Ask HN: What are you predictions for 2022?

134 points by csomar ↗ HN
- Use lists instead of long paragraphs.

- One prediction per list item.

Historical:

2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068

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

239 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] thread
All over the place predictions:

- More people will turn into alternative forms of investment (coins through large exchanges) as inflation continue to rise.

- Regulations around NFTs will start to appear as tokens are generated for copyrighted material. It will take famous personality taking things to court.

- COVID: A vaccine shot every ~6 months will be introduced.

- An early A/R prototype will be revealed by a big phone player.

- React will remain the leading framework for web application development, but a push towards better server-side-rendering will make performance easier to achieve for average developers.

- Web3 will go nowhere, and the vibe around it will remain driven by an MLM like mentality

- most predictions will turn out to be false :P
This is awesome because it generates a fun paradox.
no it doesn't, it is only guaranteed to generate a fun paradox if the prediction was "all predictions will be false".
Earlier there were only about 5 comments, two of which involved this "most predictions here will be false" - however one was sadly deleted and nobody else decided to play ball :D
The paradox would be “this prediction will be wrong”

“All predictions are false” could be wrong, because other predictions are right even though some are wrong.

yes you're right, although I think my example is more likely to exist than the previous.
Here, let me throw one in the true pile for the benefit of the true/false ratio: near the end of 2022, someone on HN will post a thread along the lines of "Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?".
This represents a sun will rise tomorrow type bet, though obviously not nearly as guaranteed but still looking good!
- Bitcoin will go down to $12,000

- One EU country will default (not Italy), the EU will bail it out

- China will enter a recession

- 2022 will be the year of the hottest and coldest temperatures on record

- and also highest CO2 produced on record, caused by huge fires in the Russian Taiga.

"- One EU country will default (not Italy), the EU will bail it out"

Who?

Spain most probably.
Could also be Greece, iirc they're still in slightly dire straits in terms of debt
Why Spain?
Why not?

It was a completely random prediction, so a completely random country is a good match.

Predictions are not meant to be random forecasts and "most probably" doesn't sound to me like random either.
What are you basing your predictions on? Quite bold to say the fourth biggest economy in EU will default in one year and not something the rating agencies seems to agree when compared to other countries.

Also "most probably" sounds like you have have already been short selling a good chunk of your savings.

Were other recent fires in the Taiga widespread enough to limit the spread of fires in the next few years?
> - One EU country will default (not Italy), the EU will bail it out

Given your name, it seems you might be a bit biased about Italy not defaulting ;)

Of course I might! But jokes apart, Italy's economy is in relatively good shape, compared to 2-3 years ago, and a need for bailout is at least a few years away.
Going with my gut feel which is "the biggest thing will start with something incredibly inane and stupid" so with that in mind:

- a huge worldwide economic downturn where the first tiny little domino is the price of those ape NFTs crashing

... but more realistically:

- The World Cup in Qatar will go ahead in November+December with fans, despite growing concern over a new emerging variant

- Queen Elizabeth to pass away

- Boris Johnson to somehow hang on as UK Prime Minister

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2022 will be more or less the same as 2021.
European perspective:

- car manufacturers will start to phase out ice production

- all time low birth rates

- brexit and covid will still be major problems for politics

- worker shortage we saw in GB, will hit rest of West Europe

- major collapse of German pig farming after tonnies moving away

- rise of living costs will kill almost all of which was left of brick and mortar shops

- The cryptocurrency market cap will continue to rise, reaching $4 trillion by mid-year then crash 60-70% about $1.5 trillion by end of 2022 (currently around $2.2 trillion as of December 31st 2021).

- More large companies will invest in Bitcoin, including Tesla who will purchase another $500 million worth. Tesla will also start accepting Dogecoin as payment.

- NFTs will continue to be hyped up along with Web 3.0 but there will be no actual progress. Once the crypto market crashes by 60-70% the companies which remain will start to truly build the future web technologies we will be using in 5-10 years time.

Elon has already stated they will accept dogecoin as payment
He has stated a lot of things... Does not mean it will happen.
Which will come first? Dogecoin or robotaxis?
web3 will start to become mainstream as corporations adopt NFTs
"Corporations" and "NFT" need "scam" to glue them into a meaningful sentence.
- another facebook whistle blower will emerge after the US midterm elections

- people will lose interest in NFTs, the bubble will deflate

- google chrome will decrease it’s market share

I wish and am helping for the last one!
Pandemic situation will turn into something alike Brexit - indecisive pulp without a view for resolution or and end. Further corrosion of EU agreements like the current suspension of Schengen Area (certificates are required now). Real estate market to rent and to buy will turn even more unaffordable and hopeless for salaried - especially millenials and younger.
Not betting on this one but:

- There will correction on stock market. And solution is to pump it up even higher...

