Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Predictions For 2016? (slashdot.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Ok folks, it's been ten years since we've done this. What are your tech/science/nerd/misc predictions for 2016? Is VR going to be the bombshell it's being hyped as? Are wearables going to come into their own? Which tech companies are going to implode, and which are going to blossom? What discoveries are we going to make this year? Will people ever shut up about Donald Trump? Which new movies, books, games, and TV shows are going to be awesome? Which are going to suck? How will our privacy and security erode in 2016? And anything else you'd care to forecast.
That's not the right question. The question should be, "Will Donald Trump ever shut up?" And the answer is no. He has no chance of being elected, and he knows that. Who has Donald Trump pissed off? Women? Latinos? I feel discriminated against . . . he hasn't pissed off middle aged white guys . . . yet.
He is going to find his place sniping at Hilary, when she gets elected: the social gadfly of the opposition. It's a great role to play. A lot of folks really detest Hillary, but she's going to be elected anyway, just because of demographics that favor the Democrats. That will leave a lot of folks looking for a steam valve, to let off some vitriol. The trouble that Hillary will have, is a Republican Congress and Senate. She will have to resort to the "Obama Prerogative" of using Executive Orders, read, "imperial decrees", to circumvent the due process of the creation of laws in the US. Opening the border to Cuba? A good idea, but the way Obama did that was dubious, at best. Congress should have approved.
Now Obama wants to do another Executive Decree, that affects the Bill of Rights, on gun laws. In international soccer matches, that would get the red card from the referee. What will happen if Hillary decides to issue a decree about the Freedom of Speech? Democrats will close ranks behind her; Trump will honk off.
Although that sounds a bit pessimistic, I'm thinking that is what 2016 has to offer.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
People will keep flocking to one of the fastest growing city in the USA, even though it will continue to have increasingly devastating consequences from regular flooding for the population and industry, particularly farming.
Wall street, on behalf of rich people, will short-sell (via complex derivatives that mask their intent) the Florida property and life insurers, mortgagees, corporations, and property owners.
Florida will continue to deny the existence of climate change at the popular and official levels.
Completely unable to post from Chrome because slashdot keeps logging me out when I hit "Submit" and won't let me post as AC.
I just love it when upgrades break things.
OTOH, if this post from FF fails, it's certainly slashdot's fault
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I predict that Slashdot does the right thing in 2016 and ditches its outdated, broken modding system.
It's a system that made sense in 2002, when even the most boring Slashdot stories routinely got 400+ comments.
But these days, it's typical to see stories that get less than 100 comments. Even just hitting 50 comments is a real accomplishment.
The only stories that see more than that today are highly-politicized or controversial topics, where the editors are clearly stirring up pointless discussion (see all of the women-in-tech submissions as examples of this).
In order to keep this site viable, more good discussion is needed.
The seeds necessary for good discussion are there. The problem is that the best comments often get modded down before this discussion can start.
Facing an ever-dwindling number of users, 2016 will be the year that Dice will need to take some real action.
The first thing to do is to get rid of the moderation system completely. It's old, it's broken, and it doesn't help promote good discussion. It just stifles it nowadays.
The second thing to do is to display all comments by default. It made sense to hide some comments when there were typically 500+ in each thread of discussion. But now it's typical to only see one or two comments showing by default, with the other 30 comments, most of them very good, not being shown by default!
The third thing to do is to get rid of the posting limits. Again, these made sense a decade or more ago, when this site actually had a lot of users and got a lot of comments. But now it's just dumb to limit anonymous users to just 10 comments per day, along with the stupid delays imposed between comments. The last thing Slashdot should be doing is impeding the ability of the small number of remaining users to comment!
By turning Slashdot into a site where discussion can happen freely and without the friction imposed by the current bad moderating and the unnecessary posting limits, it could very well see a revival in 2016.
No longer would Slashdot be seen as the early-2000s relic that it is currently seen as. Instead, it'd become known as a site for vibrant discussion, without the pathetic don't-offend-anyone wimpiness of places like Reddit and Hacker News.
Dice, make 2016 the year that these three important things happen:
1. The moderation system is completely thrown away.
2. The current posting limits are completely disabled.
3. Slashdot is turned into a site where discussion is prompted and encouraged, rather than stifled like it currently is.
Dice, make 2016 the Year of Slashdot!
I think you're making up a conspiracy where there really doesn't need to be one.
He wouldn't have to pay anyone in the "social justice" crowd to act the way that they do. Those in the "social justice" crowed are just naturally deranged, and voluntarily engage in the behavior that they do without requiring any sort of financial compensation or incentive.
"Social justice" supporters are naturally hypocrites. They're naturally intolerant. They're naturally hateful. They're naturally bullies. That's why they're drawn to the "social justice" movement in the first place: it embodies everything that they naturally want to do. But best of all, it deludes them into thinking they're doing something "good", rather than having to admit their true awful nature.
Their anti-white, anti-heterosexual, anti-male agenda promotes the very things that they claim to stand against: racism, discrimination based on sexual orientation, and discrimination based on gender.
It does not help that they also pardon and encourage illegal activities, such as foreigners crossing the border illegally, "disadvantaged youth" attacking police officers, and the riots that these "disadvantaged youth" engage in in order to steal the latest Nike shoes.
Maybe Trump is benefiting from the divisive environment that the "social justice" crowd has naturally created. But I really doubt he has to waste his money on these people. Their natural actions will benefit him more than anything he could ever hope to organize.
It's much like what we've seen in the open source community with systemd. The people who support systemd have, perhaps unintentionally, done more to harm the viability of Linux, especially when used on servers, than Microsoft, or SCO, or Apple, or any other organization could ever have hoped to do. A community that is naturally rotting from the inside out can be exploited much more effectively than one that's being actively manipulated.
While Bitcoin had a great year in most metrics of 2015( https://blog.coinbase.com/2015... ), expect even more rapid growth in 2016 when years of development and investment compound with another disinflationary bubble driving media and user interest. Several more bitcoin "killer-apps" (I.E.. https://openbazaar.org/ ) will come online while banks continue to poor money into block chain development to play catch-up. Crypto-currency developers will be the biggest winners as more fintech VC money pours into innovative startups and "blockchain" consultants.
Banking alts will begin to roll out in late 2016 with some eventually becoming massive failures and some private blockchains winning out providing slight benefits from removing some interbank inefficiencies. Both bank alts/tokens and bitcoin will coexist and serve different purposes as the key benefits to bitcoin will never be replicated by the banks: immutability, privacy and security with no KYC, sovereignty, open source and decentralized allowing limitless innovation and ability to onramp billions of unbanked and underbanked.
... that could be construed a bigoted, sexist or unpatriotic. It will go viral, and a flame war will rage across social media in which the public shamers and defenders will vie to twist the narrative of what was in fact a moment of misspeaking into proof that their respective world views are, not only right, but the only conscionable viewpoint to have.
And, even knowing in advance fully how futile and unsatisfying it will be, you won't be able to resist weighing in with what seems to you to be a reasonable and nuanced take on the matter. This will not be perceived by anyone as reasonable and nuanced. Then, like a gambler vainly trying to win back his stake, your participation in the controversy will grow in proportion to your dissatisfaction with it.
An when it is all over a few weeks later it will all happen again.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I hoped we would be saying goodbye to 1366x768 displays in laptops, but alas, my employer has just handed me a new one with a WXGA screen.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers