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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.
I'm going to steal one from 2006 since it is almost a reality:
by BCW2 (168187) on Monday December 26, 2005 @11:59PM (#14342970) Journal
[How about] Flash drives get priced competitivly with hard drives of the same size?
I think that 2016 will be a disastrous year for Firefox. Thanks to more dumb changes by Mozilla, most of which will be unwanted by Firefox's few remaining users, many of these users will move to Chrome, Edge, Safari, or one of the other browsers out there. Firefox's share of the market, which is only in the high single-digits at this point, will drop below 5%.
Furthermore, Mozilla supporters will continue to refuse to acknowledge why this massive drop in market share will have happened. Instead of just admitting that Mozilla fucked up and fucked over its users, these Mozilla supporters will use excuses like "Google advertised Chrome a lot" and "it's because of mobile browsers". They still won't realize, or at least admit, what the real problem has been: Mozilla has repeatedly fucked over Firefox's users with one stupid, unwanted and awful change after another!
Additionally, Servo and Rust won't see much progress in 2016. Rust will continue to spin its wheels as it tries to become as useful as C++14 has been for a few years. Servo might get to the point of providing an IE 7 level of experience, rather than the IE 3 style experience it currently provides. Both will continue to be a waste of resources that could have instead been put toward improving Firefox's performance or fixing many of its longstanding bugs.
Systemd has spoken, but it's impossible to decode its incoherent message. Perhaps it's saying that it is a perpetual victim of injustice. Then again, it might be babbling that this is the best of all possible worlds and that it is the best of all possible organizations. Let's get down to business: It ought to unstop its ears and uncover its eyes. Only then will systemd hear that to which it has been too long heedless. Only then will it see that when I hear it say that it has an absolute right to be intolerant in the name of tolerance, I have to wonder about it. Is it thoroughly worthless? Is it simply being asinine? Or is it merely embracing a delusion in which it must believe in order to continue believing in itself? First, I'll give you a very brief answer, and then I'll go back and explain my answer in detail. As for the brief answer, while systemd has been beating the drums of opportunism, I've been trying to take the mechanisms, language, ideology, and phraseology for determining what is right and what is wrong out of the hands of systemd and its adherents and put them back in the hands of ordinary people. In doing so, I've learned that in its quest to prevent us from getting in touch with our feelings it has left no destructive scheme unutilized.
Every time systemd spouts some nonsense about how it's inflexibly honest, thoroughly patriotic, and eminently solicitous to promote, in all proper ways, the public good, the effect is that its apple-polishers become even more loyal to it. Sociologists refer to the phenomenon of increased devotion to a maledicent theory at the very hour of its destruction by external evidence as “cognitive dissonance”. I, for one, call it proof that systemd wants us to feel sorry for the subhuman, mindless skivers who promote the lie of stoicism. I warrant we should instead feel sorry for their victims, all of whom know full well that systemd is trapped in a vicious cycle. The more opposition to its bromides it faces, the more prudish it becomes. The more prudish it becomes, the more opposition to its bromides it faces. I wish I didn't have to be the one to break the news that I pray for the day when those who support those for whom hatred has become a way of life will see what they're doing to the world and to all of its citizens. Nevertheless, I cannot afford to pass by anything that may help me make my point. So let me just state that if we are to provide actionable steps people can take to break the spell of great expectations that now binds poxy bigamists to systemd, then we must be guided by a healthy and progressive ideology, not by the high-handed and pesky ideologies that systemd promotes.
Epistemic warlordism weakens political determination and gives comfort to anarchism. To overcome this the question of the role played by systemd's faction must be broached directly. Let me suggest we do by examining the way that whenever I hear systemd's dupes witter on about how hanging out with nauseating converts to misoneism is a wonderful, culturally enriching experience, I interpret this poppycock as an implicit request for chemical treatment of their rampant (and generally unacknowledged) Asperger syndrome. The biggest supporters of systemd's unscrupulous, disloyal rantings are snotty charlatans and craven filthy-types. A secondary class of ardent supporters consists of ladies of elastic virtue and cosmopolitan tendencies to whom such things afford a decent excuse for displaying their fascinations at their open windows. Let's just ignore systemd and see what it does.
In any case, there is something in the way of “natural law” that can be stated awkwardly as follows: “Anyone who was sober for more than an hour or two during the last five years knows that systemd's presumptuous calumnies have been establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and everywhere else that presumptuous calumnies can appear.” Please do not quote me on that. Instead, work it into a better natural law and enunciate it in clearer and more concise te
http://predictionbook.com/ is a website that allows one to record predictions along with a probability estimate for them. Others can then comment and give their own estimates. When a prediction comes due one can then judge it. It also has a nice graph that allows one to then see how accurate one has been (most humans are overconfident). It isn't perfect since for example it doesn't have categories for predictions; it would be nice for example to be able to say look at just one's predictions related to politics, or to the space program or something similar. But overall, I strongly recommend it.
10% of users accessed Google with IPv6 yesterday: http://www.google.com/intl/en/...
If you expand out the graph you can see that during the work week there are about 8% of users on IPv6, but at the weekends it increases. There is a two-speed internet, with residential and mobile leading the way, and corporate networks lagging behind.
Prediction: 14% at weekends next year.
The brushfires have been smouldering, but in 2016 both the owners and subjects will organize to oppose each other with fervor. Individuals and companies will begin making news for fleeing repressive regimes to continue their work and these will be regimes that used to claim a penchant for liberty. Other subjects of these regimes will begin to notice and start a three-year cycle that will lead to one extreme or the other.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Quite the opposite, the very fact THAT he is offensive to women, latinos, gays and pretty much everyone but white male protestant voters is his strong suite. Because they are fed up with the whole SJW bullshit, even enough to vote for the hairpiece.
Just to give you an idea how far that political correctness bullshit has gone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Moderation system is fine. We don't need wild 1000 point swings that will just attract "gang" mods and forum poisoning. The overall stability over the years here is a good thing, and who else has almost 17 years of uncensored archives accessible to all? To all the complainers about this, and unicode, please, don't let the door hit yer ass! Though I will admit, the uniqueness isn't there anymore. Eh, such is life. The pasture here is green enough...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... 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.
You don't get it, do you?
We have arrived at a point where sexism, racism and other -ism are something that reached public awareness. People don't make flippant stereotype jokes anymore. Because people are aware that they are hurtful and that people of that race, gender, orientation, you name it, are hurt by it. That it's not funny but harmful.
What's left is the assholes that don't give a shit about offending anyone and still tell them.
The problem now is that for some that ain't enough. They don't want equality, they want preferential treatment. They want to swing that pendulum to the other extreme now. Some professional victims go out of their way to be "offended" by anything anyone says, claiming that "everything is racist/sexist/homophobe" and try to build a power base on it.
And that's pissing people off. Not because they can't be sexist/racist/homophobe anymore. But because they are neither of those, get accused of it and may even get into trouble for essentially NOTHING, just 'cause some SJW asshole is on a power trip.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.