
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010) - tcharlton
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681
======
dang
All: this thread is about predictions that HN users made 10 years ago. Note
the year in the title above.

If you want to make a new prediction, a new thread has gotten started:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278).

------
aazaa
The most striking thing about the thread is how little of current importance
was even mentioned:

\- Bitcoin would become the decade's best investment by far

\- the President of the US would conduct foreign policy through Twitter

\- electric scooters would become a billion dollar business (Bird, Lime, etc.)

\- the sharing economy would threaten the taxi and hotel industries (AirBNB
and Uber)

\- escalation of school shootings

\- the explosive growth of quantitative easing

\- negative nominal interest rates on sovereign debt

\- revelations of mass surveillance by the US government

\- streaming video services would begin to produce content rivaling major
studios in quality

\- Amazon would become the everything company

\- DNA testing would become a major recreational activity with numerous
judicial and social implications

\- the US would approach energy independence, driven largely by a boom in oil
extraction technologies

Also interesting to consider how all of these ideas would have seemed more or
less ludicrous in 2010.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
> escalation of school shootings

Bubble thought. School shootings are down from previous highs and are actually
very rare [0].

COVERAGE and willingness to use any incident to promote a very specific
narrative are up.

[0] [https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-
still-o...](https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-one-of-
the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/)

~~~
calcifer
"No Way To Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens)

~~~
ancarda
On that thought, is there any way to prevent shootings without making guns
harder or impossible for citizens to own?

Seems many will not disarm in the US, so should we be exploring other options
rather than repeatedly saying the US should be more like other countries?

~~~
jonny_eh
Is it so bad to make guns as hard to own as a car? Simple licensing would go a
long way to reduce the risk of guns.

[https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20861019/gun-solution-
backgrou...](https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20861019/gun-solution-background-
check-licensing)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
> Is it so bad to make guns as hard to own as a car?

The ONLY people that say this are the ones that would be (fucking) horrified
if we treated guns like cars.

Ok. You are proposing I should be able to buy any gun I want whenever I want
regardless of size or capacity, automatic, or loud or silenced for cash
without any checks or regulations at all? That the only requirement to use it
in public is that I need a license - BUT - that carry license is good in all
50 states?

... that sounds good to me! Let’s do it.

Yours is an argument based entirely in ignorance of gun laws. And maybe car
laws too.

~~~
jonny_eh
> Ok. You are proposing I should be able to buy any gun I want whenever I want
> regardless of size or capacity, automatic, or loud or silenced for cash
> without any checks or regulations at all?

What? No.

~~~
etrabroline
But that's how loosely cars are regulated, and you said you wanted guns
regulated like cars. I think what you meant to say is to regulate guns much
more strictly than cars.

------
haunter
IsaacL nailed it the best

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093)

And surprisingly the WoW one is the most off :D

~~~
TulliusCicero
> \- As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than
> Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java,
> trading even more programmer time for CPU time.

Interesting how plausible this one is, yet turned out to be terribly wrong:
the newer hyped languages that got some uptake were largely compiled ones like
Swift, Rust, Kotlin, and Dart.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
One thing that always really bugged me about the "the language will figure it
out" philosophy is the complete disregard towards carbon footprint.

Like yeah, you can make an interpreted dynamic language that's pretty neat,
but you can also make something like go, swift, or Julia that jits and also
captures 90% of that ease of use while significantly reducing your hosting
costs/energy consumption.

Going forward I think static compiler inference will be the future of language
design. Either for safety like in rust or for convenience like in swift.

And we can already see pitfalls in the interpreted world of python where the
wrong implementation, like using a loop instead of numpy, can lead to
devastating performance impacts. Looking forward, something like this seems as
outdated as having to manage your 640k of executable space in DOS: an
unreasonable design constraint caused by the legacy implications of the day.

My prediction is 10 years from now we'll look at interpreters and language VMs
as relics from a simpler time when clockrates were always increasing and
energy was cheap.

~~~
guidoism
I'm actually pretty amazed at what the Javascript VM people have done in the
past decade. It's way more than I ever expected.

As far as the carbon footprint, well, yeah, it depends. At Google I remember a
friend talking about how he cringed whenever he added more code to the
pipeline that ingests the entire internet. He said that he wondered how much
extra carbon was release into the atmosphere just because of his stupid code.

As for numpy, we are seeing that loops are stupid and Iverson and APL were
right. :-)

~~~
bjz_
> At Google I remember a friend talking about how he cringed whenever he added
> more code to the pipeline that ingests the entire internet. He said that he
> wondered how much extra carbon was release into the atmosphere just because
> of his stupid code.

I wish companies were under more financial pressure to actually track and
mitigate this. (hint hint, carbon taxes)

~~~
SamReidHughes
If you run your data centers where electricity is cheap, you're using
electricity but not emitting very much carbon dioxide.

------
scarface74
What’s amazing is how little changed.

\- Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that
matter and they are still in relatively the same position. iOS still controls
the high end where the money is and Android has the market share but the OEMs
are not making any money.

\- Facebook is more profitable and popular.

\- Amazon is still the number one online retailer, the Kindle is still by far
the most popular ereader but more importantly, the Kindle platform is still
dominant.

\- Google still hasn’t managed to diversify from its ad business and YouTube
is still dominant for video.

\- Netflix is still the dominant streaming platform.

\- Microsoft is doing better than ever.

~~~
jedberg
> Netflix is still the dominant streaming platform.

Netflix didn't start streaming until 2011. So it wasn't a streaming platform
at all in 2010.

~~~
chalupa-man
Netflix was a streaming platform in 2007.

[https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/01/8627/](https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/01/8627/)

By 2009, they had 12,000 movies up for streaming, and Netflix-compatible
devices were advertised heavily in stores, with Best Buy including Netflix
apps on their store-brand devices.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-compatible-video-
devices-c...](https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-compatible-video-devices-
compared/)

------
sambroner
At least this guy was wrong

> I predict lots of people will make predictions, but we'll never go back to
> check and see if they were right.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748)

~~~
real-hacker
We would never know if he is right

------
DevKoala
> Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political
> scalp. That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of information are going
> to start being the kind of core liberal issue that environmental issues
> currently are.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703)

This poster saw it.

~~~
dnautics
> Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political
> scalp.

Who's scalp was it? I don't know any politician who has been taken to task
over network analysis and data mining. Fore sure not Obama, whose staffers
have quietly chortled that they did far worse than Cambridge Analytica ever
did. Definitely not Trump, his numbers are as even as they haev ever been.
Maybe Zuckerberg? But he's still CEO of his company.

