Ask HN: Predictions for 2022?
1. HN predictions will continue to be a poor predictor.<p>(HN is wonderful for raw data and technically analysis, but full of prejudice and echo chamber effects, bike shedding, and poorly read young people - just look at the visceral crypto hate vs what&#x27;s actually happened... and the love for self driving cars... and and and... you have to separate predictions from your desires... worth reading: _Superforecasters_)<p>2. Incremental improvements to self driving trucks are closed track systems. Little progress in self driving cars and open road systems.<p>(it&#x27;s more blocked on regulatory approval, and SDCs are off-trend politically - pandemic&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;economy is what matters, and SDCs destroy jobs and give wealth to the 1%, no reason any politician would fight for SDCs right now)<p>3. More vaccine boosters, especially overseas.  Disclosure: I bought MRNA and BNTX)<p>(Sure, Omicron is &quot;mild&quot; but it&#x27;s still a <i>major</i> problem when the NYC subway, urgent care facilities etc are shutting down to staff sickouts... wait until Omicron comes to your town... Moderna etc will successfully target Omicron... I&#x27;m not forecasting whether Omicron mutates into a more-impactful variant: r0 is already crazy so a new variant would have to outcompete <i>that</i> OTOH there&#x27;s 1B hosts with Omicron and we were surprised at the number of mutations in Omicron... mutation to being less deadly is NOT assured: look at 1918...)<p>3. Bitcoin 50+k and maybe 100k.<p>(Institutions are piling in, and while altcoins are outperforming and stealing marketshare&#x2F;marketcap, BTC will continue to get allocated first)<p>4. China bails out its real estate sector. No hard crash.<p>(It&#x27;s too big to fail and also too visible. It&#x27;s a lot of money but CCP can afford it)<p>5. Trump continues to be marginalized.<p>(Out of office, he&#x27;s just not relevant and the signal media bans kinda worked... not that I&#x27;m not predicting 2024, where he could easily win if he&#x27;s up against low energy, uninspiring candidates)<p>6. AOC and Sanders continue to be marginalized<p>(don&#x27;t offer practical solutions - people want careers, not handouts or band aids. Also, they offer no solutions at all to tricky problems like immigration, foreign relations, USG debt, etc etc)<p>7. NYC (continues to) recover nicely. Measure by GDP.<p>(it&#x27;s singular in culture and entertainment, has diversified and integrated industries, and now has practical leadership both city, state &amp; fed... note that it&#x27;s still ruinously expensive and it won&#x27;t be any easier for working families...)<p>8. Remote work remains. Back to office is tepid. Office to residential conversions happen but it&#x27;s slow.<p>(Pandemic isn&#x27;t over and the economics of remote work are simply too compelling. Video and adaptations worked well and continue to improve. I&#x27;ve been working remotely for decades and cut &amp; executed billion dollar deals with people I never met: competitors schlepped on planes while my teams built compelling solutions and compelling demos. Office to residential conversions are slow projects and very expensive)<p>9. Amazon announces a split-up or parent company structure (e.g. Alphabet) of AWS vs e-commerce. (maybe 2023)<p>(The two businesses have little synergy... AWS is easily big enough to stand alone, and e-commerce should just be a customer under long term contract... Meanwhile AWS is giving up marketshare to numerous companies that <i>can&#x27;t</i> use it because of fiduciary responsibility with Amazon e-commerce being a competitor... each division could design new partners e.g. Amazon e-commerce could leverage Google etc )<p>10. Rust and Python and JavaScript continue to gain marketshare __in open source projects__.<p>(Linux and Solana are major boosters for Rust: Solana alone is $54 billion bet that depends on rust... closed source continues to depend more on platforms i.e. Azure driving gains for C#)<p>11. SQL, PostgreSQL and sqlite continue to dominate<p>(SQL has a 25 year history of copying innovations from new database tech... PostgreSQL and sqlite are well architected, well packaged, well supported and no-nonsense licensing...)<p>12. UAP evidence continues to mount and point to extraterrestrial or time travel origins but no conclusive evidence.<p>(UAPs are <i>very</i> fancy tech requiring massive R&amp;D and production... we&#x27;ve pretty much ruled out every current govt and military, leaving only &quot;crazy&quot; options... OTOH strong evidence that UAPs have been around for decades, which means a coordinated effort to release info slowly e.g. avoid panic... so my forecast that this pace continues... it would take an Arrival type event to be wrong, or UAPs to stop getting news coverage...)<p>13. 5g home internet grows quickly<p>(I have it: it&#x27;s wonderful... if you have the budget, I recommend getting 5g + terrestrial and bonding them together with a &lt;$100 load balancer =&gt; no more internet speeds drops... it&#x27;s amazing...)<p>14. US housing prices in the suburbs and countryside flatten out but don&#x27;t crash. Selected areas that got over-bought come down.<p>(See remote work and broadband... OTOH the COVID runup has played out...)<p>15. ESG grows in importance but does nothing material to slow global warming. Global warming disasters remain regional. Geo-engineering slowly gains traction as the solution but there isn&#x27;t consensus yet.<p>(Combine the math and politics, and no way will voters tolerate the extreme conservation required to impact temperatures... It has to be geo engineering... but since there isn&#x27;t a &quot;complete&quot; and practical solution, and since there&#x27;s 50 years and leftist guilt-driven politics pushing conservation, I forecast this continues until it hits a wall... Meanwhile, climate change isn&#x27;t a one year thing, and even if the Thwaites shelf collapses, Miami won&#x27;t flood in 2022... but once it does finally flood and $862B of talk estate is toast, <i>then</i> we&#x27;ll get serious about climate change, the emperors of conservatism will be shown to be wearing no clothes, and we&#x27;ll be forced to try geo engineering even as unsavory as it seems... but that&#x27;s definitely not 2022 and unlikely 2023...)<p>16. CBDCs continue to be researched, but no major economy announces one in 2022.<p>(Just takes time... they&#x27;ll let the small countries test first... I&#x27;m guessing Estonia announces a CBDC in the next 1-2 years)<p>17. Hochul wins NYS governor.<p>(She&#x27;s doing fine and no other candidate has brand name or reputation... just not enough pain to boot her for an unknown...)<p>18. Adams&#x2F;Hochul successfully turns NY regulators around from being laggards in crypto to &quot;saying the right things&quot; and stopping the Luddites, even if sensible regulations take longer. That may ultimate result in more regulation, but at least it&#x27;ll allow New York businesses to engage where today, major products like DeFi are blocked from NYS residents and businesses.<p>(New York is always about the money and business, and crypto is simply too big to pass up)<p>19. Metaverse grows but doesn&#x27;t crossover.<p>(Still too hard for humans to interface with it... but Ready Player One pretty much nailed it: for millions, RL will suck and AR&#x2F;VR will successfully dominate their attention, making virtual goods&#x2F;services ever more valuable in $USD terms... Unclear if early winners today will preserve that lead when MV finally crosses over to mainstream, I&#x27;m guessing when AR hardware becomes practical...)<p>20. NYC continues to attract and grow in tech companies and startups.<p>(Always been a good place to do business, and now there&#x27;s enough talent &amp; influence to hold its own... Plus, NYC is making a major and coordinated bet on tech... California has natural beauty and weather, NYC has <i>everything</i> else... when you turn off your screen, NYC is a fantastic RL place to reside... Both are expensive...)<p>---<p>Note: I&#x27;m not opining on the midterms, which obviously will hurt the Dems but nobody knows by how much - too much depends on future events.