brands can't own their own app (to be fair the gucci on succkks) or LVMH just pools their brands onto a new virtual department store brand?

Personally I don't get the appeal. Seems to me like those who want to actually try on clothes want the tactile feel which you can't get virtually. Versus shoppers like me I just can see from images online what I like and read the fabric, especially a designer I enjoy I already know what the quality is.


... then build a platform that feeds a consumer's measurements to a secure environment controlled by the brand/designer, render the result there, and send the picture back.

Everything can stay under the control of the designer, including 2FA of the end-user, the degree of fidelity of the rendering, rate limits for requests, timed release to selected partners, etc, etc.


Two minutes into that pitch, any and all major fashion corporations will kick you out the door. I spent significant time trying to crack this nut - the fashion industry culture at it's core is luddite, that and any tech that is not 100% transparent ain't gonna fly.


In Megaman Battle Network, the “shadow net” had a name: UnderNet (UraNet, in Japan).


> New law enforcement techniques using DNS and other Intel techniques will be used to track, seize and tax cryptocurrency - which will cause increased popularity of Ethereum.

DNS? Not sure how that's relavent. And furthermore why would a crack down lead to more popularity?

> A qubit will travel around the world without decohering and increase attention on quantum internet investments

Well that would be good for researchers, there are basically 0 applications so i'm not sure why it would generate imvestment excitement (who needs QKD when you have public-key crypto?)


To join many Bitcoin based peernetworks - you first contact one of the DNS seeds. Which is traceable by LEO. Ethereum has their own DNS and other security protocols which bypass this problem - which would be attractive to those who use cryptocurrency to avoid LEO.

Quantum internet is different than QKD. The best analogy I can give is its like the difference between Morse code and the internet. Things like quantum teleportation, superdense coding and distributed quantum computing through a quantum internet will be revolutionary.


Since I had to look it up: LEO = Law Enforcement Officer(s) in this context.


Thanks for that, I initially read it as “Low Earth Orbit” which didn’t make much sense.


> Things like quantum teleportation, superdense coding and distributed quantum computing through a quantum internet will be revolutionary.

Why?

> quantum teleportation

What is the practical near term (next 10 years) applications? I can't think of any.

> superdense coding

Somewhat better compression is hardly a killer app, especially given the costs imvolved.

> distributed quantum computing

Need actual quantum computers before you can have that (definitely more than 10 years away imo). I'm also a bit unclear as to how applicable quantum algorithms are to parallelization in distributed machines.


2021 will be one of the hottest years on record. Wildfires will rampage across the western US in the last half of the year. Oil prices will decline to $30/barrel. The Dow Jones industrial average will break 40K. Interest rates will remain low. Employment levels will be very slow to recover to pre-COVID levels. Tensions between China and USA will increase, but will decrease between USA and Russia.


After experiencing the brutal summer/fires in the Bay Area this last summer, I have decided to hedge my bets on a long life by smoking one cigarette a day. I also cycle 70 miles a a week, so I'm not sure if my plan will work


> Tensions between China and USA will increase, but will decrease between USA and Russia.

Unlikely. Biden once said to putin directly that "he had no soul".


And Putin looked Biden in the eye, smiled, and said "So, we understand each other."


Really?! That’s stone cold.


Apparently it’s true.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-biden-idUSKBN0...

> "I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul,'" Biden told the magazine. "He looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.'"


That reminds me of a one-line summary of the Cold War: "The Americans play Poker. The Russians play Chess."


Smart reply; this is in the context of international negotiations - Putin's response is the correct response for Biden's little attack: it takes his statement of defect and turns it into a statement a power. That is astute.


That just gave me chills.


And then everyone on line behind him applauded.

The source is Joe Biden. There is absolutely no way that actually went down as he described it.


But will he have the balls to do anything about it? He'll have too many domestic issues in the next 4 years to deal with


All evidence points towards US foreign policy being set by an enigmatic autopilot known to us only as "the civil service."


don't you mean "an enigmatic autopilot known as the neocon agenda"?


Bitcoin backers will continue to pretend that their hyping of one of the worst ideas in modern history has nothing to do with their significant financial stakes in it.


I hate Bitcoin but I want to be rich with no effort, so I've got FOMO.


Brutal honesty I can relate to


I'm curious - why do you think that Bitcoin is "one of the worst ideas in modern history"? It's a very bold claim, I'd like to understand your reasoning.


I’m not OP, but I agree with OP.

To me, BTC looks like an inefficient way to partially solve a problem that doesn’t exist — the problem of trust.

It’s only a partial solution because it only deals with the money in a transaction and not the goods/services.

In addition, it also exists purely by consensus and is therefore just as vulnerable to majority demands for inflation (the limit of 21 million is a choice, not a fundamental constraint).

Furthermore, I do not believe that there is a real problem of trust to be solved, not because governments never mess up currencies (of course they do), but because right now they are not messing up currencies — the stability of most major currencies demonstrates that they are broadly trusted, and conversely the value of BTC fluctuates wildly compared to fiat or resource-backed currencies because it isn’t broadly trusted.

It’s also inefficient by design, being a proof-of-work that doesn’t solve real-world problems, and also limits itself to a really small number of daily transactions over all uses of the currency.


You can't trust the government (or the central banks) to not dilute your savings by increasing the money supply - something they have already been doing in 2020 at an unprecedented rate which will continue in 2021.

While Bitcoin might not be the payment system some have been hoping for, it surely provides a hedge against the incoming increase in inflation rates which is why institutional investors are increasingly replacing cash reserves with bitcoin.


> You can't trust the government (or the central banks) to not dilute your savings by increasing the money supply

I expect the government to do so, and I also expect that it will usually be done in a controlled fashion and for broader economic benefit. Conversely, I expect that when Bitcoin goes wrong and the 21 million unit limit is replaced (call it “Bitcoin Future Fork” or whatever), this will be done by people not too familiar with hyperinflation.

I’m also hedging against inflation with property, although I could also hedge against it with shares or precious metals.


> I expect the government to do so.

I suspect many don't and many underestimate the effect inflation has on their savings.

> Conversely, I expect that when Bitcoin goes wrong and the 21 million unit limit is replaced (call it “Bitcoin Future Fork” or whatever)

Bitcoin is 10 years old, there are already numerous forks which changed several parameters of the original Bitcoin implementation. According to their market value, all of them failed in comparison. In fact, Bitcoin's hesitation to implement breaking changes (hard-forks) may be what the market finds valuable.


> I suspect many don't and many underestimate the effect inflation has on their savings.

Most people don’t have significant cash savings. I forget the percentage, but a ridiculously high fraction of the USA population can’t put together $1,000 for an emergency.

> Bitcoin is 10 years old

Early days then. The Euro is only 22 years old, and decimalisation of GBP [0] happened about 50 years ago. Both still have people shaking their canes and dreaming of the Before Times.

Also: the 5,600,000-fold deflation of BTC in that time makes it almost, but not quite, as impressively unstable as hyperinflation, just in the other direction — it’s not a good thing for the economy when everyone holds onto their money instead of spending it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day


> Most people don’t have significant cash savings.

Unfortunately those are often the same people that get hit the hardest once inflation increases the sales prices while their salaries remain stagnant and they can't afford hedge options.

> The Euro is only 22 years old [...] the 5,600,000-fold deflation of BTC in that time makes it almost, but not quite, as impressively unstable as hyperinflation.

The initial exchange rates of the Euro was determined by the European Central Bank whereas Bitcoin is decentralized and started with an "exchange rate" of literally zero (they were gifted via mail and forums).

Calculating a fold-increase or 'volatility' on this timescale is thus arbitrary (you could just as well argue it's "infinite"). The SD of daily returns as a volatility measure for Bitcoin has decreased from >10% in 2011 to <4% in 2020 and the 3-month realised volatility is mostly comparable to and sometimes even lower than "traditional" tech stocks like AAPL and AMZN.

Dominant risk in Bitcoin is not volatility or 0-day anymore but key management (e.g. exchange hacks, wallet loss, scams/phishing attacks). GBTC for example is an ETF-like trust which allows you to invest in Bitcoin without holding any.

Interesting side note: ~9% of currently available Bitcoins are held by companies on their balance sheets (~7% by companies which are publicly tradable btw).

HN might still be cautious about Bitcoin, but the market thinks it has matured.


can I trust the Winklevoss twins to not flood the market and dilute my bitcoin savings?


One issue: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/12/873/bitcoin-mini...

> "The new study by researchers at MIT and the Technical University of Munich suggests that Bitcoin mining was consuming 45.8 terawatt-hours of electricity per year as of November 2018.

That, in turn, produced estimated annual emissions of between 22 and 23 megatons of carbon dioxide, slotting the operations between the nations of Jordan and Sri Lanka in terms of greenhouse-gas pollution."

It creates more CO2 than entire nations. And that number most definitely has not decreased in the past two years. We may very well be up to or past 0.1% of all global CO2 emissions due solely to crypto mining, a number that will only increase as the value of bitcoin, etc increases.

What is the good that has been gained that offsets that?


It's a fraud engine.


The sour grapes on HN is incredible regarding crypto. Never seen a group of tech people more hostile to a fundamental tech innovation!


- more psychedlic tech ipos; websites such as https://psilocybinalpha.com/ gain more tractions; I expect Compass Pathways (NASDAQ: CMPS) double in mkt cap

- Terence McKenna becomes more relevant again; recordings of McKenna's talks such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijA5RHTJaV4 reach million views

- if we look back in 2030, we'll see 2021 being the year that marks the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance

- as a consequnce of this, more VC money will be poured into BCI research & meditation tech; I expect headspace to ipo

- not optimistic about neuralink's consumer debut though


I do agree, but think this is not just a psychedelic renaissance but a drug-assisted psychotherapy renaissance.

As Stanislov Grof has said:

> Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy.

https://maps.org/news-letters/v21n3/v21n3-26_29.pdf


Sensible predictions. ATAI Life Sciences is also expected to IPO.


* more countries will attempt fascism or authoritarian type of government

* more countries will have problem with clean water. Hopefully new technologies to make water purification easier or cheaper emerge

* given fall guys and among us success stories, there will be many more games aimed at that gameplay. Likely one or two of those will boom

* non code programming (drag drop, or similar to) will rise. Used to complement customization, not to replace code-based programming (dreamweaver for example)

* PWA or similar web-based app / installer will rise, while having more opposition from apple and google.


> * more countries will have problem with clean water. Hopefully new technologies to make water purification easier or cheaper emerge

Solar energy is dropping in price like a rock, and desalination uses tons of energy. Desalination can run on intermittent energy, storing water in tanks for the periods without sun. So new technologies aren't required, just continuation of existing trends.


I doubt that google will oppose PWA since they are the main force pushing it.


Oh right, it's more that google will regulate PWA's to follow mobile's behavior, such as tracking, ads, etc, to more enrich play store apps.


>PWA or similar web-based app / installer will rise, while having more opposition from apple and google.

Google is the one pushing it, actually. And wasn't there a recent post on HN that Firefox devs are planning to remove PWA support?


2021 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. You heard it here first.


> You heard it here first.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25596401 ;-)


You all are hilarious


2020 kind of became the year of the linux desktop for me after I caught one of our sales guys with linux on his desktop in 2019 and suddenly realized a PM type with one of our customers were running Teams from his Ubuntu computer!

At work it seems anyone can habe Linux as long as they support it themselves and it generally feels a lot like when Mac broke through.

But whatever, 2021 it is then!

Hope to see som really good distro releases this year then and maybe one more vendor will officially supoort it? Or maybe we will see a MS Office for Linux beta release this year?

Microsoft has been flexing their muscles for years now to the point were my personal laptop has a dual-boot partition with official(!) Norwegian Nynorsk(!) language settings.


It means there will be one single dominant Linux Desktop Environment.


And, more importantly, on smartphones!


FINALLY


Prolonged lockdowns and new habits kill 75% of small businesses and greatly increase inequality as the richest 10% stay at home saving/investing instead of spending.

This will trigger an economic collapse which will bring down the eurozone. Germany will want country rated euros to avoid having to bail Italy.

House prices in Europe will drop to a rent / value rate similar to the USA, as property owners scrap for money.

USA will face similar problems and inflation will start being a problem.

China will start buying more in Europe and USA (same as they did with Africa).


If I had a euro for every time I've heard a prediction of the collapse of the euro I'd be rich by now.


> If I had a euro for every time I've heard a prediction of the collapse of the euro the Euro would have collapsed because of devaluation by now.

FTFY


Let's hope a that a Euro collapse won't lead into the 3rd WW in 3-5 years. People have _very_ short memory and are very eager to point fingers at each other.