- 2-3 covid variants and we will still being doing this same approach then, with 5th dose of "vaccine"

* The pandemic will gradually lose attention not because people stop dying but because new topics will dominate the news and people just don’t want to hear about it. By the end of the year the new normal of widespread mask wearing, vaccination and wfh will be established for the coming decade.

* There will be a growing awareness between the mismatch in the heavy web dev build tools that were designed for the feature-starved browsers of the IE era and the reality of today’s evergreen browser landscape. New frameworks and build tools will show up to take advantage of what browsers can do now.

* Because almost nobody develops on 8 GB anymore and software keeps bloating, by the end of the year it will have become a bad idea to recommend 8 GB RAM PC’s even for casual use. 16 GB will become the minimum spec for futureproofing, but it will take another three years for the PC market to catch up.

* The climate will be a dominant topic again, thanks to the IPCC reports dropping and the petering out of the pandemic. Governments will fail to make progress on climate accords because the hope that technology will save the status quo will outmatch the pressure for societal change. The private sector will surprisingly start filling the gap. There will be massive private green technology investment but still few results in CCS and newgen nuclear, which will eventually turn out to only be small parts of the solution. If it is a record breaking year for severe weather, climate protests will turn grim.

> become a bad idea to recommend 8 GB RAM PC’s even for casual use. 16 GB will become the minimum spec

I think the only reason why anyone still argues whether 8GB of RAM is enough is because of Apple still offering this miserable amount of memory on their Mac's. Anyone outside of Apple ecosystem doesn't even bother answering.

You should seriously look at all the most popular windows laptops at online stores.
> I think the only reason why anyone still argues whether 8GB of RAM is enough is because of Apple still offering this miserable amount of memory on their Mac's

I don't really agree with that. I bought a Windows PC in 2012 with 8GB RAM and connected it to my TV, for watching YouTube and general surfing. It's still going strong. Typing this reply using that computer. A dozen Chrome tabs open, Spotify playing etc. Currently 2.9 GB in use according to Windows 7 task manager (maybe Windows 10/11 would use more RAM?). I think 8GB is more than enough in 2021 if all you want to do is have a few Chrome tabs open, watch YouTube etc. Which is the target market for low-end Macs I reckon.

- 2022 is going to be slow and forgetful year of complacency

- Covid19 virus will mutate and people will be moderately compliant to recurring booster doses

- No significant climate change policies

- Housing prices will not go down yet people/entities will keep buying them

- America will invest heavily in arms deals and ignore investing in infrastructure and aid in local and foreign lands

- China and America will get involved in a proxy war - Fiat backed government issues e-cash will see greater push

House prices is an interesting one, regardless of where you are in the world. Where I am prices have skyrocketed (my flat which was 3,600,000 in 2017 is now "worth" nearly double that now - 6,900,000) and any time you mention to anyone that this looks like the insane growth we had in the UK and USA prior to the 2007 crash you get brushed off as a lunatic.
Everyone's either getting rich or wants to get in on it. You have a very small audience.

I predict that low interest rates will continue to wreak havoc. Lots of media content will address the symptoms but never the cause. No one of influence will publicly call it out. Also should a financial crisis arrive everyone will be like, "Nobody saw that coming!" Not a profound prediction I admit.

I wouldn't say comparing the housing prices is an orange to orange comparison to 2007 era housing price spike and it's subsequent collapse. The problem is MBS had a form of circuit breaker that verged on national default rate. But this time, housing prices aren't backed by some form of tradable derivative. People and funds are actually buying houses directly.

I think people are still making payments on the houses they have bought. But most surprisingly houses are being bought by mega hedge funds like Blackrock and what not. There is no circuit breaker for that. Also in NA and EU zones particularly in Canada, I believe money launderers buy up properties outcompeting and outbidding local investors.

I also I firmly believe that, we are living in a post-scarcity economy where economic logic fails, people buy up stuff regardless of its future economic outcome.

Voyager probe will leave solar system.

Water will be discovered on Mars.

Russia will further it's expansion, EU will send strongly worded letter.