~~~
arrosenberg
Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign claims their data operation is how they
won in the Rust Belt.

~~~
skinkestek
To me it seems obvious that Hillary Clinton was the one who pulled (or pushed)
the victory in Trumps direction, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by
some really interesting remarks about her core voters.

(Disclaimer: Not an American, don't like Hillary Clinton and definitely not
Donald Trump.)

~~~
arrosenberg
I can see how one would get that impression based on our media, but it would
be an oversimplification to say the least. The history of Hillary Clinton is
too complex and long to get into for the purposes of this discussion.

Suffice to say the Trump campaign made a concerted effort to use data to
target ads at specific groups in the Rust Belt with the intention of de-
legitimizing her as a Presidential candidate.

------
hirundo
> if there is a way to work Elon Musk in there somewhere that would be good, I
> have a feeling he's going to make some big waves in the next 10 years but I
> haven't a clue how. \-- jacquesm

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025811)

~~~
lalos
The Roadster got delivered on 2008, right but not a crazy prediction based on
those times.

~~~
tashoecraft
Roadster was an extremely niche car for millionaires. Spacex had yet to have a
successful launch I believe. So while not a crazy prediction, still impressive
that I doubt many people who have bet on

~~~
lalos
Model S got unveiled on 2009, the Gov invested/lent in them in 2009 and I
remember the whole buzz of having a Tesla. Seems like a lot of people betted
on them (pre-orders, government, investors, etc).

Quick search result in that time frame
[https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1...](https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2009%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F1%2F2010&tbm=)

------
gregdoesit
What a fun read! The one that ended up being the most off in the thread:

> I predict (and hope for) a major turn back to simplicity in technologies.
> Multimillion-line software will go extinct like dinosaurs. Existing
> programming languages and platforms will gradually be replaced with ones so
> simple and elegant that one software component will be written and
> maintained by one to three developers and art designers and not a whole
> software company packed with managers and other unnecessary staff. Oh, and
> managers along with poeple who "understand" "software business" but not
> software will hopefully go extinct too.

If I can predict anything for 2030 based on this, it will be software being
even more complex, with even more frameworks and abstractions.

~~~
zozbot234
I'd say that this prediction is describing _current_ developments quite well.
Newer programming languages (Go, Rust) and development tools are making the
"software as lean independent components" vision more relevant than it ever
was.

~~~
bordercases
Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels
of performance to get all of this to work.

Performance comes from optimizing the usage of state against hardware,
modularity comes from code satisfying the properties of composition which is
best left stateless (and high levels of modularity must come from abstraction
and conventional practice, incurring further debts on the programmer and
machine.)

It's a tension that I haven't seen fully resolved but I'm very very very open
to being wrong. Many languages seem to be experimenting in this space with
some preference for one side of the equation for another.

~~~
zozbot234
> Someone really needs to crack simple generic type systems with native levels
> of performance to get all of this to work.

We know how this works, at least in broad theoretical terms. Zero-cost
abstractions are quite feasible _within_ a self-contained module/component,
but their scope is ultimately limited by ease of building and deployment.
Nevertheless the performance impact of having to support high levels of
abstraction _across_ modules/components is quite reasonable, even if not
literally "zero" cost.

~~~
bordercases
I'm thinking supercompilation might be another part of the equation as long as
we're talking extended composition of modules and types whose behavior is
totally closed. Having a pipeline that can supercompile when systems are
pushed in production even if some compilation time is traded for performance
at development (maybe "local" supercompilation for subsystems relevant to a
development team?) would be an interesting thing. But I don't know.

~~~
jlokier
Fwiw, I agree about supercompilation.

Some have noted that JIT systems perform many of the same things as
supercompilation, and it seems reasonable to consider that JIT is part of the
equation for optimising performance when systems are pushed to production.
We've been doing that for decades now, with increasing sophistication in the
details. Profile driven, multiple stages of specialisation and optimisation.

Not quite to the levels of proof systems (and therefore supercompilation as
envisioned) yet - there's plenty of room to get better at it - and we need to
go there if we want those "zero cost abstractions" across modules that aren't
designed for it, often with significant impedance mismatches.

------
mNovak
> Google will be the Microsoft of 1990-2000: scary, dominant, and increasingly
> hated (by nerds at least).

That one strikes a certain chord..

------
wheelerwj
Some of those are really funny, but the one by adw nailed it.

>adw on Jan 1, 2010 [-]

>Network analysis and data mining will claim their first major political
scalp.

>That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of information are going to start
being the kind of core liberal issue that environmental issues currently are.

~~~
adw
Thank you! There are still lessons to be learned from the early data
journalism community, which is what got me thinking about this at the time;
Craigslist eating classified advertising and Facebook eating display created
this kind of apocalyptic burst of desperate creativity which didn’t save news
but pointed in a bunch of important directions which haven’t been fully
followed up.

~~~
mdgrech23
wow crazy you found this comment.

------
TheKarateKid
> * Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be
> downhill for them (at least for the rest of the decade). > * Surprisingly
> enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs will have to
> leave his position due to health problems or something else.

Unfortunately, both of these were spot-on.

------
ra7
A lot of doom and gloom for Microsoft in that thread. But Microsoft has fared
much better than anyone expected.

~~~
mooman219
I disagree, I think anyone the put in charge would have done well. Satya came
in during one of the biggest bull runs in history and just surfed the wave.
Even Ballmer would have had a hard time to stop that.

~~~
ricardobeat
Surface, Azure, Minecraft, Github, VSCode and the whole renewed developer
focus... those seem like pretty strong shifts and not just 'surfing the wave'.

~~~
olliepop
They are. Microsoft, especially under Ballmer, was notoriously anti-OSS (open-
source). Not only did Satya make the decision to shift the company to be cloud
focused, he represented a change of guard when it was critically important to
make peace with the open-source community.

Ballmer: Called Linux "Cancer". Literally.

Satya: "We are all in on open-source"

------
wcoenen
Nobody saw Bitcoin coming. (The first block had already been mined at the
start of 2009, but there was no real exchange trading until later in 2010.)

