9 ms·

Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

115 points by mfrw 9mo ago

What are your predictions for this coming year?

lee101 9mo ago
[dead]
RaccoonAttack 9mo ago
No predictions, only wish next year bad things no so much. And f** u 2025.
- ant6n 9mo ago
  It’s crazy, it feels like 2019 was the last good year.
  - m-hodges 9mo ago
    People post their annual “20xx was terrible!” every year since 2016.
    - Atreiden 9mo ago
      Well, in fairness...
Bender 9mo ago
Some people will write 2025 on forms asking for the current year.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
brynet 9mo ago
I finally get adopted by a nice family of sentient pizzas in 2026. https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html
mfrw 9mo ago
Previous Years: - 2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490343 - 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777115 - 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628 - 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236 - 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068 - 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596 - 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859 - 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988 - 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767 - 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723 - 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370 - 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201 - 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023 - 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681 - 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416530
- yen223 9mo ago
  Read the 2025 prediction thread for some perspective. (Hope you didn't stake your retirement on bitcoin hitting $200,000!)
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
    > There are even more restrictions aimed at stopping kids using social media. I dont recall if the Australia ban was on the cards then.
    - yen223 9mo ago
      The act passed federal parliament late 2024. It already existed in the state of South Australia before that.
brihati 9mo ago
In the software engineering world, in 2026 we saw a wave of code assistant products. In 2026, we will see a wave of designing software architecture products, not just on greenfield projects but also brownfield projects.
ksaj 9mo ago
YouTube will be so inundated by AI cat and dog videos that people stop watching them altogether. People will automatically assume anything labeled "cute" is fake.
- pestaa 9mo ago
  Facebook is already like this. People didn't stop watching. In fact, they mostly stopped caring if it's fake. And no point in debunking the obvious BS: they scroll faster than you can say AI.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- phito 9mo ago
  I wish, but from what I've seen, most "normies" don't care at all as long as they are entertained. It makes me depressed seeing my friends consuming and sharing all that AI slop while either believing it's true, or not even asking themselves if it is. At least they're having fun while they still can... right?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - aprdm 9mo ago
    Why should they care and why does it make you depressed ?
- prepend 9mo ago
  My mom sends me AI videos of cute cats doing the impossible (flying around the room, washing raccoons, etc). When I told her they were AI, she said “so what, they’re cute”
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    Say more.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
rozenmd 9mo ago
Last year I predicted: People will continue to run websites, and need to know when they're down (god, I hope). My 2026 prediction is that people will continue running websites and buiding web apps that need monitoring, more than ever before.
silexia 9mo ago
The USD will devalue 5-10% further. Flock and other government tools for watching and controlling you will expand. Big companies will expand their regulatory capture, especially in medical care. Fingers will continue to be pointed at health insurance as the problem while the real problem of an artificially limited supply of doctors goes unaddressed. Government agencies will continue their slow bloat as no mechanism exists for government like bankruptcy in the private sector. Patent trolls will expand their lawsuits and extort more legitimate businesses. The far left will assassinate more Republican leaders.
- racktash 9mo ago
  Given most assassinations on US politicians (including attempted) targeted Democrat politicians in 2025, I would have different expectations to your last point.
jawuilp 9mo ago
[dead]
MSKJ 9mo ago
Still no high-speed rail in the US
- al_borland 9mo ago
  Look into Brightline. They are already operating in Florida and are currently building a route from CA to Vegas. https://www.brightlinewest.com/ https://www.brightlinewest.com/
ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago
Physical AI will make subversive discoveries that exceed everyone's expectations - space-time integrated computing, rather than the current three-dimensional spatial computing plus discrete time steps
- mythrwy 9mo ago
  I'm really hoping you mean substantive not subversive.
  - OutOfHere 9mo ago
    Allegedly AI recently discovered vulnerabilities in React Server that were/are being exploited on unpatched systems, so that's subversive, and we might expect a lot more of it before it gets better.
  - ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago
    I actually meant subversive intentionally. While 'substantive' would mean major progress within the current framework, I’m predicting a shift that subverts the current foundational assumptions of robotics. Right now, we treat time as a secondary sequence—an 'add-on' to 3D space. Moving to a unified spacetime architecture isn't just a big improvement; it fundamentally undermines the discrete-frame logic that almost all current CV and RL models are built upon. It’s 'subversive' because it requires us to unlearn the way we’ve been processing motion for the last decade.
  - ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago
    Let me explain again why I said "disruptive" rather than "substantial"：the current "embodied artificial intelligence" still uses 19th-century numerical methods (the Adams-Bashforth integration method from 1883 and the Runge method from 1895) to represent time frames + three-dimensional space calculations to approximate four-dimensional spacetime (relativistic covariance has proven that spacetime is an integrated whole, i.e., four-dimensional spacetime). I will release more specific code later - you might wonder, don't the "scientists" at those big companies know about this? The answer is that they do know, and I will also release the reasons later, which will definitely surprise you!
rvz 9mo ago
I predict more layoffs as I unfortunately already did in 2024 [0]. But let's just say you have to prepare for 2030. The future of jobs report 2025 by the WEF is also reporting that 40% of employers are planning to reduce their workforce because of AI by 2030. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041311
TheAlchemist 9mo ago
Musk empire will come crashing down, starting with Tesla. AI bubble will start to pop (even though the adoption continues to improve slowly). US / Europe separation will accelerate. EDIT: For the first 2 - it's the 3rd year I'm thinking it will be 'the' year...
- snvzz 9mo ago
  >bubble starts to pop They're called bubbles because they don't "start to pop". It's sudden and sharp.
AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
AI bots post enough content fast enough that the general public learns about the "dead internet" theory. The Supreme Court rules against Trump in several important cases (tariffs and birthright citizenship, and a couple of others). Trump threatens to arrest at least one big tech executive. LLMs continue to improve, but the rate becomes slow enough that most people realize that AGI is not just around the corner.
charlescohen 9mo ago
[dead]
muzani 9mo ago
- EVs will be in the Early Majority group, and 2/3 of them will be Chinese. At least 1 in 4 of new cars purchased will be EVs. - AI will innovate towards visuals, personality, and tool use. AI tool use will start to innovate past just reading docs, maybe into more things like gaming and robotics. - Some AI products (not necessarily LLMs) will start competing on latency. Notably on voice/calls, but also things like drones, robotics, etc.
- magixx 9mo ago
  I think EVs will head in the complete opposite direction in that sales will slow down and they will continue to be a minority. Ford just killed off the F150 lightning and EVs (but also new cars) are still expensive purchases in a time with a lot of economic uncertainty. While Chinese companies are making affordable options all the markets seem to love putting tariffs on them in order to keep their homegrown automakers alive.
  - tomwojcik 9mo ago
    I just read on a Polish automotive portal that the government has concerns about cybersecurity in Chinese cars. I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese cars were entirely banned for some businesses in the future. https://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,178770,32479760,minister-bije-na-alarm-chinskie-auta-moga-byc-koniem-trojanskim.html https://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,178770,32479760,minister-bije-na-al...
  - muzani 9mo ago
    Looking into this, this reinforces my predictions? I looked up the Ford F-150 Lightning and a quote catches my eye: "When the electric truck debuted in 2022, Russia had just invaded Ukraine, disrupting supplies of nickel, a key material in EV batteries." Raw materials and cost is a big part of the Chinese dominance on EVs and it'll continue to be on that side of the political sphere. Having to tariff China also emphasizes that they're gaining ground too quickly. They process about (over?) 80% of the major parts, so you can't fully tariff them either, only assembled cars or some parts.
  - 2026iknewit 9mo ago
csomar 9mo ago
- Major disruptions on the financial markets due to the USD losing value. Commodities go up. Not certain about Bitcoin/Crypto as it is backed mostly by the USD itself. - US goes on the offensive on tokenization moving bonds, stocks, transfers, etc. to the blockchain. China opens up its eCNY to the grand public. - AI bubble pops. Companies decide that LLM-coding is not worth it after accounting for the downsides. LLMs for generating photos and videos are still not good enough. OpenAI goes the way of pipedpiper. - The war in Ukraine remains unresolved. Russia advances but only marginally. Europe still shaking its head about what to do. US lower its involvement. - The US world cup goes very badly. Like embarrassingly bad. Goes okay in Canada and kinda okay in Mexico though. - China invades Taiwan in the last month of 2026.
- weagle05 9mo ago
  By going the way of pipedpiper do you mean Son of Anton?
gardenhedge 9mo ago
AI continues to improve - not to AGI levels but claude code level for industries outside of coding/tech. Elon Musk gets richer Europe anti-woke grows
Ekaros 9mo ago
Significant economic turmoil. Either from private debt or AI finally deflating. Probably due to enough data center projects that won't materialize due to funding getting cut.
- eps 9mo ago
  More likely from the government attempts to manipulate mid-term elections in the US, and the instability that will follow. And I hope I'm wrong.
cons0le 9mo ago
[flagged]
- mc3301 9mo ago
  Who is the big guy? Why $1000?
  - johnwheeler 9mo ago
    Donald Trump because he made a bet is my guess.
    - cons0le 9mo ago
      It's not for a bet. The presents are just for celebration. You could call it an expression of joy
      - johnwheeler 9mo ago
        To each their own. I can definitely understand that sentiment, although I'm 46 years old, and I've turned more conservative over the last few years, I still really like Obama. I also like Trump, though. It's kind of weird. Don't want to start a flame war though, I respect your opinions.
mediumsmart 9mo ago
game over
d_silin 9mo ago
Politics - New major armed conflict starts. Space - Artemis II succeeds. - Starship makes first fully reusable orbital flight. Other tech - One of the fusion startups demonstrates net energy. - AI bubble pops, OpenAI gets acquired by Microsoft.
m-hodges 9mo ago
Household name AI Company will IPO. Existing safety work will further deprioritize in favor of maximizing shareholder value.
jawns 9mo ago
I predict certain political factions in the US will spend much of 2026 looking for ways to introduce a delay in the 2028 elections, such as pursuing a war so that Congress can postpone elections until they can be held safely. Which has never happened before, but who knows what absurdities will be given the OK these days?
- prepend 9mo ago
  We had elections during the civil war, 0.000001% chance the 2028 elections get changes.
  - taproottap 9mo ago
    That was the civil war, maybe in 2026 the uncivil one begins. (But I think it will just be a more general unravelling.)
- VoodooJuJu 9mo ago
  [dead]
- softwaredoug 9mo ago
  As elections are determined by state and constitutionally mandated, this would be next to impossible. It’s more likely that legal shenanigans happen like VRA section 2 going away and deepening gerrymandering wars or looking for excuses to disqualify people from voting for “election integrity” and other creative democratic backsliding that would pass muster at SCOTUS.
phito 9mo ago
Engagement bait will get amplified even more, with the goal of gathering human generated data and user retention. Lots of new subreddits have been popping up this year, in different languages, that are flooded with AI generated rage and engagement bait posts. Facebook is feeding boomers with the same kind of slop. We will see the repercussions of this on society.
mindracer 9mo ago
A driverless car will be involved in a fatal accident
humanfromearth9 9mo ago
The Independent Variation Principle, the unifying software design meta-principle, becomes widely known, recognized and applied across the industry and academic world. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17677316 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17677316
- physicles 9mo ago
  This piqued my curiosity. Are you the author of the paper? For this principle to become widely known, it needs to be communicated in a more succinct way. 400 pages is too much to ask people to invest. Even so, as far as I understand the gist of what the paper says, the principle helps make explicit some intuition I’ve had about design for a long time.
  - rramadass 9mo ago
    It sounds like a retake/elaboration on the "Commonality and Variability Analysis" used in Domain Engineering and employed in "Family-Oriented Abstraction, Specification and Translation" (FAST) software engineering methodology. Commonality and Variability in Software Engineering by James Coplien et al. pdf at - https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Commonality_Variability.pdf https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Commonality_Vari...
- montague27 9mo ago
  sounds interesting
- aeve890 9mo ago
  >Error 503 How ominous
hajrice 9mo ago
- SaaS prices will start dropping. - Current LLMs being seen more and more like commodities - We'll start see a LOT more companies making their own LLM - Capital stops pretending everything is fine & we finally see the stock market reflect what's been slowly bubbling up socially (people 'feeling poorer', trust declining, consumption becoming more cynical)
Yossarrian22 9mo ago
Major “prediction market” scandal Someone is busted falsifying a race horse’s pedigree to hide use of a cloned sire. Entropy increases Putin dies, significant palace intrigue follows, but the war in Ukraine continues on unfortunately.
johnwheeler 9mo ago
- Tech layoffs grow 100% YoY - Multiple interest rate cuts instead of 1 - News about prosecutions for insider trading on Polymarket. - Bitcoin will touch a multi-year low. MSTR becomes insolvent. - Google Gemini will overtake ChatGPT in DAU. - Software will be more commoditized and the authors’ “taste” will become its primary differentiator. - Fiserv will increase 50% or more in market cap (I said the same thing last year about PayPal, and I was wrong) - Warren Buffett will pass away. (I hope I’m wrong) :-( - Google will drop the price of Gemini Ultra to $125 a month or less, Anthropic and OpenAI will follow suit. - Logitech will start making a dedicated vibe-coding microphone-whatever that means.
- bawis 9mo ago
  I will take the Warren Buffett prediction seriously.
- sosodev 9mo ago
  Prosecution for insider trading in 2026? I highly doubt that
gota 9mo ago
Dedollarization accelerates. I'm keeping that prediction for 2026 from a late 2024 thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405149
- Schiendelman 9mo ago
  What's the specific measurement you are predicting? What happened to the measurement you would've made based on your previous prediction?
  - gota 9mo ago
    I wrote a lot. Let me add a tldr: any international trades happening in non-US dollar is an "acceleration" of dedollarizatiom, given that currently all trade is dollarized. Original: I don't known if I understand the spirit of the question. There are no metrics or tracking of how "dollarized" the international economy is because virtually all trade is done in dollars and there has been no risk of this changing for the past ?65? years My original prediction for 2026 (not 2025, mind you) made in 2024 was based on a few factors, if I recall correctly, 1) the Russia-Ucraine war and related sanctions; 2) the open discussion in BRICS about trade in direct currencies; and 3) the then-promised isolatonist policies of Trump's second mandate. What we've seen in 2025 makes all of those stronger I guess. 1) I don't know the status of the Russia-Ucraine war; all I know is it is a glaring sign of the end of Pax Americana (as is the Israel-Palestine genocide/war, by the way, which the US would -not- have allowed given the strong internal opposition and negative popularity among the American public). So sanctions of Russia notwistanding, that status quo, which strongly related to dollar as reserve currency, is either agonizing or dead. 2) Trump and the US attempted a very strong response to the (first ever?) trades in local currency between Brazil and China, mostly in the form of targeted tariffs (all discourse about Bolsonaro and whatever being the motivation for tariffing Brazilian imports being, in my opinion, political smoke and mirrors). I don't think it worked. I think BRICS might press on this. If the mercosur/EU trade deal goes through it will also be a strong force towards trade in Euros/Reais/Pesos directly I believe. 3) I don't think I need to clarify; tariffs and other issues brought on by the current US government were severely negative to the placement of the US as a preferred trade partner. This is to beyond economic choice; active anti-american sentiment are at all times high in countries like Canada, Denmark, and Mexico, all historically aligned with the US. This may not seem that relevant but come election cycles in those and other countries we might see platforms/candidates that openly propose to "secede" from the US hegemony international order. If that happens, removing US military bases is a first go. Alternatives to the US "petrodollar" a close second.
2026iknewit 9mo ago
= Generelly speaking: Chinas market power will continue grow around the globe. There might be some issues with there economy but they will increase exports in all relevant inudstries. The Solar revolution in Afrika will continue, driven by even cheaper chinese goods. It will be a story around the globe how much Afrika is changing. CATLs Sodium Batterie will reduce prices of energy stores to a new unexpected low. Cheaper faster than expected driving further some success stories. Germany (were i'm from) will continue struggling and it will get worse for the automotive sector (especially for the suppliers). Due to economic issues in germany, the far right nazi party AfD will continue winning a few more % points. Some car maker will bring a relevant cheap globally available EV car. I suspect BYD, which will increase public awareness of germans automotive sector or automotive around the world. Automotive will start becoming a commodity. Revenue per car will go down. Climate will see some new record. Either more and stronger storms, more heat or/and more flud rain. We will talk about it temporarily and then continue going back to ignoring it. = USA vs. the rest of the world: Stuff will continue as shitty as they are. Companies will not compensate the inflation americans have seen so they continue to struggle. There will be 2-3 attacks on public figures. If the economy will continue downwoards, potentially also some CEO or very well known Rich Person (Musk, Suckerberg, Bill Gates (after Epstein files), Jeff Bezos) Epstein files will come out, but due to every public media playing it down and no one caring anymore about it anyway (we all know, he is dead, Maxwell might get out of jail) and it will not lead to a coop. I will learn the full extend of Bill Gates affairs and will strike him from my list of people i thought have a positive story arc. Republicans will lose Midterms harder than usual/landslide style. Conflict between Trump and the house and senate then this will lead to either Trump doing more golfing or further sliding of the USA in an authoritarien direction. The only issue here is, Trump is to old and fragile, he couldn't care less about his power because he just does what he wants anything but he can't come up with a more elaborate "USA Trump Corp" strategy to take really over. While in parallel authorian stuff depends on a person and there is no one really there. Vance? No way. Hey lets bet on Vance and the wife of the Kirk guy coming together and the republicans liking it that much but no i don't think this will play out. Obama Care's budget cut might be a trigger point for something. Russia: Russia will continue influencing US Politics, but economy will continue going down. We are coming to the magic 5 year mark, Ukraines strategy attacking russian oil is working but Russia is Russia, people can suffer there. Derek Huffman will die. AI: AI will continue growing. Progress will still be seen in a lot of different areas. Nvidia will focus on increasing production and will see another Hit with Rubin. We might see some very special new thing. Perhaps material science discovery, mathematics or generall so much better LLMs. It will continue affecting jobs around the world. Especially in fields were GenAI is already really good. Arts. There will be more AI music on Radio and in the Top Charts. GenAI for images will continue reducing jobs for 2d and 3d, advertising, texting, translations. Robots will continue progress and impress us. Luigi: He will get lifelong prison sentence :( Musk: SpaceX will be a successful launch, while Tesla struggles in car sales, he will continue hyping and overshadowed through SpaceX, Tesla will not fall yet. The Selfdriving thing will kill someone, his robot will not be ready. GTA 6 will be out and it will be awesome!
xnx 9mo ago
Another large profession will be significantly affected by AI in the way graphic designers and copywriters already have.
tomwojcik 9mo ago
People's minds will become even lazier due to prolonged daily use of LLMs. They literally won't be able to think for themselves without AI assistance (that's why OpenAI won't fall, btw). Attention spans will drop even lower, causing severe psychological problems. Think 'Digital Dementia 2.0.' Later, LLMs will be portrayed as something evil, yet everyone will still use them. Parents will use them, while telling their kinds not to do so. Leetcode is already standard for SWE interviews, but other industries will need to adopt similar tests to verify that an applicant's brain is functioning correctly and that they're capable of doing the job. Maybe a formal confirmation from a psychologist specializing in 'fried brains' will be required.
- sosodev 9mo ago
  You do know this reads the same as every pessimistic commentary on technology ever, right? So many people were convinced that television was going to fry our brains.
  - serf 9mo ago
    ... do you know it didn't? I'm not sure myself. I do know that television feels about as deep as a puddle for me. Literature a bit less so. I suspect there is something to this.
  - eucryphia 9mo ago
    I regret watching too much television as a kid. Fortunately my mother wouldn’t allow us to play indoors on the weekends unless it was raining.
  - g8oz 9mo ago
    I assure you that it did fry many brains.
    - jf22 9mo ago
      But what was the impact? Society has made tremendous progress since the invention of TV.
coffeecoders 9mo ago
My prediction: 2026 looks normal. AI stays the top story but in a boring way as novelty wears off and models get cheaper and faster (maybe even more embedded). No AGI moment. LLMs start feeling like databases or cloud compute. No SpaceX or OpenAI IPO moment. Capital markets quietly reward the boring winners instead. S&P 500 grinds out another double digit year, mostly because earnings keep up and alternatives still look worse. Tech discourse stays apocalyptic, but balance sheets don't. If you mute politics and social media noise, 2026 probably looks like one of those years that we later remember as "stable" in retrospect. Bonus: Bitcoin sees both 50k and 150k.
- johnwheeler 9mo ago
  To me, this is wishful thinking. The more I see these "our jobs are safe" claims, the more I fear our jobs are not safe, and people are just trying to convince themselves which is an indicator of turmoil ahead.
  - DANmode 9mo ago
    Who is “our”?
    - johnwheeler 9mo ago
      Tech folk. Anyone really.
      - OGEnthusiast 9mo ago
        What does "safe" mean? Unemployment in the US right now is under 5% which is historically very good (even though it's been slightly trending upwards over the past few months).
        johnwheeler 9mo ago
        Employed. My contention is the AI is getting so good at doing tech related things that you'll need far fewer employees. I think Claude Code 4.5 is already there. Honestly, it just needs to permeate the market.
techgnosis 9mo ago
* Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity. It's the perfect vehicle for the US and most investment in EV charging stations will decrease. * Oral GLP-1s hit the market and the market shares doubles * Both OpenAI and SpaceX IPO * Charlie Kirk's shooter will be executed after being on death row for less than a year. 50/50 chance that it's televised. * Luigi is also executed * Seattle causes an international incident with Egypt and Iran when they don't reschedule the Pride Parade to not be on the same day as the world cup game. Trump sends in the troops.
- RickJWagner 9mo ago
  Nice details in this one.
- johnwheeler 9mo ago
  I can't imagine a public execution; that seems insane. I know the world is crazy right now, but I don't know about this.
- cons0le 9mo ago
  The EV one won't happen because people here are fundamentally culturally opposed to EVs
- nearlyepic 9mo ago
  > Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity. This happened, it was called the Chevy Volt. Nobody bought it.
  - techgnosis 9mo ago
    Oh that's interesting, I didn't know that. In this case I am talking about the Ram 1500. I think this one will make a splash. A truck with almost 700 miles of range. Americans think they hate EVs but they really hate the lack of EV infrastructure.
  - 9mo ago
tpoacher 9mo ago
Year of the linux desktop
coolThingsFirst 9mo ago
Another hot war. Western world will face a new generational war to uphold democracies. Ai bubble pops and causes turmoil in the economy, software jobs will be back. I get swole. In bank account and muscles. LLM progress will platoue.
eucryphia 9mo ago
The government will start calling 26°C (78°F) ‘Extreme’.
Artoooooor 9mo ago
Big mergers in the tech world with excuses including "AI". Hopefully - some reversal of sticking AI to products that don't need it. Even more massive layoffs. And the worst part - still no Half Life 3.
0x6372696E6765 9mo ago
[dead]
afaxwebgirl 9mo ago
I think that food instability will be a serious problem. I don't think that the store shelves will be empty per se, but rather I believe it will be priced so high that people will be starving because they simply can't afford it. Its already happening but I believe it will accelerate in 2026 especially with the Fed turning the money-printers back on. Inflation is sure to increase :-/ Grow a garden everyone. Just do it.
RickJWagner 9mo ago
End of the Russian/Ukranian war. US improves relations with China. Climate problems are shown to be less serious than previously thought. The rich get richer, but nobody cares because quality of life is improved for everybody. AI brings additional leisure time, which results in a worldwide resurgence in bluegrass music as millions take up the guitar, mandolin and violin. The biggest surge is in banjo, though. Billy Strings leaps ahead of Taylor Swift in concert sales. 2026 is really looking up! Happy New year, Hacker News!
- johnwheeler 9mo ago
  It's like Penn and Teller say: "Everyone thinks the world is getting worse, but it's always getting better." I hope you're right. Maybe it's just my age creeping up on me and turning me into a cynic. Anyway, good to know there's still people who think positively.
  - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    I think I am young but I do feel like we base our expectations of 2026 from 2025 which lets admit, was not good. I do not think that there would be sudden change from 2025 -> 2026 that could fundamentally change reality if the fundamentals stay the same which in my opinion they kinda would. I do feel like 2026 would be like 2025 but just a little better maybe or little worse.
    - johnwheeler 9mo ago
      Yes, I agree with this sentiment. A little better or a little worse, hopefully not too bad. But I think the same feeling of dread will persist, especially going into 2027, particularly around artificial intelligence for tech workers. My concern is that the switch won't be gradual. One day someone will come out with a model that can do everything valuable this software engineer can do. Claude code 4.5 almost hits that mark for me. In a year, I can't imagine… It might not be AGI, it might not be able to do everything everyone could do, but it'll be enough that you can fire most of the people on your team and just use a few to guide the AI. And I think that's gonna tighten things up in the job market even more. Hopefully it leads to more job creation and it empowers people to compete with one another based on taste and individuals to compete with organizations. That's the best-case scenario I see.
bayareapsycho 9mo ago
There will be a cliff in the number of people in this industry. There will be a bunch of senior people floating around the job market and no more junior talent. There will be fewer new grads and the pipelines will dry up. If they go down the route of automating as much as possible, it'll destroy the social pipelines that allow companies to reproduce themselves. I don't think that'll actually happen, but it'll be interesting to watch
- xnx 9mo ago
  Programming may become like typing where people do it for themselves instead of having a secretary.
  - kjellsbells 9mo ago
    I think the set of values of X in the prediction that "X is the year of the citizen coder" has a lot more members than you think. fortran in 1955, cobol in 1965, visual basic in 1993, delphi in 1995, visualage in 1998(?), Power Automate in 2022, vibe coding in 2025...
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  What are your opinions on accepting junior talent say, 4 years from now? Would there be any changes because I feel like a lot of junior talent isnt picked because of AI but I feel like given a long enough timescope, AI bubble will burst and so taking that into account, what would you say about the job market?
  - kaycey2022 9mo ago
    Unless there is an exponential growth in model context AI is not replacing anything. So far every new model launches with some increase in advertised intelligence, but only with increasingly dubious ways to measure the same. All the current crop of AI does is it makes the job of some people easier and allows some others to level up faster in terms output. If managements are going to be stupid enough to destroy the human side of the business, then they are only setting themselves up to spend much much more hiring the right people in the future.
MichaelNolan 9mo ago
Most to least confident: 1. Bazel is still not widely used outside of massive monorepos. (because its such a pain to use) 2. Solar power will surpass wind power in the US to become the 4th largest source of electricity. https://eia.languagelatte.com/ https://eia.languagelatte.com/ 3. Starship begins launching real payloads, achieves reusability of the upper stage, and successfully does a ship to ship fuel transfer. 4. Tesla stock has a major correction (>20%) as it becomes increasingly clear that Waymo, Zoox, AVRide, and various Chinese companies are significantly ahead in AV technology. And as it becomes clear that Optimus is a sham.
- fuzzythinker 9mo ago
  > 20% is not a major correction. It just recently doubled. Even at price before it doubled wasn't considered undervalued, so anything < 66% down is not a major correction.
  - diamondfist25 9mo ago
    What dope are u smoking? Fsd is fantastic and works everywhere
- everfrustrated 9mo ago
  I was with you until the last. Chinese will always be irrelevant to the US car market as both political parties will block chinese vehicle sales on (valid) national security grounds. Uber and Lyft stocks crash as markets realise the game is up - nobody can compete with Tesla who can afford to burn excess spare factory capacity driving cars directly off the line to start picking up passengers. Waymo might have good AI but can't possibly compete with Teslas unit economics.
mandeepj 9mo ago
Bloodbath in midterms!!
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
So far.. my track record has not been great, but maybe I was being a little too optimistic as I shuffle various futures in my head so lets start from more likely to more fun: - Unabated push towards 'Snow Crash' level of extremely localized power structures at the expense of federal government ( think K shaped economy, but for governmental structures ) - Actual further descent into K shaped economy -- that.. I fear.. is a very safe prediction to make now - Midterms will see some localized polically motivated violence ( likely across the spectrum bar some pressura valve release ) - Shadow wars will continue - Bitcoin will crash; monero will replace it as dollar falls - Companies and government will desperately work together to contains severely distributed ASI level entity that exists as hidden braille invisible characters across all known fora - I manage to to move to full WFH - Valve releases HL3 on Frame - Fusion power will get closer by two kiloseconds
- DANmode 9mo ago
  Why is Bitcoin crashing? Also, sometimes headlines claim 11% down is crashing - what’s “crashing” here?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
    Honestly, I think it ran out of speculation runway and current 'crashing' is just poeple cashing out the profits they made on the recent swings. It doesn't take away my 2026 prediction tho:P
wslh 9mo ago
Crypto, as an economic and innovation ecosystem, is largely dead, with the partial exception of stablecoins (which are not inherently “crypto” in the ideological/decentralized sense). The core issue is structural: most cryptocurrencies depend on foundations that fund development, marketing, and operations through large token holdings. When prices fall, these entities eventually become forced sellers. At some point, their “whale power” is not optional but necessary to survive, creating persistent sell pressure and undermining long-term trust. Bitcoin likely has a longer lifespan than most alternatives due to its lack of a foundation, fixed monetary policy, and social inertia. Over time, it may absorb whatever residual trust exists in the broader crypto space. However, that does not imply indefinite relevance: Bitcoin could survive while gradually becoming economically marginal, not dead, but increasingly negligible outside niche use cases.
- lern_too_spel 9mo ago
  The analysis requires understanding the total addressable market of greater fools. Bitcoin, like any speculative asset, has value as long as people believe its value will go up. When there are no more greater fools to buy in, its value stops going up, so it loses value as a speculative asset. People will sell off to buy other speculative assets, causing a price drop and accelerating sell-off from others who do not want to be bag holders until the asset reaches its intrinsic utility value. Since Bitcoin is strictly worse than alternatives as a form of payment, that value is 0. While this is the ultimate price of Bitcoin, correctly estimating when it will happen requires an understanding of the addressable market, which can change sharply as different countries implement regulation.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  Yup I had written a similar comment where I feel like stablecoins do seem to have a good idea but I still believe that the whole industry even with stablecoins would tend on becoming even more regulated and getting more integrated with centralized finance I do feel like it would be centralized finance which would run stablecoins and not defi/crypto companies which would connect with/partner with centralized finance in my opinion tho. Or as I said in that comment, the rise of finance superapps like coinbase so I feel like their stablecoins might be more of influence but either way, I do feel like its going to be extremely hard for people to enter the stablecoin market basically.
aadv1k 9mo ago
This is less of a prediction, more of how I see this industry progressing. I really feel "web dev" is going to get highly commoditized by GenAI, by web dev I mean 99% of building CRUD-adjacent apps, we are already seeing it now with tools like Claude Code etc, this pipeline is just going to get more refined, with tigther testing feedback loops, PR-workflows and a CI/CD deployment pipeline which the GenAI will control. This might be amplified by the fact the sheer amount of tested, high quality there is in the JavaScript-ecosystem for the AI to train on and learn from. Software engineering in general will tend more systems and embedded software, fields where GenAI can't perform well or can't be trusted to produce good code (I am thinking writing device drivers, or maintainence of legacy C applications) as well as deep research fields. The average software engineering job might be either that of a "technical product manager", or "researcher" or "low-level systems expert" That's just what I feel. Honestly, I am probably much younger an others on this forum, so I haven't really seen this industry "evolve" this is just how it looks to me now. I believe there was a time in the early 2010s where there was a boom of this "generalist developer" where if you knew your JavaScript-ecosystem (or App Dev ecosystem for that matter) pretty well, you could land a pretty decent job right out of college, or without a college degree at all. To me, at this stage the world in general needs software engineers who understand the "world" if that makes sense (in terms of physics, mathematics), or who have a really good mental model of computation. Better put, software engineering will become a tool in the larger context of research & development of tech that advance humanity.
- scuff3d 9mo ago
  You've left out an absolutely massive swath between "low level systems" and "crud app". There a lot more to the industry then just those two things. And as productivity rises, the complexity and ambition of the projects tackeled will continue to rise. The way we do the work might change, but things aren't going to look as different as people think.
  - aadv1k 9mo ago
    Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I mean, we have SRE, which is a whole set of skillsets in itself and it does involve around maintaining "CRUD-apps"; Heck there is the cybersec industry as well, ensuring CRUD-apps aren't exploited. My para was certainly a bit more 2D, I was speaking more from what I might benefit learning now, to get a job, say end of 2026. I have observed many roles like SRE etc, require certain experience which is hard to get by working on your own projects without much traction; similiar case for cybersec but to a lesser extent. It's this paradox where in order to become a senior engineer, you must get hired as a junior engineer, to learn and observe how production software works, but that is pretty hard these days.
neom 9mo ago
We'll hear "emergent" a lot. Maybe too obvious but more and more interesting new robots will hit the market and robotics as space will become considerably legible. Probably going to start to understand how different types of models scaled capabilities will play off of each other when architected together (MOE+). Non-tech people are going to start having the model welfare conversation more generally.
snvzz 9mo ago
RISC-V based chips enter the high performance market. Everybody is somehow surprised.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  Oh I would like so but I saw that the amount of compiler optimizations/optimizations in general for an architecture like arm or intel are so high that risc was unable to perform I think I really like risc-v but I saw the performance and I am doubtful about this, so I am interested if you have any evidence/resources that I don't know of to back up this claim
rntaberaberr 9mo ago
[flagged]
- 2026iknewit 9mo ago
  [dead]
alexgotoi 9mo ago
[flagged]
bf9d413906 9mo ago
The collective West will continue its negative momentum. People will continue to seek easy solutions to hard challenges and vote accordingly, making things worse. We'll see further fragmentation of the post-WW2 international order. China does not interrupt while others are making mistakes. The US stock market will see a correction (and possibly a crash) due to it being generally overvalued, LLM advances unproven for most enterprise contexts, and premature investment in infrastructure. Other stock markets will be dragged down because everything is correlated these days. Building software continues being commoditized, putting downward pressure on salaries. Software quality diminishes due to prioritizing speed and using LLM output. Billionaires continue taking control of media companies and continuing using them to influence public thought and discourse. Big budget media production companies show no signs of newfound creativity or risk taking and continues producing remakes, sequels and prequels within existing franchises. Many people have further diminishing mental health due to a severe value crisis and lack of human connection. The neurological, cardiovascular and long-term consequences of repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections become better known and understood. But nothing is done to prevent further damage.
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
There would be very strong emphasis on financial superapps, I saw coffeezilla's recent video about how coinbase is expanding to stocks and other stuff too but they are also expanding to prediction markets themselves which are also eating away at gambling/basically are gambling apps itself Coffeezilla (and me too right now) basically shout that its like a health app tried to give you junk food off the back alley basically But I feel like these trends will continue to grow, I was partially interested in stablecoin markets and it seems that apps like paypal,venmo,cash app etc. would essentially just stand back as stablecoin and so there are chances that these financial superapps will do these too in the near future There would be more emphasis on removing VPN's in countries. I feel like UK (and in extent other countries too) will have some influence on gatekeeping their populations from websites who dont comply to their arbitrary rules and VPN's being the last hope for many, I feel like a real crackdown on it is gonna come in 2026 I feel like centralization and extremism might continue slipping up in 2026 too perhaps. To me I just feel like we see things and this illusion that there are many players in any marketplace but it does feel like they are centralizing (some major tech apps, some major finance apps etc. which will influence a lot of average person's opinion) and we just saw something similar happen to dram prices which i also think wont really reduce even in 2026 I am seeing people fed up with centralization and big tech and more interested in homemade-alike solutions/created by normal people. Projects like clippy and others have made more people aware of such things and I think it will continue in 2026 when more people see this real "AI tax" of increasing prices of hardware Centralized finance and decentralized finance (although I dont appreciate crypto) feel to me would kinda converge on stablecoins and then merge/already are merging and In my opinion the company with more ties to centralized finance could win. Tech and finance seem to me would have more coupling on a rate similar to 2025. The AI bubble has chances of popping in 2026 but I am not sure about it but that being said, its a matter of when, not if in my opinion. But if AI bubble does pop, I feel like finance and tech would decouple most likely because it seems to me that if an offer as lucrative as "AGI" for the financial investors failed in their eyes, they would stray away from real tech businesses who make real life problems much easier but wont have the lure/lucrativeness if the bubble pops up Else, we are gonna see the same thing where people will slap AI over anything to get funding. I do feel like if AI bubble pops then the companies who picked AI hype when there was no need might be shamed for it but It never really happened in the crypto space because those companies went straight to AI after crypto so I think we would need some time in between after AI bursting and another hype to give people some time to think what really happened and the scale of it if it does bursts.
vismit2000 9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294574
kaycey2022 9mo ago
Aliens will reveal themselves
euparkeria 9mo ago
AI will start to be seen as a 'boomer' and a low-quality term. Manual and human work will become more valued.
hamburgererror 9mo ago
We'll get similar stories than the one told in the movie Her [1]. People will get married to AIs. [1] https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt1798709/ https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt1798709/
- ajoseps 9mo ago
  this has already happened: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/japan-ai-wedding/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/japan-ai...
  - hamburgererror 9mo ago
    Wow I'm late, but not so surprised! I'll correct my take then: due to this, the epidemic of loneliness will start to surge like never before. This might pave the way to some reaction in the public opinion, but real concrete actions will not happen in 2026, I would rather expect them around 2028 or even 2030.
protortyp 9mo ago
Positives: - Major breakthroughs in robotics research thanks to ultra scalable simulation software and RL - AI will become even more useful in daily life - New drug discoveries or successful stage 3 clinical studies related to / similar to GLP-1. Also in longevity research. - Renewables will get even cheaper - Creators will thrive with all the new AI tooling - Government services will become more digital (at least in Germany) - The war between Ukraine and Russia will end - Interest rates continue to fall, causing an uptick in housing buildup - The EU finally takes a harder stance against uncontrolled migration with concrete measures that will bring numbers far down. Negatives: - Societal loneliness will continue to accelerate - People will use their brains even less, thanks to more widespread LLM use - the Nazi party in Germany will become the majority in two states (but won't be able to govern them)
- tetris11 9mo ago
  > Major breakthroughs in robotics research thanks to ultra scalable simulation software and RL I was hoping that plumbers, electricians, construction, factory workers still had another 10-20 years before being priced out of the work pool. I was also hoping we had that much time to use threat of mass protest to keep our politicians aligned. I genuinely think it's game over for 99% of humanity's interests once the top wealthiest individuals and/or their governments can simply deploy robots en masse.
  - lotsoweiners 9mo ago
    Hey if developers and office jobs get fucked by AI “promises” then fuck blue collar as well. You need a united population to destroy the interests of the 1%.
frigg 9mo ago
Or "what will surely not happen in 2026". HN crowd is atrocious at predicting anything.
dzonga 9mo ago
maybe finally the US gvt n elites will finally admit the economy is an recession. not this dress up and cosplaying being done - like the economy is growing - while it's actually shedding jobs, homes ain't selling cz there ain't buyers
estimator7292 9mo ago
Bad. Bad bad bad.
kilroy123 9mo ago
1. There will be an economic meltdown by summer. Similar to 2008, likely worse. 2. Some kind of extreme US constitutional crisis. 3. Putin will remain in power, but Russia will be struggling dramatically to keep funding the war as Ukrainian attacks keep chipping away at oil and gas exports. 4. At least one new major AI breakthrough. 5. Several more countries virtually collapse
pcdoodle 9mo ago
[dead]
sosodev 9mo ago
I suspect that 2026 will be the year we see a big breakthrough in the use of LLM agent systems. I don’t know what that will look like but I suspect the agents will be doing meaningful research (probably on AI).
treebeard901 9mo ago
Debt and Liquidity Crisis in the Bond Market that spreads to other areas. Probably first signs will be in the Repo market and go from there. Zelensky will be replaced as Ukraine's leader and Ukraine as a whole will switch back to Russian control, moving the new front line to other former Soviet states and Poland. Also, all of the weapons provided to Ukraine will begin pointing at Europe instead of Russia China will begin blockading the islands around Taiwan, leading to a blockade of Taiwan itself. Odds are there will be a peaceful reunification with China instead of a war. Maduro will be overthrown in Venezuela and is all being used as leverage by the U.S. in its negotiations with China and Russia The GOP will retain control over the House in the upcoming Midterms A large labor reduction in many high paying jobs, such as tech, due to higher productivity provided by AI. In normal times, this would cause a kind of deflation to balance everything out. Due to the pending economic crisis, the Govt will spend even more money to try to maintain the current system, leading to more inflation. The cost to service the current debt will be used to justify a large reduction in Federal Govt agencies and services. The Atlas comet will not be an alien spacecraft The public will learn more about the extensive surveillance state and be less approving of it. The Epstein files will be a big nothing burger.
- treebeard901 9mo ago
  > China will begin blockading the islands around Taiwan, leading to a blockade of Taiwan itself. Odds are there will be a peaceful reunification with China instead of a war. It's not even 2026 and this one has already started to happen...
  - treebeard901 9mo ago
    > Maduro will be overthrown in Venezuela and is all being used as leverage by the U.S. in its negotiations with China and Russia
nitwit005 9mo ago
US tourism continuing to slump, particularly if conflict with Venezuela happens. More job interviews having a step to prove you can do it without AI, even at roles that expect you to use AI. OpenAI will be on the front page of Reddit for how bad/annoying its ads are (There was already a popular post about it from someone in a test group).
cwmoore 9mo ago
More color in clothes fashion
ksec 9mo ago
Instead of Predictions I guess I will do Wishlist. JPEG-XL or AV2 with AVIF. I still dont believe AV2 would be a better technology. But regardless we need something better than JPEG. And WebP wont cut it. Arguably JPEG-XL isn't good enough either but we have to take what we have. LLEVC + EVCv2, VVCv2, AV2, or H.267 early release. We need better video codec. H.264 High Profile is still 70% of all video usage. May be LLEVC could be a decent alternative if the recent testing showing 60% bitrate reduction were accurate. Apple please open source your AAC-LC Encoder. It has been 10 years since you last update it and the release before that was 5 years so we are nearly 16 years since you last touched on it. Battle of OLED and RGB LCD. It has been a long time since display technology was this exciting. We have Tandem WOLED and RGB OLED, battling RGB Mini LED and SQD - Mini LED. Both will drive quality and price improvements. Safari - Please fix your multi Tab ( 10s to 100s of tabs ) issues. There are too many to even list but just copying 80 of what Firefox is doing is more than enough. Oracle release ZFS, MySQL, Solaris and dTrace into certain foundation. With their licenses changed to BSD. Bring back old 1.5mm typing distance keyboard on Laptops. HyperScale Cloud competition. I still dont understand why all Cloud are so expensive. And dedicated server are not promoted enough.
everfrustrated 9mo ago
AI will cause the value of knowledge to plummet. This will be felt particularly by universities - graduates will be valued to near zero by business. Elite universities will continue to do well but the value there becomes elitism and social status (this has been apparent for a long while already). Value of experience will grow - compounding this will be less opportunity for junior people to get that experience so they will be increasingly (and rightly) frustrated. The opportunities to have a successful career as a salaried employee decline significantly - people are pushed to start small businesses out of necessity - and this barrier is lower due to AI. A flurry of new dev tooling companies start up re-packaging software development processes and concepts into a more user friendly package that allows software development to go even more mainstream to accommodate this.
Havoc 9mo ago
Think we'll have the first job niche shock from AI that the wider public notices. A bit like online translation market just vanishing...except big enough for people to go "oh". Probably transport or warehouse related. US democracy fundamentally breaks (more). Substantial global turmoil directly resulting from US losing it's way. Will take time for an alternate order establishing itself in that void.
born2web 9mo ago
Coding job losses will continue.
Lapsa 9mo ago
life will be worse
atleastoptimal 9mo ago
AI will get better
markus_zhang 9mo ago
I'll probably get laid off.
belevme 9mo ago
I predict we will be able to use useful enough models on our own consumer machines with decent tokens per second and we will see an open source alternative to Claude Code using this setup, essentially making agentic vibe coding free.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
My proverbial taxi driver tells me about their DDR5 RAM investment and how we are still early.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
My proverbial taxi driver tells me about their DDR5 RAM investment and how we are still early. Apophis gets closer.
petabyt 9mo ago
Windows market share drops below 90% (On steam) The great recession of 2026/2027 (AI bubble pop) Sam Altman arrested OpenAI sold or split up in some way Bitcoin drops under $50k Ukraine war 'ends' Half Life 3 announcement GTA6 delayed again
nishilpatel 9mo ago
I’m cautiously optimistic about AI, but less about the hype cycle around it. AI (especially LLMs) will likely stay top-of-mind in 2026, but I expect costs to drop meaningfully and capabilities to feel more “infrastructure-like” rather than magical. SME Adoption will drive the AI to masses. If AI doesn’t meet near-term revenue and productivity promises, we may see pressure or stagnation in tech valuations, even as the underlying technology continues to improve. In other words, the market may cool before the tech does. On the macro side, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more market stability or mild declines, driven by a re-rating of expectations rather than a systemic collapse. Capital might rotate from speculative growth into cash-flow-positive businesses that actually deploy AI profitably. More broadly, I think 2026 will reward: reliability over flashy innovation in AI , Engineering depth over marketing narratives, Systems thinking over isolated “features” Less “what’s possible?” and more “what actually works at scale?”
smspillaz 9mo ago
I'm a bit late to the thread, but I'll play the game this year (24.12.2026). I don't want any of these to happen, but unfortunately I think they might: - US starts a digital services trade war with the EU. It starts out with tariffs on digital services provided to the USA. EU responds in kind. Google Cloud, AWS and Azure lose a lot of clients over this, but they mitigate the damage by restructuring their business to avoid the tariffs. The tariffs don't achieve any policy change in the EU and eventually settle on a tolerable level. - Significantly more restrictions and tightening on the US Visa Waiver Programme, with a small chance that it is rescinded altogether. VWP beneficiary countries threaten to retaliate in kind, but never do, because US tourism is too valuable. - China continues to overtake the USA in growth in tech and digital services related exports. FVEY gets very nervous about this, but in practice nothing is done because of strong consumer demand. - Coreweave faces solvency issues and numerous AI companies fundraising are forced to do their next raise at a down round. - AI job loss is revealed to not actually be real. The cause of unemployment really is finally realized to be economic uncertainty caused by high inflation, interest rates and international trade policy uncertainty. Potential digital services tariffs and AI boom collapse make the situation much worse. - Significantly more momentum behind the HIRE Act, with a small chance that it passes. If it does, tech giants close their EU/UK/Canada/Australia offices and move the roles to India. - Russia / Ukraine "peace deal" is signed, but will be broken by Russia based on some false flag. Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine unfortunately continues, but doesn't progress. - MAGA aligned actors interfere in the election of another country. - USA conducts a "special operation" in Venezuela. - Weaponized AI generated disinformation and fake audio/video/images starts to become more common. A major news story will break based on AI generated disinformation. It will be disproven quickly, but not before it has had a chance to spread.

115 points by mfrw 9mo ago

What are your predictions for this coming year?

lee101 9mo ago

[dead]

RaccoonAttack 9mo ago

No predictions, only wish next year bad things no so much. And f** u 2025.

ant6n 9mo ago
It’s crazy, it feels like 2019 was the last good year.
- m-hodges 9mo ago
  People post their annual “20xx was terrible!” every year since 2016.
  - Atreiden 9mo ago
    Well, in fairness...

Bender 9mo ago

Some people will write 2025 on forms asking for the current year.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

brynet 9mo ago

I finally get adopted by a nice family of sentient pizzas in 2026. https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html https://brynet.ca/wallofpizza.html

mfrw 9mo ago

Previous Years: - 2025: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490343 - 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777115 - 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628 - 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236 - 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068 - 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596 - 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859 - 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988 - 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767 - 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723 - 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370 - 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201 - 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023 - 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681 - 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416530

yen223 9mo ago
Read the 2025 prediction thread for some perspective. (Hope you didn't stake your retirement on bitcoin hitting $200,000!)
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
  > There are even more restrictions aimed at stopping kids using social media. I dont recall if the Australia ban was on the cards then.
  - yen223 9mo ago
    The act passed federal parliament late 2024. It already existed in the state of South Australia before that.

brihati 9mo ago

In the software engineering world, in 2026 we saw a wave of code assistant products. In 2026, we will see a wave of designing software architecture products, not just on greenfield projects but also brownfield projects.

ksaj 9mo ago

YouTube will be so inundated by AI cat and dog videos that people stop watching them altogether. People will automatically assume anything labeled "cute" is fake.