- The Omicron wave will finish raging across the world by February/March, after which COVID will become a much more mild endemic situation.

- Africa will catch up a lot with vaccines, but that process will continue into 2023.

- China will give up on their zero COVID approach and be the last country to experience a major wave, aggravating supply chain issues.

- The left will continue to worry about COVID and politicians will continue using it as a power grab. Many irrational COVID restrictions will remain as political theater.

- mRNA technology will have several breakthrough successes and stocks of companies developing mRNA technology will steadily rise.

- Russia will stop their saber rattling in Ukraine, realizing that they don't have enough leverage against NATO.

- Ukraine will join NATO.

- The price of Bitcoin will reach a new high around the middle or end of the year, but it won't last long.

- Joe Biden will be hospitalized and Kamala Harris will attempt to push through several extreme left policies, which will be met with violent pushback from Trumpers, while Trump will amplify his inflammatory public statements.

- Due to supply chain issues, there will be shortages of many consumer products around the world, stoking inequality and discontent.

- Several countries will announce digital nomad visas to capitalize on taxes from remote workers.

Wishing a malediction on any specific individual is questionable.

Kamala Harris is not a member of the leftmost wing of her party, which is not a particularly left party by global standards. That party has, in the last couple of years, deliberately gone back to the centre (of US politics) with their candidate choice (i.e. Biden not Bernie) in order to meet the voters and present a "safe, reliable, moderate choice" to contrast the other party.

In this specific circumstance, why would Ms Harris have the inclination to, and mandate for, "push through extreme left policies" ?

I'm sure that some media figures would be pushing this idea for their own purposes of rousing emotion, but that doesn't in itself make it a prediction that makes any logical sense.

> Wishing a malediction on any specific individual is questionable.

I didn't wish anything on anyone.

- Covid will wither away, largely due to the scale of the Omicron wave

- Biden will pass away, making another massive mess in the US

- Markets will see a crash event

- EU/US will yield to Putin on Ukraine

- China will up its efforts to absorb Taiwan

> - EU/US will yield to Putin on Ukraine

Was there any chance NATO would accept an applicant that is currently fighting a war?

I will go with most 'outrageous' predictions I can think of:

- 2022 a year of Linux desktop

- Dynamic typing becomes niche technology choice

- 'Green course' becomes less popular due high energy prices

- West decreases trade with China by a substantial amount

- Russia invades a country without admitting that

- Windows 11 becomes even more user hostile and less 'Pro'

- iPhone grabs more market share in developed world

- Laws around refugees become more strict internationally

- Matrix, Signal become mainstream. I think its close already and next year will be a breaking point.

- More substantial AI adaptation/innovation in audio engineering space

- More substantial AI adaptation/innovation in anti bot space in online spaces like social media

- Governments start to open more data

> 2022 a year of Linux desktop

Has anything at all changed in desktop Linux space in past ~10 year to make it more user-friendly to "non-geeks"? I'm using desktop Linux and nothing comes to mind.

> Dynamic typing becomes niche technology choice

I wish!

> Russia invades a country without admitting that

Hmm, I am from that "country" and I think Russia is quite past "Little green men" stage.

At the moment they intend to instigate some thinly veiled provocation (read their statements about "it is actually Ukraine who is planning the offensive!" and "undercover American soldiers are preparing to use chemical weapons in Donbass") and go in with official "peacekeeping" mission in order to protect Russian-speaking people of Lugansk/Donetsk from bloodthirsty Ukrainian nazis. Plan B (if no good opportunity for provocation arises) is to just declare that West has crossed their "red lines" and forced their hand to invade in order to protect their security.

> Windows 11 becomes even more user hostile and less 'Pro'

Already happened?

> Laws around refugees become more strict internationally

Ditto.

>Has anything at all changed in desktop Linux space in past ~10 year to make it more user-friendly to "non-geeks"? I'm using desktop Linux and nothing comes to mind.

I meant it more as a joke as every year we expect it to be a year of Linux desktop. Nevertheless, I am quite happy with Linux these days. (I use all three OSes (Linux,Win,Mac) daily/weekly)

> Windows 11 becomes even more user hostile and less 'Pro' >>Already happened?

I think the progress is there, but I bet there are product managers already working on their KPIs to make it worse for Pro users

> I meant it more as a joke as every year we expect it to be a year of Linux desktop.

Ha! Didn't realize you were joking on this one since your other predictions seemed serious.

> Nevertheless, I am quite happy with Linux these days.