I think eurozone collapse will begin in germany, centered around the collapse of deutsche bank. No other scenario will make sense. Although it will still be bad, the uk will have dodged a bigger bullet with brexit.


Since the UK was never in the eurozone, if anything it would be more affected in this scenario following Brexit.

In that scenario, the UK will have no influence in the EU and not a single person in the EU will think it's important to protect Britain's political interests.


You don't think that the EC will make demands that non eurozone countries (SE, DK) participate in non-monetary aspects of bailout of the eurozone in the case of such a collapse?


You don't think they would make demands of the UK?


As the UK didn't use the euro anyway, I don't think it will change how much the country would be impacted by a Eurozone collapse (ie: still seriously impacted)


Italy's sovereign debt crisis is going to be a nuke compared to the firecracker that was the Greek crisis in 2012.


I can't see DB being big or important enough to cause the collapse of Germany. I could be wrong.


Doubtful, the UK would suffer greatly from reduced demand for their goods and services.


inflation will start being a problem

If that happens then interest rates will rise, which will be very, very bad for both businesses and home owners. If it happened quickly enough it'd make 2008 look like a walk in the park.


The US isn't going to start facing meaningful consumer inflation for the exact same reason Japan didn't / hasn't. And for the same reason all the Keynesian economists have been hilariously baffled by Japan's situation for decades now, they'll be entirely baffled (and have been for the past decade) by the US and its 0% rates not spurring rampant inflation. Their dogmatic, borderline religious, belief in their wrong ideology makes it impossible for them to understand what's actually happening. They're entirely blind.

The ever-expanding massive pile of debt robs the economy of dynamism, which prompts an economic heat death. That's what happened to Japan and it's exactly the reason US growth keeps trending ever downward and will continue to and why the Fed has been doing crazy shit and can't spur the expected inflation result. The US has begun to suffer a debt-based heat death economically, where the cost of debt and the (mis)allocation of capital to low-return (de facto junk) debt robs the economy of the capital required for investment to expand effectively. And the more debt piles up the worse the effect gets, until you get to a point where the bureaucrats in charge just start doing direct currency chop-downs (aka mauling the population's standard of living), which is the point Japan arrived at several years ago. You end up with tens of trillions of dollars tied up yielding zip, heat death. Covid accelerated the dire fiscal situation for the US by nearly a decade, which is about to hand China the keys to taking superpower charge of half of the planet (if you're in Asia, you're particularly about to be screwed, as the US is going to be increasingly forced to stand-down there; before the decade is out, a transfer of hegemonic power will occur in Asia). The US is now blatantly bankrupt and spiraling (not just slipping toward it, the US is sprinting at it), it will be forced to pull back. The US jumped right to print to fund everything mode (there is nobody to buy $1.5-$2 trillion in junk debt every year other than the Fed), which will speed up the heat death by a lot (and as that gets worse, the politicians will want to spend ever greater sums to attempt to offset the stagnation to placate the angry voters, which will make it worse even faster; spiral). If China didn't release the virus on purpose, strategically it would make perfect sense to do so (and hell, if you're them you might consider doing it again given the amazing results, their global export share is now the highest for any nation since the US in 1981).

And to throw a new wrench into the economic disaster, the American population has had enough of it all. The clowns in charge in DC can no longer throw around bailouts without having to pay off the public with magic printed money too. They'll never be able to do bailouts again without throwing large sums of money at the public (all via debt and currency destruction, adding to the previously mentioned economic heat death scenario). $2,000 stimulus checks? $463 billion, 2/3 of the military budget. You see the choice that's coming very soon? The bureaucrats can feel it at this point, their senses are tingling; this, or that; this, or that; which will it be? For a bit yet they can pretend we can do both, but that won't last much longer at the rate Rome is fiscally burning. Then all hell breaks loose (already begun) as the factions start to eat eachother over priorities.

Europe is enjoying much of the same effect, including the intense economic stagnation (for 13-14 years now Western Europe has seen zero net GDP growth, and it'll continue). Trillions of euros held in garbage paper yielding negative, their economies have been in the freezer for a long time now. Nothing like paying a government to eat you.

Inflation will once again surprise the clown economists. Golly gee, what magic is this such that 0% rates aren't causing a lot of inflation. Golly gee it worked before, what's different now versus the 1970s. We just can't figure it out, our textbooks say this should work. Print more fiat, we gotta spur inflation! $20 trillion in worthless Keynesian stimulation isn't enough? Print more! We'll find the number eventually, keep digging that hole.

No field has more idiots than economics.


> Keynesian economists have been hilariously baffled by Japan's situation for decades now

Keynesian economimists understand what's going on perfectly well. It's the mainstream Chicago school economimists that can't gasp what's going on. Because Keynesian's totally know what a liquidity trap is. Keynes would easily understand that monetary stimulus in a liquidity trap just results in capital imposing larger and larger burdens on the real economy.

Put the due where it's due. The ideological followers of Milton Friedman the dummkopfs you're talking about here.


Keynes invented the idea of liquidity traps which is what caused the Japanese crisis. Wild that you feel so confident calling economists idiots when you don't even know their positions?


The observation about consumer inflation is very true, the massive inflation is actually in asset values (house prices, share prices, etc) I also wonder how I reconcile the rest comment with others pointing out the vast amounts of money available, especially in the US, for startups in general. When seed rounds can be more than $3M, I’d say there was plenty of capital available for growth investments as well?


> No field has more idiots than economics.

Alternative explanation: economics is hard & illusory superiority is a thing.


Why would interest rates rise? They're completely manipulated. If interest rates rising would kill businesses, then they will be manipulated not to rise.


Because the choice will be interest rates or inflation


But it’s been made very clear every major economy wants inflation. Interest rates ain’t never going back up, ask Japan.


Few trillion in national debt. Who cares.

I thought it was quite interesting that 30% of the budget is debt servicing.

If they didn’t have any debt, they wouldn’t need to loan any money.


> Prolonged lockdowns and new habits kill 75% of small businesses

Hey now, we're talking about predictions, not things that have already happened...


BABIES! So many COVID-induced lockdown babies! I've had so many people, many who were either done with having children, and those who weren't planning to for a while yet, announce their pregnancies.

Wonder if there are any companies I can invest in to cash in on this?


Interesting. I predict the exact opposite: birth rates will decline dramatically. I'm not alone in that prediction. According to this article, birth rates have already started to decline in the US: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/11/covid-19-...


I have never heard of so many babies on the way as now. Heck, even I had a son born in November (so not technically a lockdown baby).


> even I had a son

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon got you good!


I suspect this is a situation where you’re likely to have a lot of sampling bias. Lockdown has been really shit for a lot of people and I would guess that the lack of financial stability or any kind of predictability would put people off. The question is whether this is counteracted by the better off people whose pandemic experience has been more encouraging.


I had my first during the first UK lockdown (ie planned before COVID). Tbh, I thought it'd go the opposite way - I wouldn't recommend having a baby during lockouts. You have to ask family to break rules just to get some occasional rest bite and we've had very little in the way of government or community support - my wife goes to 1 baby class a week, with reduced capacity, social distancing and masks. Being a father is great, but it would have been nice to start outside a pandemic.


`Rest bite' is a great eggcorn.


I wonder if the fact of making babies by couples in lockdown will not be offset by singles in lockdown unable to go out and meet people for baby-making purposes.


That doesnt really seem to be the case so far https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/canada-s-population-gro... maybe when its all over we will have a baby boom with everyone being happy.


Atleast in Belgium, a mini baby boom is already a fact

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2020/12/29/tot-500-baby-s-meer-...


I would think the opposite. What's the long-term effect on births when the dating world shuts down for 6-9 months? I'm not single though, so I do wonder how much it shut down and was affected by lockdowns?


This has been a theme since the start of the first lockdown, but surely humans in general would seek to avoid having babies during a pandemic?


Why would anyone do that?


Remote as a hybrid approach will be accepted norm. Remote work for few weeks a year will be accepted norm. Remote medicine will co exist will inperson visits. Remote education will co-exist will in person school.


I hope this to be the case, but the large businesses that own large chunks of city real estate will push hard to get people back in and paying rent.

Frankly, I hope some areas are abandoned or made radically cheaper, and are reclaimed by impoverished artists and other bohemians. This process has happened in the past and has enriched many old cities. By the same token, I'd also love to see blue-collar workers able to move back into cities where they work, but where they're currently priced out of house ownership.

We might see a boom in commuting two or three days per week, and a growth in clusters of more localised communities, more like villages than cities. They might encircle a city made of a mix of business meeting places (office blocks) and the more bohemian/blue-collar pockets I mention.

At least, that's what I'd like to see. I don't know if it's a prediction as such.

I'd also like to see desk- and office-rental businesses openly embrace this and explicitly move away from current models that encourage the corporate sterility seen in many modern cities, and towards an enriched, happier working environment.

I can hope!


Tech stocks will drop

More no code platforms will emerge and grow

Fiat currencies will have major moves

Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is

Inequality will continue to grow. More controls will be put in place to keep disadvantaged in line. Surveillance, social controls, brainwashing

Real estate will have volatility


>Tech stocks will drop

There is no change in monetary policy globally, and every country injected even more printed money into the system for Covid relief. 2021 should see new all time highs across all equities, particularly tech.

>Bitcoin

Crypto will have a meteoric run up until the Coinbase IPO in February, and then people will take their profits, but I expect it to rise with the rest of the economy by the end of the year again. Overall, everyone should be buying the major dips on crypto until 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics when China is expected to do a roll-out of their digital currency. I don’t recall if it’s exactly blockchain based, but it’s a sentiment booster for digital cashless economy and should boost the general crypto market.

I personally don’t over think this one, just buy/sell the trends on this stuff. If you bought 1btc at 3kish, you are sitting on 24k. Didn’t we all know Bitcoin wasn’t going to stay at 3k? This will be a never ending cycle and will be our generations Gold (what makes that go up or down now days is anybody’s guess, but the sentiment cycle is real on this stuff and it’s best to surf the trends).

>Inequality

Most likely due to economic growth. In the shuffle, the working class doesn’t get it’s fair share of the pie.

————————————-

I’ll add five:

1. Tesla really benefited from government subsidies for energy efficient vehicles. I expect the Biden administration, and the Democrats to push hard for “Green” subsidies across the board. Don’t be surprised if suddenly the new meme startup pitch shifts from blockchain over to “green”. Buy anything selling solar, electric vehicles, etc.

2. Restaurants come back different in a leaner way. Smaller locations, delivery first, little to no dine-in. Think more food trucks. Suddenly that mobile robotic pizza truck SoftBank invested in might not sound so insane. What was insane was an entire industry unable to survive because of people and real-estate costs. Not so wild to consider location-less/people-less alternative.

3. If Democrats win the run-off next week and take Congress, marijuana will get federally legalized.

4. Covid annihilated companies will merge or get acquired in 2021. They won’t be given a chance to rebound, but instead be snapped up at the first sign of an uptrend.

5. Online learning platforms will become enterprise grade platforms leveraged by school systems. I expect to see 10x more companies building a Blackboard alternative for k-12, as school districts will look negligent for not investing in one to facilitate remote learning.


As a high school level teacher, I don’t believe 5. will happen in a meaningful way. The fundamental funding models and incentives that brought us to this place of almost universal mediocrity in Ed Tech will continue. With the waning of covid over the summer, there will be a massive push to “get things back to normal” and no progress will be made.


>Most likely due to economic growth.

Growing inequality with near zero interest rates is a sign of wealth re-distribution, not economic growth.


Sorry, I meant stock market growth.


> Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is

or when the liquidity catches up to the prices on exchanges, like every bitcoin rally ever and people keep building on it regardless? it isn't controversial for commodities to have cyclical trading patterns.


Tech stocks could decline because they are way overvalued. The digitalization will stick with us. Online commerce will increase because traditional shops will accept that they have to adapt. Virtualization, remote work, and video conferencing will stay with us.


In one year? Or is that a 10 year prediction?


> Tech stocks will drop

As a vaccine roles out, one would expect these online services to die back down again to roughly where they were, if a little elevated due to some good exposure.

> Fiat currencies will have major moves

I see a few large movers now trying to push micro-transactions which could be interesting. I know for example China are pushing Alipay very hard.

> Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is

I think of Bitcoin essentially as a pyramid scheme, it has zero real world value. I think banks made a major mistake in trading in it.

I always thought it would be more interesting (if not more illegal) if it was used for solving computationally hard problems, where people post bounties for their completion and it can be proved the computation was done correctly. For example cracking a strong key pair or website certificate, or doing some computation for research like protein folding.