~~~
umanwizard
If someone saw it coming in 2010 they are extremely rich now :)

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Or they sold it all in the 2013 bubble and now regret it.

(This happened to a friend of mine - he sold it all off to pay-off his student
loans before the 2013 bubble peaked - it'd be worth over $10m at the end of
2017).

~~~
jamiek88
Or, like me, literally deleted my wallet with 100 ish coins in 'cos I couldn't
be bothered finding a USB key.

I though 'oh I'll just mine a few more next week' when I get my new laptop
(!!! mining on cpu).

Narrator: He forgot about it.

~~~
umanwizard
If you still have the old machine, it's not impossible that the deleted wallet
is still on the disk and could be recovered using some sort of undelete tool.

~~~
jlokier
Good thinking. I'll be happy to supply expertise recovering data from old disk
images if this is the case :-)

------
darzu
> Functional programming / dynamic languages will go out of fashion.

Glad this didn't happen. Also it's weird to me to equate functional & dynamic
like that.

~~~
dehrmann
They halfway did. Other languages took the interesting parts of functional
languages (Java and C++ have lambdas, now). The the dynamic bit, Python has
type annotations now, and Go, a replacement for Python in some ways, is
statically typed.

Except for the spread of Javascript. No one said backend JS would be a thing.

~~~
chalupa-man
It was already a thing, Node launched earlier in 2009 and there had been quite
a bit of talk about it on HN already.

------
lawrenceyan
> The world falls into war, inclusive of even the most pacifist, post-military
> states. On the upside, a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter moves anthropogenic
> global warming to the back burner and spawns a generation of Mad Max-style
> entrepreneurs among the ten-million or so human survivors. Surviving
> software engineers relish the opportunity to rebuild lost infrastructure
> "the right way this time"\---including a transactional, secure, well-formed,
> rule-based, semantic world-wide-web---while the less-gifted turn to
> secondary issues like clean water, shelter, food, energy, medicine, and
> transportation.

> Internecine fighting erupts amongst the software clans over whether certain
> symbols are separating or terminating and whether or not the name of the god
> of modification is spelled with two letters or five. The dehumanized masses
> turn on the dithering software clans and their IT crowd supporters,
> demanding to have their souls restored from failed exchange, facebook,
> gmail, and twitter servers. A small nomadic clan clad in denim and mock
> turtlenecks seeks the legendary Cupertino Stone in the wasteland of New
> Gorgoroth (mostly between the 85 and the 280), but finds only the
> unpublished "Objectivist-C Manifesto" and shiny discs inscribed "Dylan DR1".

------
contingencies
This one came true: _The post-PC decade. The evolution of SmartPhones, set
tops, cloud computing and other mobile devices is going to make the PC
redundant for most people. By the end of this decade I could see the PC being
exclusively a business tool or power user tool._
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022)

~~~
nearbuy
It's trending that way, but this decade still sold more PCs and laptops than
the previous decade. 2018 sales were around the same level as 2006 or 2007.

------
chubot
_HN will split._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709)

Didn't happen! Kudos to @dang and the HN staff for keeping the site going for
a decade !!

~~~
surround
Well, there is lobste.rs

~~~
omegabravo
lobste.rs is invite only which makes it hard for people like me to sign up

~~~
gerikson
Feel free to provide me an email at @gerikson on Twitter (DM) and I will send
you an invite!

------
wyxuan
Jacquesm's comment on Musk is quite accurate

"

Edit: if there is a way to work Elon Musk in there somewhere that would be
good, I have a feeling he's going to make some big waves in the next 10 years
but I haven't a clue how.

"

------
mam2
"Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs
will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else."

yeah

------
joaomacp
by DrJokepu: > Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though
Steve Jobs will have to leave his position due to health problems or something
else.

Sad, but accurate.

------
fullstackchris
before anyone makes some new ones for 2020 - 2029, i urge you to read this
great article:

[http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-futurism-
has-a-...](http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-futurism-has-a-
cultural-blindspot-rp)

it has something special somehow, I always come back to it

------
cambalache
It is going to be expected that most of these predictions were going to be
wrong, that is OK. What surprises me is how almost ALL of them were. This is
not better than how the average Joe in the street or the proverbial monkey
with the typewriter would have fared. Well, perhaps they would have done it a
little bit better.

------
anderspitman
To me the interesting question is: What cool things were predicted and still
don't exist, but could if someone from that thread had spent the past 10 years
trying to make it happen?

------
theboywho
If something can be predicted, or if many people agree with you, then it's not
that revolutionary.

ctrl+f "bitcoin" returns 0 results.

Disruptive ideas take humanity by a storm few people believe it's coming, the
rest can only connect the dots looking backwards.