Me too.

> I meant it more as a joke as every year we expect it to be a year of Linux desktop. Nevertheless, I am quite happy with Linux these days.

Now, if only we could have a Beowulf cluster of Linux Desktops! </joke>

> Has anything at all changed in desktop Linux space in past ~10 year to make it more user-friendly to "non-geeks"?

Proton / Valve. Steamdeck will bring more people to the ecosystem than anything else. (Yes, to the desktop as well, not just the console)

> Matrix, Signal become mainstream

Which one? These two are not compatible. Besides, Signal I can see, but a possible Matrix mass adoption is probably still years away. Experiences from previous years have shown that there seems to be no incentive for a majority of users to move to decentralized protocols. Unless either WhatsApp or Signal adds compatibility, that is. Does not look like it's happening any time soon though: https://community.signalusers.org/t/make-signal-use-matrix-p...

I don't think it has to be 'either or'.

For example: iOS and Android are both mainstream and pretty much not compatible.

In 2012~2015 I was considered a "tin foil hat" type of person by my friends just because I talked about privacy and was conscious of who has access to my messages or data. Fast forward to now - a good chunk of non-tech people are genuinely scared of data collection and they start to take it seriously.

As for Matrix or Signal, at least for me both are fine. It feels extremely good that when exchanging contacts with tech related people most of the time they use either Signal or Matrix. Signal is becoming very popular between non-tech people too. I can see that a good amount of my contacts have it already.

- pandemic counter measures will go away, even as new variants emerge -- due to a combination of vaccinations and lack of attention span.

- Supply-chain issues will fade.

- inflation will slow.

- interest rates will go up slightly, almost nobody will care.

- asset prices will continue going up, but not as fast.

- Russia doesn't invade Ukraine.

- The cryptocurrency bubble will continue to inflate.

- things will largely go back to normal.

Just my guess...

Central banks will crap themselves between inflation and popping the bubble.

Covid will keep going with at least one new variant of concern like Omicron, but governments in the west will not lock down for it. Not counting ANZ and the Far East.

Web3 will soak up more VC than ever.

England to reach the world cup final. Denmark will do well. Mbappe goes to RM with Haaland.

Rewrite it in Rust becomes official Linux mantra. Lol.

It will be a tumultuous year, new covid variant will come out and governments will insist on the same playbook, a large part of the population will push back.

Money markets will go up and down surfing the good and bad news of Covid, but will cool off with the social cracks made by inflation and the timid “end of free” money. Bitcoin will go up but not reach 100k.

Tech’s gonna tech. Nothing profoundly new, the already big ones will continue to inflate and rake the money, sure they’ll get flak, fight a few big fines, make sure the right-to-repair plane lands of favorable ground. Their angst about the unknown future will increase but the bottom line will be great.

New hacks and leaks scandals, a roaring for a few weeks about it, nothing fundamental will change.

More “EVs surpassed ICE car sales” news, existing infrastructure will not be able to accommodate them and that will be mainstream news.

Shortages of things ( both legit and artificial) will continue and contribute to market instability and high prices.

When there’s instability among the people, the regimes tend to find a common enemy to save themselves. I fear the start of big wars in 2022, the west will pussy out because the cost is high and they aren’t willing to pay, the other parties know it. In the next years somebody’s gonna get too greedy and the cost will stop being too high.

Socially, people will realize things change but they mostly stay the same. They can change by refusing to not play the game, will they have the courage to live without the goodies they’ve learn to pursuit?

Must agree with all of the predictions 100%
We are at a crossroad here. If people don't push back in 2022, we are going to live in a society that makes "papers please" look like heaven compared to what we have.

Please read this book if you doubt what I'm saying. It's not a god damn conspiracy theory.

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Children...

Lots of downvotes but no counter argument? Please HN, let us do the right thing by disagreeing by argument rather than downvoting someone into oblivion. The only reason I value HN is that it (generally) is open to debate without taking hardline positions. Let us ensure we can retain this culture even when our emotions try to get the better of us.
The entire premise of up- and down-voting is that some comments are more valuable _to read_ than others. “Let’s just have a debate” isn’t really a fair criticism; we can’t afford to debate everything, so ultimately there’s going to be a preceding value judgment.