> Inequality will continue to grow. More controls will be put in place to keep disadvantaged in line. Surveillance, social controls, brainwashing

See the point about micro-transactions. Cash-in-hand agreements grease the palms of the working man, if they can make that digital then they can tax it.

> Real estate will have volatility

After the protests/riots in the US and the COVID situation in all major cities, I think many people are looking to move out to more rural areas. In New York I hear the markets are in a very bad way.


The economy will bifurcate into two sections: a corporate economy that builds platforms, and an individualist economy that uses those platform for creative purposes.

Think YouTube + video creators, Spotify + artists, Netflix + more long tail video content, Substack + writers, TikTok + influencers, Doordash + indie chefs, Apple + indie developers.

I believe this will feel like visible people are losing jobs and making less money, but humanity as a whole will see wealth increase.


Isn't this just a continuation of the service economy? It won't feel like people are losing jobs and making less money, people will lose jobs and make less money as they transition to creative domains that AI/automation hasn't captured yet.


Damn I never thought about indie chefs! I heard about ghost kitchens which I think is brilliant but building and promoting your individuality as a chef unlocks a whole new world of possibilities.


I think the more savvy term for it is cloud kitchens.


Cloud kitchens are actual commercial kitchens run by corporations. Indie chefs just cook out of their own homes.


Ah, I was not aware of that distinction


I think Kalanick (the Uber cofounder) trademarked that.


Any source on that? I tried searching for it, seems like Kalanick does have a new venture called CloudKitchens but can't find anything on whether the phrase 'cloud kitchen' itself is trademarked.


I was going by the “®” in their logo. From https://trademarks.justia.com/879/58/cloudkitchens-87958653.... it looks like USPTO acked a plan to use the mark within three years. I don’t know whether that means they could complain if you opened “Talukder’s Pizza Cloud Kitchen.”


Hmm, I see a few publication using the `cloud kitchen` term in a generic way. But maybe if I opened a business, maybe they will see that as trying to take advantage of an existing brand. No idea if that's how trademark works.


Isn't Netflix the odd one out there? They control both the platform and the content.


They’re buying smaller and smaller projects as time goes by, catering to more niche audiences. They understand that they’re in a unique position to work the long tail. Having tiktok like individuals creating content on Netflix is the logical extension of their current strategy, alongside some shows with broader appeal.


Hmm, I think I get your point. But still, I don't see if it will ever be as effective a market for individual creators as youtube.


It won't be a market, but it will be a living. Netflix can pay people a contract or a salary to produce content.


Yeah. But it is still Netflix controlling both end, they are just extending their supply chain to include more indie creators but at the end of the day who gets to get on the platform and how much they can earn isn't a direct function of that creator and their audience. That economy is not a directly individualistic economy like the other examples. But I would really like to see a mix of kickstarter and patreon for indie creators that can run parallel to the OTT platforms, enabling them to create more ambitious projects and enabling their audience to directly support it.


I think Kickstarter itself is a pretty popular way to get projects running https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/kickstarter-film-projects/


1. Money will be printed massively to support artificially covid-impacted economies/businesses. Stocks (from non covid impacted companies) and Crypto will continue to raise.

2. Remote work will continue to gain traction. Remember that in 2020 remote work was terrible for new remote workers, as they were unprepared and face hard conditions (stress, children with closed schools), but shows that remote working can work indeed. New tools for team building will pop-up and social life will be partially transferred to local and non professionnal events.

3. Real estate will slightly evolves as houses/appartment should not only be chosen to live in but could also be used to work : square meters/feet per person will increase, measurements of the quality access to water, electricity, Internet will become a standart. Commercial estate will fall hard. Locations with high life ROI will see new comers and increasing prices. City councils will be on huge pressure.

4. Take-away only restaurants and shops will increase.

5. Universal delivery box will happen to allow asynchronous distribution of goods (by night when traffic is low, by drone ?)

6. The EU e-privacy law altogether with more legal and financial penalties will make US companies to lose momentum in Europe

7. Google Ad network will either dismantled or facing a boycott from other parties


It might not be 2021 but it'll definitely be in the decade, but I believe that people are seriously underestimating the impact that cheap green energy will have on the economy.

Right now green energy is only slightly cheaper than fossil fuel energy so it's effect has been minimal. But the price is forecasted to continue to drop the way it has over the last 50 years.

Energy is a massive component of the price of much of what we consume, from food to travel to chemicals to material.

Solar & wind energy have some troublesome characteristics, like their intermittency. But where some see problems, entrepreneurs see opportunity.

I'm not sure exactly how cheap power will transform the economy other than the obvious (fossil fuel producers are in big trouble). But I have no doubt it will.

Energy prices dropped massively and regularly between the industrial revolution and the oil price shock of the 70s. They've been relatively constant since then. It might not be an unreasonable prediction that the boom times between post-WW2 and the 70s might return.


A restructuring of commercial office real estate around coworking spaces, etc instead of offices dedicated to a company. In the short term this will be disastrous for traditional office real estate.

People still wear masks quite a bit.

Parents of children in closed school systems in the suburban US will get even more outraged as schools stay closed into 2021, with dramatic political consequences.

Finally the US succeeds at anti trust for some big tech, though not for more beloved brands like Apple

Post COVID, Massive explosion of travel and restaurant visiting causes tons of demand that the waning industry can’t meet.

Major industrialized countries have better surveillance for potential pandemics. It’s taken much more seriously.

The major issue shifts to something completely unexpected (not Covid) by years end


My prediction: most of the predictions will be wrong.


Really! Why even bother with predictions, except to reveal your biases?

Related, some enjoyable wisdom from Morgan Housel (one of my favorite personal finance writers): https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/sure/


I think you're the most accurate here. :-)


Thank you for relieving the secrets of prediction making!


- At least 5 presidents of 3rd world countries will die

- Much, much stronger ties between central europe and china

- Chia will become top 10 crypto

- DNA manipulation will become much bigger

- Facebook will go into proper decline

- Start of the break up of google ad business from google search business

- A few small EU alternative search engines come up

- Battery as a platform continues accelerating - new mobility form factors, battery grid scale storage

- Marketplaces with more than 2 links in the chain start eroding one of the middle links (primary ad channel will connect direct)

- Cross-border payments will become far easier

- Twitter will bring in a bunch of tools to combat toxicity

- So much travel in summer - hotels will have one of their best years ever

- AirBNB stock will do what tesla stock is doing - driven by reddit WSB kids

- Asia will crack down on scammy crypto companies

- MediaSynthesis will advance further - a major new tool that makes it trivially easy

- Google search results will start becoming way better and super personalised as their data efforts start showing results

- OpenStreetMaps will become a serious-serious contender to Google Maps

- Amazon gets into general purpose search?

- SSDs start dominating, NVME becomes standard for new desktops

- Google focuses far more on local, smaller sites to the detriment of big sites. Many well known brands (e.g tripadvisor) lose traffic

- Pinterest gets investigated for finance-related matters

- SARS viruses become the new normal


> - Google search results will start becoming way better and super personalised as their data efforts start showing results

This one is very surprising to me. I think Google's results have been getting worse for me every year for a long time. They used to supposedly have the goal of getting people off the search page as quickly as possible, but it seems to me their recent data efforts have the goal of making people spend more time on search pages where they can see and click on ads. I.e. worse search results, caused by ignoring search terms and showing unrelated things instead. Why would 2021 be any different?


- Google search results will start becoming way better and super personalised as their data efforts start results.

I can believe they’ll do this but it won’t make the results better. Google search would go the way of YouTube.


> OpenStreetMaps will become a serious-serious contender to Google Maps

Maybe not this year, but I can see this happening over the next five.


Speaking from Ireland.

- Car traffic will be only slightly less than 2019 levels, despite rolling lockdowns all year.

- Brexit will start to be noticed on supermarket shelves.

- The built-up stresses of 2020/2021 will turn some relatively minor issue into a genuine political crisis, in a straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back situation. It might bring down the government.


Do you think Brexit reaching a conclusion could spur reunification between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (a “United Ireland”)?


(Lived in UK and Ireland, and various other EU countries)

NI is now effectively separated from the rest of the UK, so will rely on Ireland a lot more for trade. For sure there will be more cooperation between the two countries, but in the last survey only 20% of NI residents favoured a united Ireland. [0] I doubt Brexit has shifted that number too much. I'd more expect NI to become an independent country, but Scotland will be first.

In terms of Ireland I think this is good for them, as it'll give them more opportunity to be more independent. At least when I was there (nearly 10 years ago, in Dublin), it felt like 'the UK but slightly different', i.e. very different from the rest of Europe. Online retailers often didn't have an IE store, but most UK retailers would ship to IE for extra shipping.

Now it will probably be the other way, IE retailers will ship to NI for a little extra. The combined markets have a population of nearly 7m people, so it's bigger than a lot of European countries.

As OP says it might be painful to begin with (for NI and IE) as they adjust to the new position. Ireland drives on the same side of the road as the UK, and uses UK plugs, so cars and consumer goods will most likely become more expensive too.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Northern...


Other polls seem to range from 29% [1] to 80% [2]. I think it depends who's asked!

[1] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nireland-poll/poll...

[2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/election-2020-we-want-uni...


Polls [1] and [2] are polls of the electorate on different sides of the border. Both need to approve for unification to happen.

In Northern Ireland identification primarily with the UK or with Ireland is a defining identity issue for Protestant and Catholic communities respectively. The 29% figure for near term unification can still rise but campaigners for a United Ireland there face two problems: firstly that many in their own community broadly sympathetic to the idea of a United Ireland are concerned that changing the status quo now would lead to a return to the sectarian violence of a generation ago, and secondly that the Protestant community is slightly larger and also less flexible on national identity.


That's a dubious looking poll with three options on remain and one on re-unification.


Yes -

If Northern Ireland is following the Republic of Ireland/EU commercial regulatory framework, and not the rest of the UK's as that quickly diverges, there will be a new pragmatic argument for Northern Ireland to leave the UK.

I'd give it at least 5 years, though.


Maybe "spur" might be putting it a bit strong, but I do think it will make it more likely in subtle, marginal ways. It will be an extra push factor in an already complicated dynamic. In any case, I think a referendum on unity is still decades rather than years away.


It is weird how no one wants to talk about the over-inflated euro and its potential impact on Ireland.


* Baizuo gestapo

* The DJ mix fades slowly from Covid to climatechange

* Bill Gates does geoengineering

* Trillions of dollars printed -> effect -> bitcoin to the moon

* People will say that internet in 2020 had freedom

* Migration of taxpayers to other countries


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo

> Baizuo (/ˈbaɪˌdzwɔː/; Chinese: 白左; pinyin: báizuǒ, literally White Left)[1][2] is a Chinese neologism and political epithet used to refer to Western leftist ideologies primarily espoused by white people.[3] The term baizuo is related to the term shèngmǔ (圣母, 聖母, literally "Blessed Mother"), a sarcastic reference to those whose political opinions are perceived as being guided by emotions or a hypocritical show of selflessness and empathy.[4]


> bitcoin to the moon

if you're assuming that printing money will inflate currency, won't every asset go to the moon (hold its value against depreciation of currency)? why would bitcoin particularly benefit?


Yes, this is true that every asset will go to the moon, especially the stock market. I hope that the mainstream cultural perception of bitcoin and blockchain will change from being purely speculative and related to dark markets to actually being used with a good intent.


What good intent are you suggesting?


Technology is a tool, with a hammer you can smash people's heads or build houses. You never know what ideas can emerge, what creative energy can be formed in the context of blockchain. What comes to my mind is to find a more sustainable and ethical business model than advertisement.


By the end of the year, we'll have started a new roaring 20's. People are pent-up--eager to travel, excited to be with friends, vacation, go to bars, party, see movies. Pent-up demand will help kick-start the economy.

Work from home is normalized. Commercial real estate prices will drop as companies pare-down their office space. Wework has better prospects than ever.

Travel stocks and in person events go crazy.

A renaissance for Ruby on Rails. Old fashioned SPA's are overbought/oversold, the pendulum will swing to the middle for many use-cases.

New security practices are developed, deployed, and become commonplace in the enterprise. I'd invest in this area if I had a way. Maybe honeypots, tripwires, or something new. Whatever can be sold as an antidote to the SolarWinds debacle, irony of security products as a vector aside.

Deepfakes start to surface in the public consciousness in a way they haven't so far. None of this is good.

Looking under Trump's rug gets ugly--Democrats are faced with seeming to "hunt" a political opponent, or letting some really bad stuff go.


The thought that WeWork will ever recover is comical. I’d be surprised if they are alive by summer.