~~~
nothrabannosir
To be fair, when I ctrl+f Bitcoin in my actual life there’s also 0 results.

~~~
fyfy18
I feel that overall much didn't change in the past decade in the tech world.
Bitcoin is a great example of that, there was a big bubble where you could
raise money just by mentioning Blockchain, and then just as quickly it faded
away. AI isn't much different at the moment, it feels much more like a
marketing buzzword than something that has changed my life.

Compare this to developments happening outside the computing-tech world (like
Musk is doing) and the rise of green building tech. Today it is more than
feasible to build a house that generates more energy than it consumes over the
course of a year, even in cold climates like Northern Europe. The only thing
preventing this from being more common is knowledge (builders keep building
what they know) and it costs a little more upfront.

------
wtvanhest
> motters on Jan 1, 2010 [-]

> Also, this decade sees the beginning of the "pension bomb" \- the
> demographic bulge of post-war baby boomers crossing the threshold into
> retirement. It's fairly easy to predict that there will be pensions
> scandals, with some pensions companies going bust or paying out far less to
> recipients than had been originally advertised. Also I predict the beginning
> of large supermarket scale retirement homes/complexes/compounds, where
> economies of scale can reduce costs of elder care.

Both predictions were 100% correct. Many pensions were cut dramatically or
eliminated. AMR is one that comes to mind immediately, but the pension benefit
corp could only do so much for many others. Also, this problem now seems like
an imminent problem for many companies and public entities. This is only going
to get worse.

The Villages in Ocala, FL fit the second point, and I'm confident other places
exist like it.

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah basically the entire state of Florida. The Villages is pretty exceptional
though.

------
michrassena
Predictions are a fun mental exercise, but they read an awful lot like
horoscopes. They're just too subjective to be truly interesting. It's not
really all that different than predicting the weather ten years out. It'll be
hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Things will be pretty much the same
but different.

------
tedsanders
"Tech is changing faster than ever."

What changed in tech from 2010 to 2020? My take below.

Hardware:

Phones got way better and changed the face of modern human life. 3D TVs
fizzled. VR has fizzled so far. AR fizzled. CPUs improved, but more slowly.
HDDs improved, but more slowly. SSDs got cheap. Displays got way cheaper. Cars
got better infotainment systems and other features, but never drove
themselves. Wireless power didn't happen. Mesh networks didn't happen. Ultra
cheap RFID didn't happen. Robots didn't happen. Telerobots didn't happen. T
Dynamic pricing didn't really happen. Drone delivery didn't happen. Flexible
electronics didn't happen. Nanotechnology didn't really happen. Graphene
didn't happen. Ubiquitious computing didn't happen. Non-silicon based solar
didn't happen. Silicon solar costs plummeted and installations went
gangbusters. Wearable electronics didn't happen, except for smart watches.
eReaders grew. FPGAs never took off. Chips are still mostly silicon. The top
CPU makers are still Intel and AMD. The top GPU makers are still NVIDIA and
AMD. The top video game console makers are still Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft.
Home internet remained mostly cable, not fiber. Computers remained x86, phones
remained ARM.

Software:

The dominant search engine is still Google. The dominant computer operating
systems are still Windows and Mac OS. The dominant phone operating systems are
still Android and iOS. The top video streaming site is still YouTube. The top
map site is still Google Maps. The dominant office software is still Microsoft
Office. The dominant social network is still Facebook. The top online retailer
is still Amazon. The top cloud provider is still AWS. Internet Explorer died,
and Chrome grew in share. Websites are lot better and slicker. Phone apps got
way, way better. Cryptocurrencies didn't take off. MMOs didn't take off. Web
anonymization didn't happen. Web identity didn't happen. Malware still exists.
Spam still exists. Lag still exists. Functional programming didn't take off.
Telepresence didn't take off. Remote work didn't take off. Mass outsourcing of
software jobs didn't happen. Linux didn't take off. Prediction markets didn't
happen. Video calls didn't really take off, but they happen. Most of what was
growing in 2010 continued to grow, most of what was shrinking in 2010
continued to shrink.

What else happened? What narratives do you construct?

~~~
Eduard
Good writeup!

But for my situation and requirements, SSDs still didn't get cheap.

------
thoughtexprmnt
Interesting to see that many of the predictions weren't far off.

But one recurring prediction that was notably wrong was of Microsoft's
declining prospects. It would have been difficult at the time to argue
otherwise, but WOW did things turn out differently.

------
clashmeifyoucan
I'm glad we proved this guy wrong today
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748)

------
clashmeifyoucan
> -People become more privacy aware after an image search engine with facial
> recognition is popularized and they realize that any picture ever posted of
> them by anyone is in the search result for their name. People become less
> willing to let others take compromising pictures as if they become posted,
> the link back to them will be made.

Not an image search engine as much as whole governments but this rings eerily
true.

~~~
kelnos
The sad part is that I don't think this has caused people, on average, to
become all that much more privacy-aware. Or, if they are, they still don't
really care.

~~~
jlokier
I think it's more like learned helplessness.

People don't have alternatives to using the internet, to their smartphones,
and to electronic money, that let them still participate in interesting modern
society.

I think deep down, anyone who thinks about it knows everything they do with
their devices may be tracked, is probably being tracked and analysed, but the
tools are too essential to life, so they can't afford to worry.

That said, I mentioned to someone recently that web servers keep a log of
every request and the person was shocked! (Imagine if they could see the
details kept by modern analytics and observability tracing!)

------
axaxs
Reading this made me a bit sad. So many people were optimistic, and many
predicted exciting things... but few if any of that happened.

~~~
kristianc
Hey, it wasn’t a terrible decade. We got the iPad!

~~~
cortesoft
10 years before that one commenter guessed!

------
sandov
Where is the thread for this decade?

~~~
crazygringo
Someone just started one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278)

------
mortenjorck
_> the end of 32 bit computing._

By itself hardly a bold prediction, but the top reply makes a caveat about
mobile devices, which gets some nods about mobile taking much longer to
transition to 64-bit.

Few might have imagined Apple would ship its first 64-bit phone only three
years later, and a version of iOS before the decade was over that ended
support for 32-bit phones!

~~~
rsynnott
32bit died on phones much quicker than on the desktop, in fact (though of
course it died on servers first). Arguably, this should have been predictable;
legacy software was a much smaller problem on phones.

~~~
jlokier
I find that a little surprising, because one of the side effects of 64-bit
address spaces is a lot of redundancy in pointer representations stored in
RAM. 64-bit pointer-based data structures have more redundant zeros.

Much of the energy in a computer goes on communication between chips, so
increased memory use means increased energy use. As well as more going on
inside the CPU transferring all those redundant pointer bits around

And phones are notably sensitive to energy use.

~~~
zozbot234
You don't _have_ to use full 64-bit pointers for your "pointer-based data
structures". You can store indexes into an arena allocation. This is common in
languages such as C++ and Rust, and will become increasingly so as 32-bit is
less and less used.

------
impendia
> Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial
> consumer goods, with close to 100% coverage across the civilized world. A
> significant fraction of ordinary consumer goods simply won't work in "dark"
> zones.

I'm glad that this remains mostly false (as well as "all high street
bookstores go bust"). Sure, you can get a wi-fi enabled toaster or coffeepot,
but the basic versions are still available for sale.

