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Comment by the_jeremy | Hacker News Reader

* Moore's law stays dead. Having a lightweight laptop that does nothing more than provide a portal to more powerful machines enters the consumer field (Stadia already exists, but other uses will appear). Probably offered by an existing cloud provider first.

* Recession happens this decade.

* Someone becomes the US democratic nominee with a UBI platform.

* The US gets single payer healthcare.

* Zoning laws become an even hotter political issue. We don't solve them.

* Netflix produces VR content.

* Humans will not land on Mars.

* Disney joins FAANG.

* We don't fix copyright and we don't have any exciting antitrust wins.

* Mesh networks become more popular.

* The internet becomes less open source.

* The US becomes more politically polarized. There will be hate crimes against democrats / republicans just for their political affiliation.

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> Recession happens this decade.

After any other decade, nobody would bother to say that, because of course there would be a recession (if not more) in the next decade. It is amazing that the 2010s didn't have one. But, as you say, amazing usually doesn't continue forever...

I think that this type of behavior is actually delaying the next recession. When you are aware that something bad will happen in the future you will be more careful and try your best to avoid it.

I do wonder if the more we try and delay it the worse it will be when it does inevitably arrive. We might be in for a big one.

Recessions happen roughly once a decade so it’s a pretty safe prediction.

I thought it was considerably shorter - once every four or five years.

Me too, hence I kept most of my money in a savings account during the last six years

Why do you seem to think that bull markets have to have an expiration date? It seems entirely plausible that with the right "management" (think the right people at the Fed and being the President) the bull market can continue forever with only minor corrections (on the order of the end-of-2018 correction).

Every bull run there are people saying this time it will last (forever). Most notable (for me) was the 2000 one where I had friends putting millions of euros in stocks even as it was unraveling fast because "this is a glitch, it cannot die". And then it all falls down. I know plenty of people who, 20 years later, never recovered from that 'optimism'. Same before 2008, but made less of an impact in my circles as people did learn from 2000. Maybe theoretically it can, but practically it won't. And I don't think decade; I think it will be this year.

What are you trying to say? That people that had "millions" went homeless? The stocks recovered in less than two years. If they didn't sell in panic they still had millions after a brief period.

Homeless you don't get in the Netherlands, but yeah, I know people who put all their money (2-3 million at least 2 of them) in WorldOnline[0] and lost it. Having to start all over at an age when they would normally almost retire. You won't end up on the streets in NL anyway, but mentally they were never the same because of that. Greed + weird optimism and then panic selling. But billions were lost in this fraud company and the signs were clear; people just thought it would go on forever and that's what everyone said in the bar. Hence the dumb buying.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Online

Edit: you say 2 years... But people bought this one as well by the millions in those days; https://www.google.com/search?q=kpn+koers&oq=kpn+koers&aqs=c...

That never recovered. While 'everyone' agreed that could never happen as this time there was no roof. And for a brief moment almost everyone believed that.

As a less localized thing; in the tech community, stocks of for instance Borland/Inprise were talked about in the same way. I don't think (but cannot find info fast) they ever recovered.

I don't know enough to speak intelligently about this, but my gut says that people predicting a recession simply because we are 'do' is short-sighted.

I wonder if High-Frequency/Algol trading has anything to do with our current bull run. Maybe removing some of the human response from the equation has stabilized the market to some extent.

That being said, I'd be VERY surprised if a recession does not occur within the next few years.

Astronomical valuations, and aggressive stock buy-backs makes this largely artificial. So when it comes, it really comes.

"Having a lightweight laptop that does nothing more than provide a portal to more powerful machines enters the consumer field"

Ah, the return of the X Terminal, dinosaur of the 1980s and early-mid 1990s. If that, because it barely even lived.

Sounds like a Chromebook. However there is Linux App support now inside of a container... So you could run VSCode, Node and Yarn on a Chromebook now or install GIMP.

You can already run those in a chroot environment, but most Chromebooks are too underpowered for them to work well under any real load.

> Disney joins FAANG

What do you mean by that? FAANG was an acronym from Wall Street to refer to new big tech companies. It’s not a formal group.

I think they are referencing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netfl...

> Moore's law stays dead

It is not dead yet. Maybe you meant Dennard Scaling?

> Having a lightweight laptop that does nothing more than provide a portal to more powerful machines enters the consumer field

Chromebooks already exist for a while.

> Having a lightweight laptop that does nothing more than provide a portal to more powerful machines

You just described a Chromebook or iPad

What does Disney joining FAANG mean? It's acquired?

I would interpret that to mean disney starts being considered a peer of the FAANG companies by investors and job applicants. i.e. FAANG becomes FAANGD

While we still can decide on that let's call it FADANG instead?

If only there was a big name L. GANDALF

Licrosoft?

Lyft?

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