Let me clarify that a bit--their concept has better real business prospects than ever. I'm not commenting on their ability to match their over-promises, their leadership, capital structure, or their misalignment to their valuation. I suppose their ability to stay alive is apart of their prospects, though.


Yea, I agree with the appeal of co-working spaces in general, and do expect them to see an uptick. However, WeWork's model is simply atrocious from a business standpoint. They assume all of the risk and liability by being the leasee in most cases.


> Deepfakes start to surface in the public consciousness in a way they haven't so far. None of this is good.

The scary Deepfakes will be the ones that are 90% benevolent with 10% subtle naughty bits. They'll go undetected by the press. Imagine spreading anti-CCP propaganda in China but not in obvious ways that it can go under the radar of CCP censorship. Complete disarray.


You are probably overly optimistic about Rails, I wish it could be true.


Have you looked at https://hotwire.dev ?


Autonomous vehicles will be unleashed in urban environments. They will kill people in unacceptable scenarios and the industry will be forced to retreat as political and legal pressure mounts. Teleoperation won’t work. Operation of autonomous vehicles in urban environments without a trained safety driver will be severely restricted until there’s a major AGI breakthrough.


Watching recent Tesla FSD beta drives made me understand how stressful/dangerous it is to take a ride in such vehicle.

If they make a 1000x improvement it becomes even more dangerous because it can make you feel safe and unaware of sword of Damocles hanging over your head.

I hope I will be proven wrong, but I don’t think any of the current approaches will deliver level 5 autonomy.


* Jeff Bezos will be the first person to surpass US$1Tn in net worth

* Boris Johnson will resign

* Tiktok becomes the most popular social media platform

* Japan Olympics go ahead causing hundreds of deaths

* Covid eventually fizzles out


Boris’ stock is pretty high right now, he’s just lead the country through COVID and got the brexit deal he wanted at the same time. Whether you like him or not that was no easy feat, it’s unlikely he would have any reason to resign unless something crazy happens in the next 12 months.

The affects of brexit won’t be felt just yet, and I don’t see his party pushing him out unless they’ve found a reasonable successor.


Interesting that you came to this view. Boris seems to have handled COVID incredibly poorly (e.g. the death rate in the UK is higher than comparable countries) and the trade deal is considerably worse than deals he previously rejected (e.g. customs border inside the UK). I expect that once the world stabilizes again, members of his own party will want to take his job.


I agree with your assessment of Johnson, but I don't think the majority of the country (or perhaps more importantly conservative voters) do


We won't really know until the election, but for what it's worth opinion polls have Johnson down compared to when he started his term.


That's a neat alternative universe that you're in. COVID is a complete disaster in the UK (and in plenty of other places, but the clusterfuck in the UK is really quite something), besides that brexit could very well cause the UK to cease to exist or be diminished, you can expect a breakaway effort to start in Scotland just about today.

Imagine the irony of the UK more or less trying to forbid the Scots from seceding the union when they just seceded themselves from the EU. That won't go down well, no matter what legalese the argument will be cast into.


I’m not saying the COVID situation went well by any stretch, but I haven’t spoken to anyone on the street who wants Boris out of office due to it. If a general election happened tomorrow I doubt he would have problems. It’s pretty clear most countries have struggled to handle it so that’s probably why Boris hasn’t had as much flack as expected. Like I said, it’s unlikely that would be the reason he resigns, if that was the case he would have gone already.

Brexit will cause issues, but I don’t think many of them will happen in the next 12 months. The UK won’t “cease to exist” with the next few months let’s not be alarmist. (And I’m the one in an alternative universe?).

It’s more likely that Scotland will continue to ask for a referendum and Boris will continue to deny it.


I don't think Scotland will 'ask for a referendum', if they won't get the permission they seek they will go the legal route:

https://www.dw.com/en/scotland-nicola-sturgeon-aims-for-2021...

Scotland will be disproportionally hurt by their lack of EU membership and voted strongly against leaving the EU.

As for people not wanting Johnson out of office due to COVID: we are in a similar situation here in NL, but at the end of the day results are what matter and Johnson has done the UK citizens absolutely no service with is performance so far. Maybe it will take some time before that sinks in and I don't have a shred of doubt that he will try to pin the blame on the EU for all of his own failures.


true, that is one way of looking at it, though I'd still argue that his handling of COVID wasn't the best and same for the Brexit deal. Either way, IIRC there were rumors last year that he might resign in Feb or so, but maybe they were just rumors...


So Boris Johnson just got the trade deal he was hoping for and the UK is leading in a vaccination programme, so I'm not sure he'll want to resign unless the last year has been too stressful for him and he has some kind of breakdown?

Although aliens might invade or some other crazy s*t.


Um, Boris caved in completely and the EU got the trade deal they were hoping for. Politically, Boris may be stronger now within the Conservative Party. I don't expect that to last long.

2021 will be a year of the messy downsides of Brexit becoming ever more clear, plus the economic fallout from mismanaging Covid.

Boris will be history the moment challengers in the Cons Party judge he not they will be held accountable.


He will be scapegoated for the Brexit fallout and the awful Covid response by others in his party who want his job.


Number 55 will be factored using Shor's algorithm on quantum computer.


Please god no.


I’m unsure of whether this is a joke or not.


Average VC fund returns stay below Bitcoin yield on an annual basis. You have to be vaccinated to travel. Fake vaccination certificates become a thing. Contactless retail, robotics and industrial automation growth. Ecstasy decriminalization / legalization continues to gain momentum.


"AI" will become more democratized, regular developers will be able to `npm install` a dependency and benefit from per-trained models, GPT etc...

JavaScript frameworks will feel a lot faster with more accessible implementations of SSR and React finally shipping concurrent-mode.


You can already ‘pip install’ quite a bit (gensim being a prime example), but it takes some knowledge of how/why the general resource was trained to apply it to a business problem.


I think the big leap will happen when a "regular" developer (as in doesn't need to have any specific know-how), when they can just call simple APIs that hide all the complexity, Same way we don't need to know how a GPU works to render a red square in a browser window.


grandparent comment is saying that you _have_ to be able to apply the data and training techniques to a use case. what you're describing is the nocode fantasy where non-developers will be able to name complex apps, but applied to ml


Netflix stock will drop by half.

The singleton will be rediscovered and frameworks, languages and religions will form around the concept.


Care to elaborate on your second point? Doesn't really seem to have been forgotten cries in spring


Why do you think Netflix stock will fall?


GDP will continue to increase in the US while a majority of the population will get poorer.


* EU-based SaaS will become more popular due increased difficulty in working with US-based SaaS companies in a privacy compliant way

* Remote work will stay mainstream in tech, with most employees working at least a few days remote per month

* HN will get a dark mode


>> HN will get a dark mode

Maybe in 2022 ;)


There will be a 20 % increase in Toronto Real Estate. Average house price will be well over a million $$$.

Cannabis will be decriminalized at the Federal level.

Covid Fatigue, no one will give a shit by summer.

DOW 36k. There is no limit to the amount of stimulus.


How many years can it increase by 20%? This is getting ridiculous.

The inequality in the city has reached a point where is impossible for people to catch up.


I predict that we'll see a sharp drop in real estate prices and rents in major cities. They are way beyond reasonable at the moment; my presumption is that the decline of small businesses will open up at lot of space. Given this and the radical shift to work from home, I presume that the cities will attract far less people (especially in high paid jobs) and therefore the apartment searching madness we see right now will hopefully come to an end.

In turn, of course, suburbs will probably rise in value and attractiveness.


I'm assuming this is from a US perspective. Do people in other places with high rents around the world feel the same?


I only somewhat agree.

For example, Vancouver's real estate is pricey because it's one of the nicest places to live in the world. The rise of teleworking won't erase the mild weather all year round, the access to world-class mountain sports (hiking, climbing, cycling, skiing, etc.), the ocean with its views, great asian food, the rule of law, liberal culture, etc.

That's a very different scenario than, say, Winnipeg where it's -30 half the year and the other half the year the insects are so bad they send trucks around to fog pesticides. Plus you have conservative culture, no mountains nor ocean, little in the way of outdoor sports unless you like quad biking and fishing, or hockey.

I lived in Vancouver for a short while, and have visited Winnipeg several times for conferences and work trips. I can see reasons to live in Vancouver even if you didn't have to live there for work. I can see no reasons to want to live in Winnipeg unless someone was literally bathing me in money.


Vancouver is a backwater town compared to many asian cities such as in tokyo. It's way overpriced.


Perhaps, but it's orders of magnitude nicer than many north american cities.


It's a German perspective, actually ;) But I presume it's similar for the US.


This would be great for me (I am in my late-twenties and would like to settle down soon), but sadly I don't think this prediction will come to pass. Urban real estate prices will continue to rise in the US as more and more people move to cities, chasing economic and social opportunities.


Work habits will change: more freelancing and gig economy stuff will creep into white collar job marked. Also there will be new seminal book for new way of thinking about work or work life balance similar to 4-Hour Work Week was hitting nerve with 2008 economic crysis.


I’m hoping people will start realising our technology stacks are too complex and start looking at simplifications.


That'd be great, but from what I'm seeing also an extremely unlikely turn of events.


Health and Human Services will constitutionally designate Social Media as a public health emergency, allowing all states (while in states of emergency) to include restrictions to accessing social media or restrict the function of information on those network or restrict the price of ad bidding and data markets.


This is a bold prediction. It sounds plausible, but I would doubt the ability of the federal government to do this effectively. what constitutes "social media"?

further, shutting down websites at random or just specific domains would be wildly unpopular with all voters. I like how you're thinking, though


I had a similar reaction. I respect how bold it is, but I still think it's pretty fanciful. I suppose I could see the part about social media being a public health issue, but I don't think it's super realistic that the government would straight up be shutting down sites, which to me reads like some kind of bad fanfiction. More likely it would be the usual churn of testimony before congress, news about antitrust cases, new laws requiring some kind of new disclosure, etc.


Talk about a nanny state


Not 2021 per se, but I feel electric cars will be the future. And much of the base for that could be developed in 2021, including maybe some manufacturer finally striking a deal with Tesla for its batteries, and maybe some manufacturer announcing compatibility with Tesla's charging network.


* Facebook will enter a downward spiral and start declining

* A security breach bigger than SolarWinds will be discovered and will severely affect market position of a major cloud provider

* Google will make its biggest acquisition ever

* Inequality, censorship, and polarization will continue to increase


> * Google will make its biggest acquisition ever

Which one?


I have no idea. I believe they will start realizing that click-based advertisement is an increasingly unsustainable and flawed revenue model and will look for a ways to start a significant portion of revenue from another source. Assuming that:

1) They don't have time to build it. 2) Since, they will need to buy it, it should be a business that already generates significant revenue, thus the biggest acquisition price tag 3) The longer they stick to click-based ad revenue the lower their chances to diversify and the higher the chance that someone else comes forward with a new revenue model that will irreversibly undermine Google's.


but to be a biggest acquisition, it has to be a few years old unicorn with a solid revenue models at this point. And among the current ones, I can't think of any that would give Google an opportunity to diversify from their click-based ad revenue. Until they do something radical and acquire robinhood or coinbase.


That's true. I would include Shopify and Stripe in the shortlist.


Actually, Stripe is a really good one. Shopify, I dunno, I can't see it meshing too well with Google's current products or google even doing a good job developing Shopify further, especially after being acquired at more than 100B$ valuation. But a Stripe acquisition, I think, will be mutually profitable.


People overestimate what can happen in a year and underestimate what can happen in a decade.


If you’ve seen the hackernews “predict next 10 years” threads you’ll see we overestimate decades too.


There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen


I'll be an optimist and predict that Patrick Rothfuss will publish Doors of Stone and the fourth Evangelion Rebuild movie will be released.

(I just checked on the latter and apparently it's scheduled to be released on the 23rd of January, so I guess that's pretty solid at this point. You never know, though; last attempt at release was postponed due to Covid, and it could happen again. If we're really lucky there'll be a US release in 2021.)


>Evangelion Rebuild movie will be released.

First screenings for press were held in December already, so there is no going back, fortunately.


HBM3 is released sending GDDR6 into an identity crisis

Apple's processor series has an upgrade and has an unexpected name

Apple gets tired of Qualcomm and starts making radios as well (Qualcomm's has not released adequate drivers to allow 5g in a multi-SIM environment, delaying Apple's ability to offer it)

A Camera manufacturer implements "Live Photos" in the RAW format with key frame selection

A cooler running version of the Raspberri Pi is released


Quantum computing will start making inroads to the mainstream. Large corporations will start using quantum computers and run quantum suitable algorithms such as quantum optimization ones.

More software libraries develop that use quantum algorithms in the backend.

One of the major company among IBM, Nvidia, Intel, Apple and AMD will release a prototype minimal viable Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) alongside CPU similar to GPUs.


The overwhelming majority of forecasts on this page don’t come to pass.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as a predictable year


Some country in Africa is going to have a civil war.


Quite an easy prediction to make given Ethiopia is already in the middle of a civil war

edit: It's been so long, but we should remember Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo. Liberia and South Africa are stable though, and most African countries merely languish in peaceful obscurity.


- Niche social networks will thrive, innovating beyond infinite scrolling and Stories.

- Travel will boom towards the second half of the year, with people spending more on vacation/leisure and more “active” travel (e.g. luxurious hiking/camping trips).

- Protests and social upheaval once countries reach herd immunity via vaccination.

- People will spend more time looking at screens and socialize less.


Strike slip on the San Andreas.

It’s always atop my insight-free lists of long overdue events. Keep a pair of shoes and a gallon of water by your bed.


With the maturing of the Holochain framework (a novel data integrity engine for fully distributed applications [1]), Valueflows/hREA and Holochain apps will start taking off.

My hope is that this will rewire our society in two significant ways:

1) Through hREA and REA accounting in general, we will start having better wealth acknowledgement systems and a new grammar for different types of wealth [2],[3].

2) No more exclusive Intellectual Property rights (trade secrets and patents) that privatize and monopolize knowledge and ideas, the use of which currently comes at the expense of mother nature and society [4]. Our accumulated human knowledge is a shared inheritance, and it belongs to all children of the world, in the commons.

-

[1] "Holochain is a framework for writing fully distributed peer-to-peer applications. It is not based on blockchain technology. It is rather like a decentralized Ruby on Rails, a toolkit that produces stand-alone programs but for serverless high-profile applications."

This Medium post by a Holochain core developer is a great intro: https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing-applicati...

[2] http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommons...

[3] https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55

[4] Wendy Liu, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley


I disagree it was a false start. This year turned everything over, so much that people (around me) seriously consider calling it year 0 - and not just the techies. I think this year accelerated biomedical research many times, and changed the risk proposition a lot. Now it's risky to not research and progress.


* Bitcoin will rise up until the point where vaccinations are widespread and then rapidly decline. Same goes for inflated tech stock prices.

* There will be dev layoffs in areas where low/nocode handles most work, especially internal tooling and APIs for corps.

* Intel will give up on manufacturing and catch up to AMD (maybe towards the end of the year or the one after). Until then stocks will plummet.

* Most big game companies will be bought by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, maybe Apple, maybe Sony. Microsoft Gamepass will get them into a leading position (but wont beat Sony in 1 years time, more like 3 or 4)

* Environmental catastrophes will become commonplace, including massive refugee crises due to water shortages, heat waves and other hazards.

* There will be 1 more economical crisis before it gets better, maybe after covid when people realize that it won't get back to pre-covid levels as fast as they hoped.


* Increased tension with North Korea and China, with the latter making trade deal reforms that will cause a spike in the cost of tech

* New applications built on web assembly (like Figma) will emerge and previously

* A plan will be solidified for space travel to the moon and Jeff Bezos will pour more of his money into Blue Origin

* A new foldable iPhone will be released

* Tech exodus from California continues as tax laws mixed with the WFH paradigm shift makes the area less attractive to migrants

* Fake news will cause a major scandal with the advancement of deep fake technology and the proliferation of fake articles made by one of the ever-evolving language models

* Waymo will continue to expand to more cities and progress the state of self driving technologies in the US


With remote work becoming a significant factor in the US employment landscape, commercial real estate can not longer service their debt and that entire sector falls into crisis. This is partially mitigated by a boom in converting commercial buildings into vertical farms, and by large scale conversion of commercial office space into multi-purpose venues with housing, commercial, and retail within the same former corporate park - becoming mini-cities with corporate services like a college dorm life for the residents and workers at their converted corporate park.


Companies will start caring about their user's data privacy. Has been a year since CCPA. iOS privacy feature will go live. Companies will realize blatant sharing of data is too risky (or not even possible)


Standardization around Personal Note taking/Knowledge management, format of storing, seamless import/export between different services or personal tools.


The request was for prediction, not fantastical pipe dreams.


This is hilarious. I love it that this is what we think is most improbable, not contact with aliens.


Aliens might want to say hi, if they exist. I don’t think the businesses with the power to standardise want to do so.


A new Raspberry Pi will be released in either the "Zero" or the "A" form factor.

HN will continue to complain about the MicroSD card reliability.

The new board will sell well.


Amazon Kindle will finally move to USB-C. We can only hope.


I hoped this would be the case with the iPhone, but no such luck.


1. I think 2021 will be the year govts will trickle official information about ET, UFOs and aliens from space.

2. Markets will crash around April 2021. Won’t revive until before 2022.

3. The POTUS inauguration will not go as expected. Something unexpected and violent might occur. Current POTUS isn’t done yet. He will gain more power.

4. Possible American civil war(50%)

5. Two governments or some kind of split(USA)

6. Covid subsides but variants emerge at the fag end of 2021.

7. K shaped economy globally.

8. Crypto will reign.

9. Silicon Valley will bounce back.


* Tesla FSD will kill someone causing a major development setback

* By the end of 2021 most cars will still use combustion engines

* A one-in-a-lifetime trip to space will become affordable for 5-10% of the population.

* Bitcoin will surpass $100k value

* Drone based delivery will not happen

* Nuclear fusion will not happen

* 25% of laptops will be using ARM

* Many small businesses will die. Amazon and other huge corporations will become even significantly bigger

* Jeff Bezos will be worth over $1T

* Facebook won't die but it will loose over 50% of it's users.


USB-C charging stations with 4+ ports at reasonable price


This: "Bitcoin will rise big and then drop sharply once people realize how useless it is."

The question is - is it going to be replaced by something similar?


Covid will be the breakthrough for working from home. It will continue even after Covid is no longer a factor.

Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. There will be some violence on or just after January 6 (certification of electoral college votes) and January 20, but it will be minor. Trump will rage and sulk, but Twitter will cancel his account on January 21 for violation of terms of service.


> working from home

I think that a lot of people worked from home for the first time, but without the required preparations. Which left a bad taste and probably turned a lot of people off.

Working from home is not a universal experience, the experience varies if you live in villa or a one room apartment. Varies, if you're sharing the space. Varies, if you have had to take care of kids at the same time, etc...

I see a lot of people who couldn't wait to get back to the office even if it meant they had to wear a mask all day.


Maybe. At the start of this year, my company was offering big bonuses to engineers who were willing to relocate to the newly-declared headquarters. Now they've decided that we are "remote first." I wonder how common this shift in attitude will be. Of course, it's possible that the executives will change their minds again once an office becomes a real possibility. But at the moment, they seem to love the idea of not having to pay for office rent in an expensive city anymore.

In any case, I think that what the executives and CEO want will trump what the individual workers prefer.


Clarification: It will continue, but not necessarily at the same level.

I mean, it existed before, just not at this level. The difference is that it won't be weird or fringe. You're applying for a job, but you want to work from home? For the majority of places, that was a deal breaker before. Now it won't be.


Trump will start his 2024 campaign, protecting his Twitter as a political candidate account.


-One or more assassinations of prominent political figures in the United Stated.

-An uptick in private security services.

-Bitcoin corrects into summer. 2021 is not the year of 6 figure BTC. (although that is probably coming in the next few years).

-I plan to make a bunch of changes and do dramatic things but do not. I do however do some unexpected things that turn out wonderfully.


Ghislaine Maxwell will either get bail and disappear or die by suicide in jail within the next 3 months.

Companies will push to have an annual Corona Virus Vaccine. Covered by insurance and mandated as much as possible.

RISC-V will start to show up in peoples hands.

Something interesting will happen with Intel.

That's really all I got, and two of them are scraping the bottom of the barrel.


I think if you want to make a prediction you should think about the odds you'll take for a bet against that prediction. This way you also assigning it a likelihood, even if only a low bar (a bet you'd always take).

For example, I'll happily bet some amount of money at 1:1 odds against some of the predictions here.


Prediction further out than 2021.

Before 2030, Snowden will not only be pardoned but will be appointed head of the CIA or equivalent.


This is one of the few predictions on this thread which I feel 100% confident will never come to pass.


Inflation will not end up being nearly as big of a problem as many have bet. Asset speculation and short bets against the dollar will start to fizzle out (including bitcoin). Potentially another economic shock will push foreign investors back to safe-haven currencies (i.e. the dollar).


Microsoft and Apple get more egregious on that you don't own your device, some people will complain but eventually the Stockholm syndrome will take over so that Apples and Bananas will make even more money. General purpose computing becomes even more of a niche thing.


* Many more droughts, floods, cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and other kinds of natural calamities.

* More pollution, global warming, rise of sea level, more health threats etc.

* Political and socio-economical instability, crisis and maybe a third world war?


PICO-8 fantasy console had a breakout year. I think we will see more "off-Broadway" style game dev. Awakened by an explosion in powerful new SoC boardss. Panic's Play.Date handheld portable could be the next "little" thing ;)


Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter will be beat up enough from anti-trust and legislation to shake investor confidence considerably. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft will emerge unscathed.

The merits of this I will leave to the reader, but there has surely been a long-lasting shift in public opinion against social media due to the unrelenting assault of Trumpism. The irony of this assault being launched from twitter.com/realdonaldtrump is not lost on me.


Swap Apple with Twitter in your list. (What sort of antitrust anything has Twitter done? Have you seen their market cap and user base?)

Apple controls 50% of domestic US computing and has redefined the concept of a computer to be a highly taxed walled garden with mysterious, byzantine rules.

More companies like Epic will sue them and Apple will ultimately be forced to open up iOS to 3rd party apps.

Apple can't be a smartphone manufacturer, computer manufacturer, OS provider, services provider, Hollywood film studio, music studio, automotive company, etc. This is standard oil.


I included Twitter because I predict an amendment to section 230 will be passed. I don't have much faith in Congress to carefully consider the effects of their technological legislation on an open and free Web.


*standard tech


I expect BTC to reach at least 50.000 USD value by end of 2021, but could be much more.


* Roblox has a massive IPO that values it at $20B after one week of trading. Facebook makes an offer to buy the company to boost its VR efforts, but the offer is rejected.

* The vaccine efforts work out, and travel begins to open up again after August.


More serial killers and serial rapists identified and caught via genetic testing.


I assume this is hinting about the case of "Joseph James DeAngelo" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo), also known as the Golden State Killer. This year, I read Michelle McNamara's book "I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer". Highly recommended!

As I understand, it is relatively easy to cross-contaminate samples. How is this risk reduced? Or do all people who handled the biological evidence also get DNA tested to exclude themselves?

And do all US states and federal level courts treat DNA equally. More interesting to me: Might we see a case where a criminal can be tied to the crime by biological evidence, but there is a court system "gotcha" that allows them to remain free?


The world will move ever more closer to the cyberpunk predictions from the 80s.


Care to explain?


All the clichés: mega corporations, further distancing between rich and poor, increasing use of AI, cyber attacks, trips to Mars


Feel free to submit your predictions here: questpowered.com I’ve started to keep track of predictions there and it’s nice to see different how different people submit different likelihood’s to the same events :P


The year of the coworking space:

- Substantial number of tech workers remain remote as vaccines role out

- Remote workers crave community after covid lockdowns

- Commercial real estate is cheap

If remote is the future I expect to see mega coworking spaces filled with desks, gyms, spas, bars, workshops, etc. Will have the benefit of being able to choose who you're around every day and without the gaze of your company's HR department.


The ridiculous rise of multiple types of HR people is nuts. And we are paying these people to make us all paranoid about anything we might accidentally say that could be misinterpreted as offensive.

We are turning our workplaces into identity politics re-education camps, and paying our own prison guards.


Getting rid of HR is a killer feature of WFH.


A rentable, higher tech conference meeting room will emerge, probably with AR or VR technology.


Does that path eventually lead us to Wandering HR Reps?


They aren't allowed in!


2021 will be a riots year. High unemployement, GDPs going down, Oil down, major economical crisis throughout 2021.

Big players in airline, restaurant and other hard hit businesses will go bust.

US war on Iran with some major development in the region especially Irak/Yemen.

Vaccination will be accepted by majority of people either through good results seen on elderly, or through a vaccine pass required by businesses.


> It's clear that 2020 [...] has arguably completely changed everyone's lives for the long term.

I don't think there is much to argue about this. Every year changes everyone's life for the long term.


Multiple covid variants found and sequenced. Mutation rate and other factors determined and predictable.