That value judgment may look a lot like an ad hominem, but it’s perfectly rational—for example, in this case, the question is, should I take the time to seriously engage with a book written by a man who claims vaccines cause autism, led a group that opposed flouridation of drinking water, claimed that 5G “damages DNA” and is being installed to facilitate “mass surveillance”, and, oh, by the way, is a master falconer? (Nothing wrong with that, but I find it hilarious.)

Obviously the answer is no. There are a lot of interesting, well-founded books on science that I want to read, and I just don’t have time to read a book by a master falconer, let alone engage meaningfully with it online. Maybe the earth is flat, and I’m just living with my head in the sand. Oh well?

Thank you for responding. I am now better informed due to your explanation. I looked up the author based on your comment and now see the issue in better light. I am sure many others will understand why the parent of my earlier comment was downvoted.
I agree with most things but I think crypto will cool off. Maybe BTC will keep climbing but crypto's wealth it concentrated amongst a few new rich people. What's different about that and old money. Not much really. I don't think real people (the 99.99%) will see crypto delivering on it's promise and it'll stay expensive and on the edges.
What does that have to do with the promise of crypto? Does it really matter if you're paying your pizza with 1 BTC or 1 satoshi? Crypto never promised to make everyone rich. It promised a decentralized trustless internet monetary system, and that is already delivered.
Crypto promised to revolutionize payments with cheap, fast and secure transactions without relying on 3rd parties.
And it's exactly that - yeah perhaps it's not as cheap as EU wire transfers which are sponsored by the banks as loss leaders for mortgages and insurance, but international transfers certainly are much cheaper, quicker and reliable/safer with BTC, and you are never forced to use a 3rd party, it's optional - as opposed to the traditional system. I'm happy with what I got.
No, crypto has not revolutionised payments.

Payments are still dominated by credit / debit cards. In some markets app based mobile payments are starting to take off, but it really doesn't look like BTC is gaining any market share.

Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell I can't buy a single thing that I would want to buy with BTC.

It's actually getting worse. Some years ago I bought something with BTC. Now fees are so high that it is practically impossible to buy stuff with BTC.

And even if you just use BTC for transferring money, you need 3rd parties to buy/sell bitcoins (and they will charge a fee). You can't keep your money in BTC, because as I stated above you can't buy anything with BTC.

Crypto has not revolutionized payments for you. It's a revolution for me and other people making cross-border (EU-Ukraine, EU-USA, EU-Africa...) transfers. It's really problematic to make these transfers even today, when in theory everything should go smooth - but it almost never does. Bitcoin works reliably every time, quickly and cheaply. What's $15 network fee when I'm saving $135 compared to bank wire and never lose my money and the other side gets it the same day? And I'm not even talking about the currency conversion cost savings and reduction of exposure to currency moves - 5 days is enough to see small currencies crash to 10% of original value. Bitcoin usually won't crash to 10% in a day or two.

What you're listing as a downside is actually a upside - both sides are happy to cut out the 3rd party and replace it with two 2nd parties - the sender/recipient and the cryptocurrency exchange. It's less hard and cheaper than finding a common third party (also, finding a common party is impossible in some cases) and much more reliable/trustable in summary.

Yeah micro-payments and in-store payments are not revolutionized by BTC, but that does not mean BTC is useless.

You've never seen it as a checkout option? I mostly agree with you (nothing's been revolutionised) but I've seen plenty of web shop checkouts where I'm just buying something normal/not because they accept crypto (which I didn't know beforehand) and it happens to be an option. I assume the payment provider just converts and gives them whatever currency they want, just as they do for global currencies already if they don't want my Great British Pounds for some reason.
It does, nano is super cheap and fast
That infrastructure came with a lot of new 3rd parties and it's a shark tank for regular people. Centralized currencies are stable. Regulatory Stability counts for something and watching BTC jump around don't make anyone want to jump on board. Just my guess for the future.

I wouldn't go long on crypto as is. Eventually it'll just be another complex trading instrument owned by the banks.

Who forces you to use the 3rd parties with BTC? And what choices do you have with the traditional system other than use 3rd parties?
It does matter, i'd be pretty upset if Pizza now costs 1 BTC.
Free Money never ends ... Authoritarianism never decelerates.
I think there will be a scare over the next variant but two years in it seems like we are on track.

I think the pandemic will be declared over in 2023. In the US, with a pandemic end in view and the Fed raising rates the Fed's balance sheet will become a major narrative https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

We will have to start thinking about the end of the "everything bubble" and the realization of the massive economic hang over from so much stimulus.

That is so 6 months from now at least though. Tonight we party like its 1999.