I chose to live without wi-fi at home, and with no smartphone, for the past
four months -- just to see how my life went without the distraction. Now the
experiment has run its course, and I plan to order wifi again. But basically
life went on as normal, and I feel I could do another four months if I chose.

I wonder for how long into the future such a choice will remain realistic.

------
vjktyu
The next decade will be the decade of survelliance. Nearly dust size receivers
will cost nothing and will be generously used everywhere: from concrete blocks
to clothes. The US will come up with a clever use case so people will buy this
themselves (finding a matching pair of socks will finally become a trackable
problem, thanks to receivers in all socks), while authoritarian countries will
implant these chips in lieu of passports and credit cards. Paired with 5G,
this will be a perfect always online monitoring system.

I don't think there will be any notable advancements in science: we won't
create AI, we won't cure cancer and we won't switch to electric cars.

------
keyle
Oh man this is fun. So many prediction we blew past and so many have had 0
progress.

------
zamadatix
Somebody hit up tlrobinson on Twitter and let him know
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025748)

------
netcan
Quick listing some top predictions & my take on right/wrong

Iran will Change : I’ll call it NO

RFID-Everything : Basically NO… not in consumer-land, at least

Cheap Flat Panel Displays : YES

Ubiquitous & Wireless/Mobile: YES

Ebooks Take Over & Pirates Win: NO. Surprisingly, the opposite happened.
monolithic legal markets did really well.

Electric Cars Event Horizon: ALMOST

Driverless Cars Go Live: NO.

Still No Fusion Power: CORRECT

MSFT Declines: NO

Chinese Bubble Burst: NO

Lady Gaga is New Madonna: Yes. Good call!

Google will Change for Worst: CORRECT on the moral point. INCORRECT on the
financial one

Pension Bomb Problems: No

Habitable Planet Found: PROBABLY, but we don’t know which one it was.

Data Mining Political Watershed: YES.

~~~
rjsw
> RFID-Everything : Basically NO… not in consumer-land, at least

Contactless payment systems grew out of RFID, I would categorize that as a
YES.

~~~
netcan
Ok, I'll call it a yes. Payments didn't come to mind.

I guess contactless payment just didn't seem important to me, so I forget
about it. Nifty, sure but blink and you miss it.

~~~
rjsw
I'm guessing that you don't live in Europe.

~~~
netcan
Actually do. Ireland. I do use it every day, and tapping _is_ better than
chip-n-pin. I barely remember scanning. But ultimately, it's not a huge
change.

------
robomartin
The first thing that comes to mind when I look back at these kinds of
predictions is what is being said today (or during the last few years) about
how AI is going to enslave and destroy humanity. The other one is how robotics
(+ AI) will lay waste to human employment.

Some of the people championing doomsday scenarios ought to be humbled by the
reality of not being able to predict almost anything ten years out.

Until someone invents a real crystal ball...

------
im3w1l
Kinda weird how no one saw Cannabis liberalization coming.

------
justinzollars
Wow! The quality of hacker news back then was amazing. So much concentration
on technology! So much positive energy. And the predictions were nailed.

------
hbbio
Funny how many independent comments predict a Microsoft demise in one form or
another.

In the context of 2009, Microsoft was obviously in disarray and most would
just accelerate a current trend to make a prediction.

Turns out many important changes in the decade were not predictable that way
(although it applies for the success of the smartphone in several comments
too).

------
echelon
2020's 2030 prediction thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278)

------
gaukes
So many predictions about driverless cars. All wrong :(

My guess is full self driving on high ways by 2030 with some semi-autonomous
trucks. Removing a driver won’t happen until 2040-50.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
I'm going to go out on a limb and say 2035 at the earliest for full self-
driving partly because A) software engineers never feeling quite done, B) the
underlying software, firmware, and hardware won't be proveably safe enough and
C) because something political will make self-driving EV's much more
difficult.

------
monksy
RMS owes someone money.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025795)

~~~
hatsunearu
I don't think it's _the_ RMS

------
FlyingSideKick
By 2030: 1\. Nigeria and/or Kenya's GDP will surpass that of the UK. 2\.
Global births will rapidly decline in all but the poorest nations. Data will
show that "Peak Child" is near and will occur around 2040. 3\. 4 day work
weeks for salaried employees will be commonplace amongst large corporations.
4\. A new search engine disrupting our commonplace search behaviors will be on
its way to disrupting Google 5\. The average Bachelor of Science degree in the
USA will cost >$180,000 at a public university

------
geuis
My takeaway from reading the top voted 2010 predictions is that people are
terrible about predicting what's going to happen 10 years later.

A few of them are correct (cheapish high density displays, commercially
successful ebook readers, self-driving cars) but most are terribly inaccurate.

Left the same comment but with some fun, probably wrong predictions, over on
the other post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941512).

------
bhouston
Lots of demographics problems in the western world and hopefully we get ahead
of it, unlike our track record with climate change.

------
suyash
Wow reading all those predictions sound so foolish! Most were way off, goes to
say why long term predictions is so hard.

------
GnarfGnarf
2010 was not the beginning of a new decade. It was the last year of its
decade. Ditto 2020.

There was no year zero.

~~~
aesthesia
A decade is a span of ten years. Every year is the beginning of a new decade.

------
kbrannigan
Africa... starvation and primitivity

There are some African countries richer than Eastern European countries.

This sucks...

------
nwsm
>Facebook will be gone in 5 years

>>Probably the best prediction I've read on this thread.

------
vendiddy
It's common to own a laptop, iPad, a Kindle, and sometimes even a drawing
tablet. They are have a tablet form factor, so these devices will probably
converge into a single one.

Once the tech becomes good enough, it'll no longer make sense to own all these
devices.

------
m0zg
Prediction: in 10 years we _still_ won't have self-driving cars on common
roads nationwide. Tesla will refund the money charged for "full self driving
capability" that was supposed to arrive "later this year" in 2019.

------
haecceity
Fun read but humans are not very good at making predictions.

~~~
crimsonalucard
I beg to differ, humans are the best at making predictions. There is nothing
better than a human.

~~~
thatsenough
We’re the best, but we’re still not good.

------
Apofis
\- You still won't be able to talk to your fridge

------
MichaelMoser123
funny they didn't seem to talk a lot about the cloud in these predictions, or
did i miss anything?

------
hising
> Lady Gaga will be the new Madonna.

Wow. Nailed it.

------
Archit3ch
Still no Duke Nukem Forever.

~~~
Archit3ch
Edit: I meant that they got that wrong, but it wasn't an unreasonable
prediction.

------
worik
The first year was year 1, not 0. So the new decade begins next year in 2021

------
PlasticTank
well after today's news I'm going with war

~~~
ianai
I fear you may be right.

------
jammygit
The death of C# and Java. It’s more of a wish than a prediction...

------
sakopov
Fully immersive VR tech will become the future of gaming.

------
namewink
TikTok is gonna go down in flames by dec 2023

------
aylmao
It's fun to see how some of these in general accurate, but others were very
far off. For example:

> Facebook will be gone in 5 years, just like MySpace. Half a dozen companies
> will rise and fall in replacing it. The web will churn even faster than it
> did before. [1]

Love the reply to this one. "Probably the best prediction I've read on this
thread." [2]

There's also [3]:

> * During the second half of the decade, the Chinese bubble will burst. This
> will be a quite heavy shock. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. A
> younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China.

> * Functional programming / dynamic languages will go out of fashion. People
> still using them will be judged as incompetent programmers by the people who
> moved on to the new fashionable programming paradigm(s). At the same time,
> huge corporations will embrace functional programming / dynamic languages
> and third world universities will start focusing on them in their courses.

> * Lady Gaga will be the new Madonna.

To be honest I don't know about pop to know if this is true, but it sounds to
me like Katy Perry might've out-Madonna'd Gaga.

Even the original post has some that didn't turn out as expected:

> \- Major changes will happen in Iran, one way or the other. The current
> trajectory they are on does not seem sustainable for a decade.

Little did they know, yes? Kind of, after the election of Hassan Rouhani and
an eventual nuclear deal, although that particular milestone would be scrapped
after a big change in government happened in the USA.

> \- Ubiquitous computing will finally arrive, with smart cards/RFID on our
> bodies seamlessly interacting with computers in our environment. As you walk
> up to your refrigerator, for instance, you're logged in and presented with a
> customized display. Same goes for the car or the entertainment surface at
> the Dentist's.

Little did they know at the end of the decade this would be DOA after a series
of scandals made people realize maybe privacy is way more important than
logging into your refrigerator with a customized display. Also, as it turns
out, dentist equipment churn, at least where I'm from, is incredibly slow and
still lacking an "entertainment surface" beyond maybe a TV if you're lucky.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027153)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027260)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025770)

------
aylmao
> Facebook will be the Google of the decade. > Google will be the Microsoft of
> the decade. > Microsoft will be the IBM of the decade.

The "decade" timeline doesn't quite fit but to be honest this wasn't a bad
prediction [1].

> Facebook will be the Google of the decade.

This feels very accurate, down to the people. There's plenty of ex-Googlers at
Facebook, including Sheryl Sandberg, who essentially built Facebook from "a
really cool site" to the profitable ad business it is now.

Google bought YouTube in 2006, and now it's a huge economy of content
creators. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, and it's now a growing economy of
influencers. There's plenty of differences of course, but in the ad-tech space
it's Google then Facebook, in Machine Learning it's Google and Facebook. What
big companies are releasing cool open source software, adopted by millions of
developers? Google and Facebook.

Miss-information, hate speech, political controversy and issues with
publishers? Facebook and Google/YouTube. In terms of data-tracking only Google
is comparable to Facebook— or rather only Facebook is comparable to Google?
Virtually complete dominance of a key-part of the web? Google and Facebook.
Number of users? I could argue only Android and Facebook are at point where
they have to provide free internet to people to gain more users.
Diversification into hardware? First Google, then Facebook.

The list goes on. Facebook is (perhaps too ruthlessly, and "breaking too many
things") largely another "Google" in many ways. Not sure if this is what the
prediction was getting at, but it's interesting to think about.

> Google will be the Microsoft of the decade.

Right now it feels like this is happening. Right now, Google is ubiquitous and
feels unbeatable like Microsoft. It also has (1) platform dominance in web and
OS and key services, (2) an incredibly diverse set of products and (3) anti-
competitive behavior stemming from this dominance. It also has (4) a thick
layer of middle-management fighting for relevance leading to (5) lots of
product churn, worsened by (6) lack of focus due a "vision" vacuum in upper-
management.

I'd suspect the next few years without Page or Brin will be interesting. It'll
also be interesting to see if Google 1. Can pull of hardware (Pixel was a good
start, but the latest iteration has a lot of reviewers disappointed) 2. Can
focus (Android, Chrome OS or Fuchsia? Will they commit to a messaging
service?) and 3. Can deliver new products that stick.

> Microsoft will be the IBM of the decade.

Up until Satya Nadella took over in 2014 and his changes started materializing
later in the decade this largely sounded like it was the case— old stagnant
company, held mostly by slow-to-change enterprise customers, and little in the
way of new products.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088)

------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
> JulianMorrison on Jan 1, 2010: Ubiquitous mobile/wireless internet
> integrated into even very trivial consumer goods, with close to 100%
> coverage across the civilized world. A significant fraction of ordinary
> consumer goods simply won't work in "dark" zones. The gap between 1st and
> 3rd world countries will widen as a result - take a modern computer into
> backwoods Africa and it's a paperweight.

It's not wrong. But I guess he didn't foresee the Internet of Useless Shit. It
matters if you tablet doesn't work without Internet, but doesn't matter if
it's your refrigerator, or so we hope.

> Electric cars become fairly common. A destructive feedback loop starts for
> gasoline fuel: lower demand, lower profit, vendors go bust, less
> availability, monopoly prices, lower desirability. The gasoline economy is
> brittle because it has high fixed costs, a complex supply chain, and its
> power source isn't fungible. As with film versus digital cameras, the result
> is an exponential crash in the desirability of gasoline cars

Exponential crash? Didn't see it yet.

> Driverless cars will appear. As they move down from the high end to the
> mainstream, they'll make taxis cheap enough that private car ownership
> starts to become quaint. Eventually, driving your own car will be considered
> selfish risk-taking, and banned on public roads.

Not yet.

> DrJokepu on Jan 1, 2010: Still no fusion power.

Haha!

> During the second half of the decade, the Chinese bubble will burst. This
> will be a quite heavy shock. A lot of people will lose a lot of money. A
> younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China.

The unsustainable early economic growth has came to an end and there was an
economic crisis, but there was never a major "burst". And the power was not
assumed by a younger group, but a more conservative group. Not sure if's
populist or not though.

> Hugo Chavez & his friends will be removed from power in Venezuela.

Still not completely fulfilled, but probably soon.

> Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be downhill
> for them (at least for the rest of the decade).

Accurate?

> Surprisingly enough, Apple will still stay relevant even though Steve Jobs
> will have to leave his position due to health problems or something else.

Accurate!

> adw on Jan 1, 2010: Network analysis and data mining will claim their first
> major political scalp. That'll be a watershed moment: the politics of
> information are going to start being the kind of core liberal issue that
> environmental issues currently are.

Accurate.

> jacquesm on Jan 1, 2010: [...] the end of 32 bit computing for consumer pcs
> and server platforms. So all mainstream machines not being mobile or
> embedded devices will be 64 bits by the end of the decade (and plenty of
> those will be too, but you are right, not all of them).

Accurate.

> artagnon on Jan 1, 2010: [...] 3. By 2020, Chrome and Firefox each have 35%
> market share. Internet Explorer becomes insignificant.

It's wrong, it's more like Chrome has 66% and Firefox has 33% (just an
example, the "real" number shows Firefox's market share is even less than
that). While the death of Internet Explorer was certain, it was hard to
imagine that Google Chrome would be a monopoly.

------
kick
I ranked all of these, and gave the rate of correct predictions. I might have
missed one or two, though.

\----- Winners:

'icefox
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026549)

ChromeOS. Based on Linux kernel. Entirely different security
system/deployment/upgrades, no legacy applications.

3/3 percentage correct: 100%

'jaquesm
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025696)

Pretty sure all are correct, though can't find statistics for the first on
hand.

5/5 percentage correct: 100%

'jacquesm
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709)

laarc, though laarc failed.

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

'adw
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025703)

No explanation needed.

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

'slashed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025702)

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

No explanation necessary.

'jeromec
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026044)

Correct. Would have been incorrect if U.S. didn't come back into Iran to start
another war. Details a bit blurry.

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

'jsz0
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026022)

No explanation needed.

2/2 percentage correct: 100%

'antirez
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025765)

No explanation needed.

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

'rms
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025758)

This happened, despite being far away.

1/1 percentage correct: 100%

'slvrspoon
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025943)

Progress with cancer happened, wasn't a big thing. Growth of a Chinese middle
class with a voice and independence didn't happen. Nuclear detonation didn't
happen. Achievements in energy tech happened. Wi-fi data collection on
everything happened, though not main change. Internet and software a snore;
happened. Privacy did become an issue for the common user.

4/7 percentage correct: 57%

'IsaacL
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027093)

Facebook successful.

Facebook IPO happened in time allotted.

Twitter became profitable.

Microsoft didn't go anywhere.

Microsoft grew, claim of shrinking denied.

Desktop market shrunk.

Internet Explorer went away. Point denied.

Mobile phones have more or less replaced computers for most average users.
Point denied.

Mobile phones did cause most of the big changes during this decade.

More successful startups.

Startups with Facebook/YouTube proportions didn't happen. Point denied.

Huge startups built on phones and web tech did happen.

Startup ecosystem has gotten worse. Point denied.

"Startup instead of college" has gotten more intense.

Languages slower than Ruby caught on. Was not because of Moore's Law but
because developers have the attention span of small rodents. Point denied.

Moore's Law is dead.

Deal to limit warming did happen, though it was in six years, not five, and
far less than what is claimed here. Point denied.

Traditional retail gave way to delivery; large shops weren't impacted as much
as small, and the incentives were wrong. Point denied.

China made no attempt to become democratic.

Rule of law in China got stronger, though civil liberties did not increase.
Point denied.

Internet crackdowns have continued and increased in China.

12/21 percentage correct: 57%

'iamwil
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025885)

Eugenics dating service from Harvard students was announced just a few days
ago.

1/2 percentage correct: 50%

'DaniFong
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026260)

Solar and wind are now cheaper than alternatives. Is not sold to customers
"when they want it, how they want it."

1/2 percentage correct: 50%

'bioweek
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026279)

Ubiquitous free internet did happen, wasn't a meshnet.

1/2 percentage correct: 50%

'borism
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025861)

Web did not cease to be the delivery platform of choice for applications, it's
gotten worse. Point denied.

Internet has become more restricted.

1/2 percentage correct: 50%

'zitterbewegung
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025906)

PMCs have gotten more prevalent. Have not gotten more popular.

1/2 percentage correct: 50%

'brfox
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025855)

Gene-therapy did become slightly more commonplace. Genome sequencing for
chronic conditions is now commonplace (wouldn't have counted this if 'brfox
didn't elaborate on the prediction in same thread).

2/5 percentage correct: 40%

'tommorris
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025771)

GNU/Linux on the desktop didn't really happen, but Linux on the desktop did
(ChromeOS).

Widespread adoption of LISP by developers sort of happened (Clojure), despite
much adoption, still limited reach.

Cheaper hardware happened, and is the only thing I'm giving a full point for.

The rest didn't really happen.

1/6 percentage correct: 16.7%

\----- Losers:

'varjag
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025740)

Didn't happen.

0/1 percentage correct: 0%

'10ren
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026574)

Nothing right, though first two slightly mirror events that happened (" _you_
inside" = VR; mobile devices have specialized processors like "organs in the
body," though multi-core is far from dead).

0/4 percentage correct: 0%

'erikstarck
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026088)

Nothing accurate barring possibly the Google example, though not even it is
really right.

0/3 percentage correct: 0%

'mojuba
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025706)

Entirely wrong, unfortunately.

0/a-bunch percentage correct: 0%

'lallysingh
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025783)

No substantial change in political bases, slight left-swing for demographic
mentioned.