Work starts on annual covid vaccination programmes, similar to current annual flu programmes.

As vaccines are rolled out, death rates in the elderly drop, and rise comparatively among those aged 20s-30s causing much debate about whether this matters.

Covid is found to easily hop from humans to multiple different animals where it mutates before hopping back to humans again. Epidemiologists become hugely worried about this, but nobody seems to listen.

Governments (those who listen to the epidemiologists) attempt to divert more funds to bolster virus surveillance programmes, but are heavily stymied by rising nationalistic tendencies among the electorate. Investment in overseas collaborations such as surveillance programmes are attacked by populist/xenophobic pundits who clamour for protectionist policies. The political landscape becomes increasingly fractious.


* SpaceX's starship will reach orbit.

* The theorem prover Lean 4 will be released.


This is very specific.

Either Flutter Desktop or Sciter will be the defacto mode of cross-platform app development replacing ElectronJS and QT.

If Flutter desktop will be a thing at the end of 2021, Sciter will be abandoned.


SpaceX announces a one way mission: "...to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!"

Jurassic Park will actually open.


* Sentiment regarding Slack will continue to decline regarding performance and increased micro outages. Perhaps a niche, light weight competitor slowly picks up steam

* Kubernetes/overengineering fatigue continues. Perhaps we see some fledgling attempts at a "platform" that handles external resources (load balancers, SSL) while still having a smaller scope and complexity. Sort of like k3s but a smaller footprint aimed at running on a single VM/host. I may just be describing Dokku plus some addons

* Evernote starts to slowly come back into the conversation as they continue with their wide spread refactorings (I just like their behind the scenes videos)

* More business get breached. No one seems to care


- Apple Keeps on releasing new M series chips, Intel falls further behind. The next iPhone also has no ports.

- Rumors about Apple AR glasses, but no release in 2021.

- GPT-4 ships, we see more trends pointing to AI generality with deep mind probably releasing another interesting paper.

- Vaccine distribution resolves covid in western countries by late summer/fall.

- Tesla ships cybertruck and full self driving beta to more users (maybe fleet wide to people who purchased FSD).

- VC 'move to Miami' rhetoric dies down and most people move back to SF bay in the short term post covid remote work.

- We see flexible remote schedules post covid, but most people still go into the office, most work still is office based (and those companies are more productive).

- Peloton continues to do well even post covid when people have gone back to normal life.

- Starlink ships and is a major telecom player, including in areas like China or the Middle East where governments try and control network access/comms. It makes good internet possible anywhere, Loon and other attempts fail to compete because their solutions are worse and less globally available.

- Bitcoin remains volatile

- Nikola dies, companies that went public via a SPAC are generally worse than companies that go public via other means.

- Post covid travel/consumer spend boom 'roaring twenties' response.

- USG institutions start to repair themselves post-trump crony damage, but congress is still largely grid-locked on legislation. Some republicans continue to refuse to accept Biden and pretend they're just doing the same thing dems did about the Russian interference/obstruction of justice in 2016 (they're not).

- Woke politics dies down a bit in Biden era, but is still an issue

- More writers go direct via Substack and newsletters siphon off the best writers. Major news outlets continue to get weaker and more partisan. Something interesting happens in this space.


Low-latency satellite internet will face populist challenges because of the sky pollution and low-orbit trash. (even if they make it blend in)


Not predictions but hopes:

1. ARM laptops will become mainstream. 2. Major brands will release their phones / tablets with reflective displays


It's going to be AMAZING. Lot's of very important breakthrough in moral philosophy and ethics are going to be developed.


Apple Fitness+ will be their fastest growing service, and Apple Watch Series 7 will have non-invasive glucose monitoring.


A reliable non-invasive glucose monitoring device is going to be revolutionary. That’s essentially a holy grail for diabetes.


I have a Freestyle Libre glucose monitor. It's not exactly continuous. I believe it lets me get a glucose reading as often as every 8 minutes. When I had to do finger sticks I would test my glucose an average of 4 times a day. With my new monitor I'm measuring an average of 20 times a day, without the pain of finger sticks. Inserting the sensor is almost completely painless, and I only have to do it every two weeks. Current CGM devices may not be "revolutionary", but they are a hell of a lot better than what I used to deal with.


The least invasive we seem to have in development right now is EasyGlucose[0] which monitors glucose levels from a photo of your iris, but it seems like nothing has come out since the initial press in 2019.

Similar is Google detecting heart disease from photos of the back of the eye, whatever happened with that? [1]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/08/non-invasive-glucose-monit...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027902/google-verily-ai...


If this is a serious prediction, I am sceptical. A number of years back Google tried to develop a non-invasive glucose monitor. The monitor relied on a sensor attached to a contact lens, that measured chemicals in tears. They failed. Measuring glucose without having access to the fluids inside the body is something that I doubt even Apple would be able to accomplish.


Apple has never "made" anything that others haven't perfected first. So, even if someone came with a non-invasive glucose monitor, it won't be Apple. If someone does come out and it works well and if multiple companies copy it... we may see it on Apple watch around 2025 or later.


Informed consent becomes the new standard of online consent and we finally see the end of the Accept All button.


* Cloudflare ($NET) stock up 75% from current value to $133 or greater.

* AMD makes an even larger dent in the consumer market, enterprise starts to ramp adoption.

* Apple will reach a $3T market cap.

* Google and Facebook will be largely unscathed by regulatory pressure. No major break-ups.

* TikTok implements more social features such as messaging, to take on Snapchat and Instagram.

* A breach larger than Solarwinds will occur, impacting multiple governments and large businesses worldwide.

Controversial:

* President Joe Biden reveals a serious illness known to affect mental state.

* One or more coronavirus vaccines are found to have serious side effects, including death.

* Tesla market cap will halve to $334B or less.


New blockchains are released that offer practical value

VR headsets as gaming platforms become commonplace

Global politics becomes even more strained


Obligatory Year of the Linux Desktop prediction. :)


Ha! Beat me to it...and the 100 other people that scrolled down before posting!


With what's happening with Valve and Proton recently, there may be something here. Although not in the way we'd expect. Valve-machine as a PC-console with preset specs?


Lot of lockdown, at least until November, then maybe some improvement will start showing.


NFT art draws in a large economy


Bitcoin will evolve laser turrets to adapt to the rise in people doubting its power.


Scotland will begin talks with Ireland about forming a United Republic of Celt.


Cambodia is rolling out a blockchain-based digital currency system. Cambodia.


[Much of this thinking is based on watching my 14-year old son embrace a new technology and listening carefully to his words and how he thinks about it, and comparing that to historical technology adoption waves. There are really large and important moral / social / utopia vs dystopia conversations around this next tech leap that I’m skipping for brevity - just focusing on tech & business in this post.]

Prediction 2021: VR adoption leaps forwards but isn’t mainstream.

Prediction 2026: You will work in VR. All day.

Prediction 2031: You won't have a smartphone.

You will wear a pair of glasses that will pop up a screen when you want one, and give you other AR (augmented reality) features.

Obviously these changes will take time to trickle-down by socio-economic class and country development stage, just as smartphones didn’t reach everyone instantly. Just for specificity (predictions are more fun if you can be clearly right or clearly wrong!) let’s say, “More than half of people who type on keyboards for work now will use VR for work”

VR will represent the "next internet" in that everything will be reinvented around the headset.

We have “files”, “folders” and a “desktop” on our computer because it was a mental crutch that helped us understand how to think about a computer when what we had was paper, pens and desks.

We're currently in the phase where we lean on current navigation/thinking as a crutch, ("watch movies with your friends in a virtual theater!") but eventually we will sort out what a "website" is in this new context, and how we navigate and find things. Everything will be reinvented for this new medium as it moves from early-adopter to the way we interact online. It will be a blended shift, but eventually this will be the primary experience.

How we name the technology that is the exception shows us where we are now during this kind of technology adoption:

“Camera” meant a film camera. We didn’t even think about it. Then “camera” meant film and we added “digital camera” for context. Now “camera” means digital, and we would add “film” if needed for context.

“Online” means the internet “Online in VR” we’ll add for context. 2031: “Online” will mean VR, and we’ll say “legacy internet” (or something like it) to refer to what we now call the internet / online.

Fax Personal Computer Cellphone Internet Smartphone Social Media Electric cars Remote work pushed forward by COVID <-- we are here VR

What this means for startups/business:

Macro: As with any of the big leaps forward, some huge companies will fail to make the leap and they'll fall, and some massive new players will emerge. This is the realm of funded startups, because timing this leap is hard, there aren’t immediate revenue opportunities for most companies because the next generation platforms will be built over the next 5 years.

All of the big players are investing into this space. Facebook is the clear leader so far. Apple seems dormant but is great with hardware and will do well here, we just can't see it yet.

Multiple VC-funded companies you've never heard of will be a household names in 2031 because they correctly rode this wave. (Just like Zoom in 2020)

New opportunities:

Exercise will be reinvented around VR. It will be more social and more fun. Perhaps people will move around more rather than less once a computer isn’t something on a desk.

Real estate: People won’t leave their homes as much. Many won’t leave their homes at all. Where you live won’t matter, which will mean cities won’t matter (as much). Massive transfers of wealth will happen because of a shift in real estate values.

Travel / tourism: Completely reinvented. People will travel much less. Now you can see the Eiffel tower, or climb Mount Everest from home. They’ll also travel less because feeling like you are with family/friends will be almost as good as really being with them.

Drones / telepresence: You will use drones when you want to have telepresence. You will see out of the drone, and move / look around using the drone.

What else?


The Corona virus pandemic will peak around 1. april.

Fiscal and monetary policies will thighten compared to 2020. The assets that had the most speculation in 2020 will correct violently: Tesla, Bitcoin ...

The US-China relationship will improve.

Big social media (FB, Twitter etc.) will split amongst political lines.


It is 2021 and ... I can't believe we are still using raw plaintext for these kind of threads. Wouldn't it be wonderful:

* To be able to vote predictions

* To filter, sort, search, group, slice and dice predictions

Same goes for HN:Jobs and other threads like that. We need just a bit more structure.


I disagree. To me and much of HN, this is a feature and not a bug. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854214


Lots of places exist for that. HN don't need to do it.


VR and AR finally become mainstream and it becomes the next big thing as consumers get a taste of what the future is.

Federal reserve cryptocurrency comes out of the blue and is finally released but it is hampered by privacy concerns and mistrust.


1. Commercial real estate nose dives, karaoke bars expand exponentially in the free space 2. Vaccines take a long time to roll out (~3 yrs) so international travel enacts mandatory screening - meaning giving your swab samples to nation states just to enter the country.. like how the US takes your fingerprint - privacy erosion gets worse to the point of mass protests but won’t be fixed for decades 3. Routine dr appointments where youre diagnosed with a cold or flu result in mandatory tests for mutliple viruses rather than being told to go home and take paracetamol.. this becomes a new standard test 4. eSports Go main stream 5. Startups in waste management begin weighing up ejecting junk into space 6. JavaScript developers jump on the Rust bandwagon to survive the next decade


Oh also, sex dolls with AI GPT-3 startup and human relationships are forever changed


How about: Rust has its "left-pad" moment?


Depending on exactly what you mean by "left-pad," this may be structurally impossible.


Rust is "left-pad" all the way down.


The United States will enter a new foreign conflict with biden as president.

Edit: thanks for the downvoted guys... You're right, it'll likely be kamala as president by the time we're at war again


Life will continue.


Covid gets worse, a lot worse especially in kids.


* It will be widely acknowledged that non-pharmaceutical interventions had little effect on the spread of COVID-19, with geographic and demographic factors the principal determinant of countries' death totals. Deaths indirectly caused by lockdowns will exceed deaths attributed to COVID.

* Large companies will roll back generous WFH arrangements, claiming that it really is "better for your career" to be in the office.

* Dominic Cummings will return to Government in some form.

* At least one COVID vaccine will be withdrawn for safety reasons after a large number of people have received it.


The first point is already demonstrably false. Similar countries right next to each other have different death tolls in the order of multiples (Sweden vs. other Nordics).

Also, similar geographic and demographic countries have performed vastly different in different parts of the of world (eg. South Korea or Japan vs. UK in order of magnitude)


I think it’s certainly demonstrably complex enough to make drawing a binary conclusion difficult at this point.

This is an interesting study which takes a wide variety of factors into account - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.6043...


I'm not arguing it's not complex or that a lot of factors go into the response. I am however suggesting your original claim that non pharmaceutical interventions had little effect is demonstrably false. Comparing the 1 death in Taiwan and the to tens of thousands in the UK, including strong quarantines and contact tracing quite obviously had an impact.


Though likely a much smaller impact than other factors such as cross-immunity from previous HCoV epidemics such as SARS and MERS.

There are no studies which have found statistically significant links between political measures and excess COVID deaths.

From the conclusions section:

“Regarding government's actions (i.e., containment and stringency index), no association was found with the outcome, suggesting that the other studied factors were more important in the Covid-19 mortality than political measures implemented to fight the virus, except for the economic support index.”


SARS and MERS didn't reach anywhere close to spreading through the population, so cross immunity (if it's strong, which we don't know), wouldn't have done much. The fact that you bring that up as a rebuttal is telling.

One difference with those is that their governance and infrastructure to tackle a pandemic already existed, which counts. You could write that off to existing 'public health', as you have tried to stretch from the paper, but that is a disingenuous of that research.

A quick search implies that you are also not looking very hard to find studies that don't find linkages. "The results presented in this paper suggest that policy interventions may well explain the majority of cross-country variation in officially reported Covid-19 deaths."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-020-00466-5


My prediction for 2021 was widespread acknowledgement by the end of the year that lockdown measures had less impact than other factors.

Since we’re not there yet, let’s wait and see.


Bitcoin hits 100k.

My friend who I'm on the phone with: "most theaters will shut down and AMC will launch their own streaming service"


Doordash for weed

Tech companies will close offices and have most employees work from home

Google will finally make a smart watch on par with the Apple wacth


Google will finally make a smart watch

I highly doubt that. They've managed to ruin even the amazing Pixel phones with poor hardware and poor decisions on pricing and availability. I have a Pixel 2XL and desperately want to upgrade but I can't because both Pixel 4 and Pixel 5 are not available in India! I've been waiting to buy a good non-Apple smartwatch for years now but I can't wait anymore. I prefer Android over iOS, but the current affair of things is making me give up and just go for iPhone and Apple Watch.


Isn't Ease already DoorDash for Weed?


Due to state-by-state legalities, it isn't available in every state that even had recreational weed being legal for quite a while. In WA, weed delivery is still illegal, and Ease tells you that they cannot service that area.

So I agree with the parent comment, but I want to clarify that I don't think the parent comment meant as "doordash for weed company will emerge". I think they were implying that the law changes that would allow that to happen, and then one of the companies in that niche will become truly big and successful.


Here are some I've been thinking about:

- Eventually the virus mutates and becomes less lethal –it needs a healthy host population to survive. Evolution, not vaccines will drive normalization.\n - Cloud gaming explodes in Q1. Just before spring we will have a killer app for VR. - Much more paid-communities... - Close to the end of Q3, Apple starts creating a buzz around AR glasses.


There will be contact with an alien civilization, the kind of which we haven't ever thought about.


Care to elaborate?


The intended meaning might rely on remaining vague. The book Rendezvous with Rama gives the reader a similar feeling—experiencing something so alien that our brains can’t quite appreciate fundamental dynamics or concepts (separate from technology)


Ah, so to rephrase: We'll encounter alien life, so unlike any life that we currently know, that it'll be, well, life as we _don't_ know it?


I think a lot of these will be wrong but here goes.

For 2021:

- coronavirus is still going strong in most of the developed world by March. By the end of the year it is still going strong in less rich parts of the world and there will still be measures to control it in most richer countries

- there won’t have been any successful antitrust action against a large us tech company (though perhaps some trials may be ongoing)

- there won’t be any large scale police reforms in the US

- there won’t be any new constitutional amendments getting the support of more than 20 US states

- tourism between rich countries in the northern hemisphere will increase significantly compared to 2020, and be similar to 2019 levels. Other tourism will not be close to 2019 levels.

- real estate prices will continue to rise in rich cities in the US and Europe

- relations between the US and China will sour slightly

- Belarus is effectively annexed by Russia

- hn commenters will move to the right, political flame wars will increase, and more people will complain about the site on Twitter. pg’s essays and responses to them will still regularly hit the front page.

For the 203rd decade:

- real estate prices (in rich cities) will have continued to rise above inflation. There will be more government schemes to somehow allow people to afford houses. Young people will complain about them but politicians won’t remove them.

- relations between China and the US/EU will sour. A smaller proportion of consumer goods will be made in China but some industries will be captured. Manufacturing will not have significantly returned to the US and manufacturing jobs certainly won’t have.

- brexit won’t have been a very good for the majority of people in the U.K.

- one of the following will happen: 1. Poland, Hungry, and other particularly conservative countries will leave the EU; 2. The constitution of the EU will change to prevent single members from vetoing policies; 3. (Most likely tbh) the EU gets into a US-style political deadlock where reforms can’t be made and bills come with loads of crazy things tacked on (either due to negotiations or because passing bills is so hard.)

- relations, and particularly public sentiment, between western countries and Turkey worsen, but those western countries will continue to need to make deals they don’t really like with Turkey.

- computer science courses at typical good universities in anglophone countries will be at least 65% male. Google will have made little progress trying to increase the gender balance of their workforce.

- hn will be a shadow of its former self and far fewer people will come here or post interesting comments.

- this will be the decade we realise we fucked it with climate change.

- oil prices and demand will go down. Some gulf states will be having significant political problems because of this, others will still be hanging on by relying on cash from better years.

- Statically typed languages with advanced type systems (in particular rust or something like it) will increase in popularity over the first half of the decade. Some new programming construct or paradigm will be invented that makes dynamic languages become more popular but maybe not as popular as they once were by the end of the decade. Garbage collection will still be very popular but some GC’d languages may offer more ways to have objects out of reach of the GC. Parallel programming, simd, and gpu programming will still be hard, even in the good languages. Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C# and Java will still be very popular.


Microsoft will buy Steam.


Daft Punk comes back, releases a single with album forthcoming.

The political divide continues to grow in the US. Terrorist acts are attributed to alt-right ideology, and government starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites.

Only a third of the country will be vaccinated by the end of Q2 2021.


My prediction is that Hate Speech definition on social media becomes so watered down that no one would agree what we are talking about. Every day people with anti-mainstream thoughts will get so used to be canceled all the time that they will start to hate the internet and themselves.


>starts to remove particularly egregious examples of online hate websites

Hate speech is free speech in the US, though. The government can only get involved if there's incitement of "imminent lawless action". I could see private companies trying to stomp out the sites (refuse to host them, etc.), but the government can't do anything except in the case I mentioned earlier.


the government seizes domains all the time. The idea of them shutting down websites because of terrorism isn't new. 'National Security' overrides free speech in the 21st century. The facilitating crimes angle can easily be used as well against a rowdy online community.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-seizes-domain-n...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-seizes-27...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/california-operators-my...


OP is talking about stuff like stormfront.org which is still up after like 20+ years. Your examples are terrorism and prostitution/money laundering. The federal government can't do anything about sites like stormfront.


President Biden will order a national mask mandate for all 50 states, making the mandate last from January until the end of April. The mask mandate will significantly decrease the number of covid cases in the US, alongside vaccines being more widely available to Americans. Some other safety measures may be put in place as well, making the US reach herd immunity by summer 2021.


Only negativity so something optimistic to talk about:

- Vaccine program will mobilize and kick start the economy. Big Time. New restaurants will open up, it will be like a forest fire that wiped out the trees but new vegetation will grow. New business will start up.

- Travel is going to be out of control once everyone is vaccinated and cases plummet after herd immunity is reached.

- Python will have a great dep management finally.

- M1X is going to ignite the competition from AMD/Intel.

- US Senate will go blue next week. New pro-democracy laws will be passed in next 2 years after this shit show.

- Remote only jobs and startups will invigorate local towns and decentralization of cities. Local ISPs, local farming, local means of production.

- SpaceX starship will demonstrate further success.

Long Term:

- US, EU, APEC region will start becoming less reliant on China over the course of next 10 years. Fungibility of supply chain and decentralization. Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philipines, Eastern Europe, Mexico will see rise in manufacturing industries.

- New chip companies outside of Taiwan.

- Defense spending will go through the roof, defense stocks will do exceptionally well.

- Globalism 2.0 will put checks and balances for healthier international cooperation.


> Globalism 2.0 will put checks and balances for healthier international cooperation.

I'm curious about this one. Who do you think will put the pressure / lead the change? (In terms of organisations or gov groups rather than countries)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Parliamentary_Alliance_o...


> - Travel is going to be out of control once everyone is vaccinated and cases plummet after herd immunity is reached.

Sincerely doubt that: for once a very big percentage of the population will refuse vaccination for all the reasons one can think of, many businesses have gone bust so travel is accessible to less people and considering the state of the airline industry, I'm willing to believe that prices will be through the roof and into deep space.

> - Python will have a great dep management finally.

I think it's ok to dream but I've given up hope on that.


first they send us the virus (c), then they send us in recession (chinese stocks without representation @usstockmarket 1.2 trillion + bitcoin without mining supremacy 336 billion), then they send us to war (taiwan)


  - BTC goes over $100k in 2021
  - We will learn about Aliens more
  - AR/VR will go mainstream. Something like Pokemon Go will appear & be huge.
  - Fitness apps start to become mainstream. Mainly follow-along workouts like FitnessBlender on YT.
  - Creator economy will be huge. We'll see more creators grabbing media spotlights like Logan Paul & Charlie D'amelio
  - Elon Musk announces a new company & becomes the richest man in the world
  - More unicorns come out of India
  - WASM goes mainstream
  - Covid Vaccine has various side-effects. There will still be a Covid billionaire.
  - TikTok survives
  - China tries to enter into US & India again, their biggest markets
  - A new social networking platform will emerge
  - Facebook is now only used by 50+ year olds
  - More people start online businesses.
  - Adult industry booms. OnlyFans wouldn't be just for NSFW content. Celebrities get on it as well.
  - India launches Cameo & OnlyFans alternative.


I'll still suck


I think after Trump (war cost to much), the US have to have at least one new war again in 2021.


The new more-infectious SARS-2 strains will outrace the vaccination rollout in most Western countries. It's stupid but it looks like the default outcome by now. Hard to say what the consequences would be.


my predictions:

1. the vaccine will prove effective against a certain strains of virus but ineffective against other strains, giving a false confidence and later re-emergence of corona.

2. WFH will continue. and companies planning to reopen offices in mid 2021, will postpone till 2022.

3. Trump will refuse to leave White House. grabs popcorn

4. College students graduating in 2021 will face severe competition with 2020 unemployed grads leading to stagnation in salary for entry level jobs. C level positions will have no impact.

5. IT will forget about SolarWinds attack and move on as irresponsibly as before


These are the most depressing predictions but probably also most realistic given 2020's events.


BITCOIN $250K


Edward Snowden will not get pardoned by President Trump


I wrote some stuff when this topic was first posted but didn't submit it. I'm glad I didn't because it gave me time to read other posts instead of my knee jerk reaction.

My thoughts that I was going to post to HN were mostly political/dystopian/economic bound. None of it related to tech. I'm glad I didn't post it.

One poster made the observation that most of the '21 predictions on HN didn't have anything to do with tech. Maybe tech adjacent, such as what FB or google impacts might be, but not much on core technology. I think this is kinda accurate of the tech industry though. Not a ton of big changes, things really slowed down this year but still notable exceptions.

Here is my revised thinking with less dystopian and political takes.

Bitcoin will rise and fall through the year, no idea how high it gets or where it settles but it's gaining popularity and it's impossible to ignore as people look for new ways to invest because people simply want to park their cash somewhere.

Space. small sats are blowing up in popularity. There's so much new tech and parts, and cheaper launch services. It's getting much easier and less technical to launch a small cube sat. There's open source flight software and constellation management software now. There's open source parts and designs for small sats. On the what-to-do-with-it side of satellites, it's also blowing up. There's a lot of new companies crunching data from small sats for everything from investing to weather observation, conservation, and military proliferation.

Drones. The war with Azerbaijan and Armenia shown how powerful military drones are over conventional warfare. Tanks are no longer relevant. You don't want to be a solider driving or even walking around on a battlefield with a drone loitering overhead. Small commercial drones are also being used in warfare too. The Saudi pipeline that was blown up used small drones with bombs attached. Drone swarms have become a thing for both artistic display and terror. There's been reports of drone swarms overwhelming nuclear plants air space, overwhelming military responses. They're too small, too portable, to be effectively combated against. I think we see a rise in counter drone tech to match the rise in drone swarms and drone warfare. FAA(?) is already implementing more controls to limit what you can do domestically with them and it will continue although, interestingly hobby aircraft has been a thing long before quad copters became regular news stories but we haven't seen them really used for makeshift war yet. I also anticipate seeing drones used for more small 'army' type applications this year.

Electric cars continue to take market share. Finally we're seeing all of the major car companies go head first into this. I think it causes increase in Tesla's popularity rather than a bad thing like saturation. We're too far away from saturation for a few years still. With this battery tech continues to improve incrementally. I don't see any revolutionary changes to battery tech over the next years but incremental changes that are enough to satiate our desires. In a few years costs will drop but we're still on the developing new tech side. Alternatives will have to be found for it to continue at the current rate of growth due to lithium supply constraints. This also leads to more banana republics among countries which mine lithium.

Wind/Solar energy continue taking market share from coal/nat gas/nuclear. Solar roofs continue to become more common place which also helps drive battery tech.

WASM gains more traction by end of the year there will be major projects from big corps running on WASM.

The URL will start to die and not matter. More and more consolidation of the internet will happen and the web will commoditize in these huge mega corps. Google is a main driver in killing the URL but all big players benefit from it. I think PWAs contribute to this. The url doesn't matter if it's an icon on your phone just like an app. Link shorteners also contribute to the decay of the URL. When I say URL is dying what I mean is that it isn't as important anymore and people don't really care. They're clicking something off FB or google and the title is all that matters.

ML continues to get bigger, but there's less break throughs and instead tightening around things which have worked and dumping ideas/applications for ml that haven't.

Deep fakes combined with GPT-3/4(?) will have some big break through applications for entertainment.

People say SV will die but I think it already has. It hasn't been about startups for 4 years now. It's all about mega corps. And mega corps have been building satellite offices all over the country/world. Now they've all gone a year with WFH and I think the satellite offices will play a bigger role for them as they become hubs people work around.

Internet availability will play an even bigger role next year and focuses on municipal broadband will become more common topic. This also prevents a lot of migration around the US where people don't really leave cities but move around to other ones to find their cultural fit.

A rise in new text based social media sites (not tiktok/insta types) as alternatives to the common ones like twitter/fb/reddit. They won't be hugely successful or profit making, but I think we're at a tipping point where it's easier to just live in your own social bubble than trying to coexist on the same sites as everyone else.

We saw quibi fail and everyone celebrated. But it did sound like a good idea, it's what substack is to writing. However phone-only kinda backfired when everyone was stuck home and not commuting on the bus.

Auction sites alternative to ebay have been on the rise last year and will continue to grow and evolve. BaT for cars blew up and now has some competitors. StockX for shoes and now everything hype has blown up. which has also shined a bright light on bots and scalpers with a few big ticket items coming to market this year. I see new opportunities to curb this or take advantage of it coming out next year.

Something better than Stadia will come out by year end. Maybe MS hedging against consoles. They'd be in a perfect place given Azure and xbox.

Mentioned briefly above but more interest in biomedical/informatics will come out. The help-protein-folding-from-home applications were a great introduction. Many new people finding interest in these fields and we see new breakthroughs next year.

SolarWinds fallout will be unnoticed by most people but the security industry will have a great year.


Aliens will make contact.


So, that government spending bill that the most recent COVID stimulus is included in, that Trump signed a week ago? Someone snuck in a section that various intelligence agencies are to publish reports on any information they have on UFOs within 180 days of it going into effect.

https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-report-government-agencies-180-...


The large scale Corona vaccination programs turn out to have major unforseen negative consequences.

Excessive monetary and fiscal policies sets off an unstoppable spiral of inflation in the US and Europe.

Trump declares himself US president. Escalating political violence in the US.


China will get into bigger skirmishes with neighbouring countries.

India might experience one or two major terrorist attacks.

Trump will be more desperate and loud.

Amazon Prime / Netflix might bring in pay-per-view / pay-per-hour options.


> India might experience one or two major terrorist attacks.

I am very curious to know what made you predict this


After a torrid start to the year, by the end of March the pandemic will be mostly over for nearly all western nations. Whilst vaccination and some social distancing will continue to the end of the year, most people will be back to work from April in office, pubs and cafes will open.

International travel will not be back to normal until 2022, however.

The vaccines will not be as effective as anticipated, but a combination of multiple vaccines, community spread, and large vaccination programmes later in the year will be sufficient to mostly eliminate fatalities.

This good news will be tempered by the realisation of the full economic consequences of covid. Many people will lose their jobs. The liquidation of assets will result in downturns in many markets, and probably a stock market crash. Inflation will take off. Governments will struggle with keeping down borrowing and investing to keep the economy going. It will be a great year for those supplying infrastructure.

At the same time, a desire to “roar” will lead to a boost in spending by those who can afford it, and we will see a “mini roaring 20s” in some ways, but more affordable ones. Lots of booze, drugs, divorces, and unplanned pregnancies. People will travel as much as they can, but a lot of it will have to be within country.

Scotland will elect a landslide of the SNP and an independence referendum will be scheduled for 2022.

It will become clear that Northern Ireland has essentially left the U.K. and this will lead to some discontent but the troubles will not return.

Belligerent behaviour by the U.K. will lead to an economic and legal confrontation with the EU. This will be drawn out and run into 2022.

American - U.K. trade talks will stall, ultimately resulting in the resignation of Boris Johnson, made somewhat inevitable by his previous behaviour towards the US.

The EU will have a year of huge decisions, but ultimately will come out stronger than ever.

It’ll be a surprisingly bad year for China, as they struggle with balancing authoritarianism with entrepreneurship, whilst also faced with strategic diversification by other nations acting in concert.

Twitter will finally be bought, probably in Q1 as Jack et al. realise it has peaked.

We’ll see about a 10% increase in home working but, apart from that, the predictions of the demise of the office will be mistaken. However, that swing will be enough to cause major problems for holders of commercial real estate, and major changes in the composition of rural areas as the rich displace locals, most notably in major beauty spots.

Biden will become president, but many of his left leaning supporters will be very disappointed with the compromises he makes and the distraction of the economic crises thrown at him, as well as further very serious problems with China’s foreign policy. Twitter will turn on him but support his Vice President. There will be some discontent within the democrat party on these accounts, but people will hunker down to wait it out.

It will be an amazing year for the fight against climate change, as Biden re enters the Paris Accord and vast amounts of money are pushed into green industries.


Kamala Harris will be President by July.


This is a ballsy prediction, but exactly the kind I came here for. No point in making conservative predictions when the stakes are so low.

(Obligatory "I wish only the best for the president-elect and his family", in case that was unclear)


I wouldn't make that prediction for 6 more days but all things considered, probably.


I believe we will find cure to cancer in 2021;


Evidence of microbial life outside of Earth will be announced.

US Government will announce it has been studying sophisticated UFO activity seriously for decades. They will acknowledge that the technology is unprecedented and could be of extra terrestrial origin.

Joe Biden will have repeated episodes of public dimentia. Public trust in his abilities will erode.

Tesla stock will collapse by at least 25% over twelve months. Afterpay (APT.AX) will lose 80% of its market cap. The price of Iron ore will reach $175.


What's with the iron ore prediction?


Inflationary pressures and pent up demand no doubt. Also, you can just look at the chart and see it's basically already there.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/iron-ore


1. Remote work is here to stay. Because covid vaccines will fail to reach herd immunity. Because the mRNA vaccines are too complicated to manufacture and deploy.

2. China will eradicate the virus within their borders, because their vaccine is easier to manufacture and deploy. And is probably safer, since it uses the traditional inactivated virus technique. So less side effects for most people.

3. Housings prices will continue increasing. Further separating the haves vs. the have-nots.

4. QE infinity is here to stay. Low interest rates will continue to push up asset prices for stocks and housing.

5. The virus will continue to ravage America for the next 5 years. Then the mutations will come.

6. Lots of houses will be foreclosed on, but wealthy companies and investors will swoop them up for pennies on the dollar.

7. American politicians will continue to be absolutely clueless, as to how their decisions and indecisions, will further ravage the fabric of society.


> Because the mRNA vaccines are too complicated to manufacture and deploy.

Don't you think some of the other vaccines (like AstraZeneca's, or maybe Novavax or the Russian one) will be deployed at a large scale?

It might take the EU and US regulators a month or two to approve them, but then things should move pretty quickly...


India’s Hindu populism will go further right.

As the vaccine rolls out in the U.S., we should slowly see at least a short term economic boost as spending increases, potentially increasing inflation.

Housing prices will continue to rise with less and less inventory, especially for single family homes.


My predictions:

- Pandemic won't go away or show any signs of going away at the end of the next year. Multiple new strains will be around at the end of next year, some of which will not be protected by the vaccines. Many more countries, specially those under the Chinese influence (which there will be more of), will not shut down or have travel bans or vaccines or have any measures against the virus.

- The vaccines will kill people at a higher rate than the pandemic, mostly by other diseases than COVID (because the immune system is a very efficient adaptive model, if you bias it to be effective against one thing, it will be at a cost of losing effectiveness against most of everything else), and vaccines will be considered very successful.

- Bitcoin will have lowest value in the year around Christmas time next year, but it will still be around the lowest value this year. It may reach much higher before it drops.

- Most American big tech companies will lose significant value. At the same time, a few like Microsoft and Tesla will be completely unaffected.


2020 was not the "start of the decade". There was never an year 0.


third world war


0


1. Major earthquake on the US west coast

2. Bitcoin will hit $60K but will also touch again $5K in 2021

3. Trump will remain President

4. $VIX will hit $100


(VIX isn't a dollar value and you can't directly buy or sell it)


Options my friend


Right, I said you can't buy it _directly_. It's still not a dollar value even when you're buying/selling options for it. Strikes don't need to be dollar values.


> Trump will remain President

How?


Believe it or not, there's some weird ways for it to happen; this is the scenario that I can remember offhand, but I think there's one or two more:

It sounds like Pence is the one that counts (or doesn't) the electoral votes, so depending on the circumstances it could result in neither candidate getting 270, which results in a "contingent election" - one vote per state, from the House of Representatives, which would be majority Republican, for the president. The Senate would choose the vice-president in the same way - so if this actually happens, it's apparently possible (if absurdly unlikely) to get a Trump/Harris or Biden/Pence outcome.

One possible reason Pence could do that is if the contested states send two sets of electors - one certified by the governor (how we usually do it) and one by the (Republican) legislature. My understanding is that if both groups of electors are correctly certified, either Pence would have to choose which to count, ignore both, or the Supreme Court would get involved. Key phrase for finding more on this is "dueling electors"; a lot of places are saying the legislature-certified ones wouldn't be valid, but a handful say it's possible.


Most interesting ones!


* Robotaxis with L4 self driving will launch in select cities

* there will be hyperinflation and it will be reflected in asset prices


Democrats will win the GA runoffs

Off the back of that, stimulus and other popular liberal policies will be enacted. And they'll be successful and well-liked.


I want to believe, however I think Joe Manchin will stand in the way.

I also think Joe Biden won't do anything to stop the filibuster.


Biden has nothing to do with the filibuster tho


Huh? He has everything to do with the filibuster.

He will work with Democratic senators to set their agenda during his term, and part of that is decisions regarding whether to keep the filibuster or whether to push to end it, or to work around it. He can express his will via the bully pulpit, and via communication & coordination with Senate Dems, the same way basically any president has been able to convey their agenda to the senate for as long as we've had presidents and senators.

Obama and Harry Reid had this exact conversation over whether to continue using a filibuster, and Obama listed it in his autobiography as a regret that he didn't accept Reid's suggestion to nuke the filibuster.


[flagged]


Can you please stop posting flamewar-style comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly lately, and it's what we're trying to avoid here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when commenting, we'd be grateful.


I’d like to know what exactly I’m “flamewar-style” comments on?

Parent commented on the “liberal GA candidates” one of whom is a known anti-Semite and literally beat/assaulted women, and that they “would be well liked”.

Other comments posts I’ve made have questioned the extreme views commonly held by those in this site, where events like CHOP/CHAZ in Seattle became well favored and liked. Yet obviously, no one then comments on the 2 or 3 black underage teens killed or the women raped/sexually attacked.

Better yet, most people here would still agree with Seattle’s mayor’s comment “it’s the summer of love”.

Perhaps we should fight against those comments and posts?


Snark and provocation on divisive topics equals flamewar. These are the sorts of comments that don't belong on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25254922

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25255196

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097468

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097867

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270544

Too ideologically generic and predictable, not enough information.

A lot of your other comments are good though! I probably shouldn't said "repeatedly" above—it's technically true, but I normally only say that when it's more obviously true.


There will be outbreaks of COVID-19 for at least a decade, as well as new strains of it.

Companies will embrace remote work after they realize they can stop paying for expensive offices and all the expensive services associated to them.

AI/ML will get better at learning and all the skepticals will be ridiculed forever.




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