0/1 percentage correct: 0%

'artagon
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025790)

Entirely wrong.

0/6 percentage correct: 0%

'andrewcooke
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025727)

None of this was correct, though AMD did make steps in that direction, and so
did IBM/Sony.

0/2 percentage correct: 0%

'samuel
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025853)

It hasn't yet.

0/1 percentage correct: 0%

\----- Honorable mentions:

'paraschopra
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025736)

Half-point given because tablets rose to prominence and serve as partial
e-Book readers, though they also killed dedicated ones.

.5/1 percentage correct: N/A

'Scott_MacGregor
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1026255)

1\. His company failed.

2\. Didn't happen.

3\. Half-point given; free for everyone, usually privately-funded.

4\. It's gotten worse.

5\. No explanation necessary.

6\. Didn't happen.

7\. It's gotten worse.

.5/7 percentage correct: N/A

'zacharypinter
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025867)

All claims basically correct, though flawed. Not taking into final %
calculation or ranking for that reason.

4/5 percentage correct: N/A

'motters
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025738)

Both predictions correct with large picture, both wrong on most details. Half-
point awarded for each.

1/2 percentage correct: N/A

'motters
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025817)

Problems with pensions happened, were not as bad as claimed.

.5/1 percentage correct: N/A

------
mc3
No one saw Trump coming.

~~~
mark-r
Scott Adams did, but not quite 10 years in advance. Check out his blog about a
year before the election.

Edit: here's just one example. It goes earlier than this.
[https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/09/23/the-reason-for-
tru...](https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/09/23/the-reason-for-trumps-
success/)

------
elfexec
My favorite from 2010 : "President-Elect Graham to Appoint Sam Altman to
Cabinet"... Not too far off.

I checked and nobody predicted a Trump presidency in 2010. So no time
travelers amongst us sadly.

~~~
sjg007
He will win 2020 unfortunately.

------
ganonm
\- The JVM running on a unikernal is the most ubiquitous backend deployment.
Kotlin is the most popular backend language.

\- Server-side rendering is ubiquitous. Previously, motivations for client
side rendering were to minimise network bandwidth requirements and to avoid
server-side statefulness, reducing RAM and CPU requirements. By 2030, memory
and compute resources are so cheap that the inherent advantages of server side
rendering make it a no brainer for the most part.

\- Discovery of extraterrestrial life will occur in mid to late 2020s, most
likely in the form of Martian microbes. The James Webb Space Telescope will
likely acquire strong evidence of organic lifeforms on multiple exoplanets.
Even more surprising discoveries may be made in this area.

\- Anti aging therapies become mainstream. By 2030, people in developed
countries can expect to live an additional 10-15 years in good health.
Reaching 'actuarial escape velocity' becomes a serious possibility for many
people alive now. Governments realise the time will come when they will have
to step in and bail out pension funds who have unwittingly sold annuities.
There will be a group of people who were old enough to get an annuity before
they became prohibitively expensive/unavailable and who were young enough to
reach actuarial escape velocity. They will be labelled 'the luckiest
generation ever'. This may not become totally apparent until 2030s or 2040s.

\- Real time ray tracing becomes standard by late 2020s. Games are
indistinguishable from reality. A murder case where defendant claims 'they
thought they were ingame' makes the news headlines.

\- Spacex's Starlink constellation is a massive commercial success. Partly due
to this, and partly due to ubiquitous aerial drone-based delivery, it becomes
not only possible, but increasingly desirable for many people to live in
remote areas.

\- Development of space based industry is slower than people hoped. Full
exploitation of cheap launch capabilities provided by SpaceX won't be seen
until 2030s. Blue Origin will catch up with Spacex's capabilities by mid
2020s. Private space launch industry will no longer be a one horse race.

\- Electric cars overtake ICEs in developed nations. Several incumbents who
don't react in time will go bankrupt and be acquired by electric car
manufacturers. As such, the brands won't disappear, the executive boards
however will be out of a job.

\- Cryptocurrency will remain off the radar for most of 2020 until, due to
major war involving a wealthy, developed country, millions of people will rush
to buy Bitcoin to save what they can of their wealth. Price of one Bitcoin
will quickly exceed $100,000 during this period.

\- People will become increasingly afraid to post their physical likeness
(appearance and voice in particular) on the internet due to a surge in deep-
fake powered identity theft.

\- North Korea will not collapse. The West will reluctantly accept it as a
nuclear armed state. It will gradually normalise relations with the outside
world and may even follow the same path China took, becoming a prosperous
country in the process.

------
dgzl
I think the country is going to become very, very divided.

~~~
ianai
I wish we’d have a moment where the extremity forces people to snap back and
cooperate with one another.

~~~
ashleyn
I figured climate change would be that moment but we have an entire side of
the political aisle essentially denying it's even happening.

------
stretchwithme
I predict by 2029 Hacker News will be overrun with AI bots and nobody will be
to identify them.

~~~
mark-r
Are you sure it hasn't happened already?

~~~
stretchwithme
I suppose an army of inept bots could throw me off.

------
pezo1919
Rise of Dependent Types in general purpose programming: eg. Idris, later
something like dependent js/ts.

------
stevefan1999
I hope I will get a girlfriend who is in CS major and is better than what I
did

------
LMMojo
I predict that people will continue to incorrectly think the new decade starts
with the X0 year rather than the X1 year.

------
abraxas
Moore’s law will peter out and everyone will be forced to squeeze out more
performance out of existing hardware.

The tide will turn hard against “the cloud” when companies figure out their
cloud spend is many times worse than their own data centres cost them. There
may be a new wave of “lean” cloud systems.

Fast programming languages will be in vogue again once the wastefulness of
things like Ruby/Erlang is finally understood.

------
HeWhoLurksLate
People will start moving _en masse_ to EV's.

There will be a spectacular fire because of an improper electrical install
that will become a huge news media event with people asking whether or not
EV's are actually safe (despite ICE vehicles having _gas tanks_ )

There will be a major continent-wide power outage either because of a natural
disaster or a highly sophisticated and coordinated attack against the poorly
secured power stations that at least span NA.

Valve will beat the ever-living daylights out of everyone else in the cloud
gaming space.