pestaa 9mo ago
Facebook is already like this. People didn't stop watching. In fact, they mostly stopped caring if it's fake. And no point in debunking the obvious BS: they scroll faster than you can say AI.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
phito 9mo ago
I wish, but from what I've seen, most "normies" don't care at all as long as they are entertained. It makes me depressed seeing my friends consuming and sharing all that AI slop while either believing it's true, or not even asking themselves if it is. At least they're having fun while they still can... right?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- aprdm 9mo ago
  Why should they care and why does it make you depressed ?
prepend 9mo ago
My mom sends me AI videos of cute cats doing the impossible (flying around the room, washing raccoons, etc). When I told her they were AI, she said “so what, they’re cute”
- DANmode 9mo ago
  Say more.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

rozenmd 9mo ago

Last year I predicted: People will continue to run websites, and need to know when they're down (god, I hope). My 2026 prediction is that people will continue running websites and buiding web apps that need monitoring, more than ever before.

silexia 9mo ago

The USD will devalue 5-10% further. Flock and other government tools for watching and controlling you will expand. Big companies will expand their regulatory capture, especially in medical care. Fingers will continue to be pointed at health insurance as the problem while the real problem of an artificially limited supply of doctors goes unaddressed. Government agencies will continue their slow bloat as no mechanism exists for government like bankruptcy in the private sector. Patent trolls will expand their lawsuits and extort more legitimate businesses. The far left will assassinate more Republican leaders.

racktash 9mo ago
Given most assassinations on US politicians (including attempted) targeted Democrat politicians in 2025, I would have different expectations to your last point.

jawuilp 9mo ago

[dead]

MSKJ 9mo ago

Still no high-speed rail in the US

al_borland 9mo ago
Look into Brightline. They are already operating in Florida and are currently building a route from CA to Vegas. https://www.brightlinewest.com/ https://www.brightlinewest.com/

ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago

Physical AI will make subversive discoveries that exceed everyone's expectations - space-time integrated computing, rather than the current three-dimensional spatial computing plus discrete time steps

mythrwy 9mo ago
I'm really hoping you mean substantive not subversive.
- OutOfHere 9mo ago
  Allegedly AI recently discovered vulnerabilities in React Server that were/are being exploited on unpatched systems, so that's subversive, and we might expect a lot more of it before it gets better.
- ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago
  I actually meant subversive intentionally. While 'substantive' would mean major progress within the current framework, I’m predicting a shift that subverts the current foundational assumptions of robotics. Right now, we treat time as a secondary sequence—an 'add-on' to 3D space. Moving to a unified spacetime architecture isn't just a big improvement; it fundamentally undermines the discrete-frame logic that almost all current CV and RL models are built upon. It’s 'subversive' because it requires us to unlearn the way we’ve been processing motion for the last decade.
- ZuoCen_Liu 9mo ago
  Let me explain again why I said "disruptive" rather than "substantial"：the current "embodied artificial intelligence" still uses 19th-century numerical methods (the Adams-Bashforth integration method from 1883 and the Runge method from 1895) to represent time frames + three-dimensional space calculations to approximate four-dimensional spacetime (relativistic covariance has proven that spacetime is an integrated whole, i.e., four-dimensional spacetime). I will release more specific code later - you might wonder, don't the "scientists" at those big companies know about this? The answer is that they do know, and I will also release the reasons later, which will definitely surprise you!

rvz 9mo ago

I predict more layoffs as I unfortunately already did in 2024 [0]. But let's just say you have to prepare for 2030. The future of jobs report 2025 by the WEF is also reporting that 40% of employers are planning to reduce their workforce because of AI by 2030. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490692 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041311

TheAlchemist 9mo ago

Musk empire will come crashing down, starting with Tesla. AI bubble will start to pop (even though the adoption continues to improve slowly). US / Europe separation will accelerate. EDIT: For the first 2 - it's the 3rd year I'm thinking it will be 'the' year...

snvzz 9mo ago
>bubble starts to pop They're called bubbles because they don't "start to pop". It's sudden and sharp.

AnimalMuppet 9mo ago

AI bots post enough content fast enough that the general public learns about the "dead internet" theory. The Supreme Court rules against Trump in several important cases (tariffs and birthright citizenship, and a couple of others). Trump threatens to arrest at least one big tech executive. LLMs continue to improve, but the rate becomes slow enough that most people realize that AGI is not just around the corner.

charlescohen 9mo ago

[dead]

muzani 9mo ago

- EVs will be in the Early Majority group, and 2/3 of them will be Chinese. At least 1 in 4 of new cars purchased will be EVs. - AI will innovate towards visuals, personality, and tool use. AI tool use will start to innovate past just reading docs, maybe into more things like gaming and robotics. - Some AI products (not necessarily LLMs) will start competing on latency. Notably on voice/calls, but also things like drones, robotics, etc.

magixx 9mo ago
I think EVs will head in the complete opposite direction in that sales will slow down and they will continue to be a minority. Ford just killed off the F150 lightning and EVs (but also new cars) are still expensive purchases in a time with a lot of economic uncertainty. While Chinese companies are making affordable options all the markets seem to love putting tariffs on them in order to keep their homegrown automakers alive.
- tomwojcik 9mo ago
  I just read on a Polish automotive portal that the government has concerns about cybersecurity in Chinese cars. I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese cars were entirely banned for some businesses in the future. https://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,178770,32479760,minister-bije-na-alarm-chinskie-auta-moga-byc-koniem-trojanskim.html https://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,178770,32479760,minister-bije-na-al...
- muzani 9mo ago
  Looking into this, this reinforces my predictions? I looked up the Ford F-150 Lightning and a quote catches my eye: "When the electric truck debuted in 2022, Russia had just invaded Ukraine, disrupting supplies of nickel, a key material in EV batteries." Raw materials and cost is a big part of the Chinese dominance on EVs and it'll continue to be on that side of the political sphere. Having to tariff China also emphasizes that they're gaining ground too quickly. They process about (over?) 80% of the major parts, so you can't fully tariff them either, only assembled cars or some parts.
- 2026iknewit 9mo ago

csomar 9mo ago

- Major disruptions on the financial markets due to the USD losing value. Commodities go up. Not certain about Bitcoin/Crypto as it is backed mostly by the USD itself. - US goes on the offensive on tokenization moving bonds, stocks, transfers, etc. to the blockchain. China opens up its eCNY to the grand public. - AI bubble pops. Companies decide that LLM-coding is not worth it after accounting for the downsides. LLMs for generating photos and videos are still not good enough. OpenAI goes the way of pipedpiper. - The war in Ukraine remains unresolved. Russia advances but only marginally. Europe still shaking its head about what to do. US lower its involvement. - The US world cup goes very badly. Like embarrassingly bad. Goes okay in Canada and kinda okay in Mexico though. - China invades Taiwan in the last month of 2026.

weagle05 9mo ago
By going the way of pipedpiper do you mean Son of Anton?

gardenhedge 9mo ago

AI continues to improve - not to AGI levels but claude code level for industries outside of coding/tech. Elon Musk gets richer Europe anti-woke grows

Ekaros 9mo ago

Significant economic turmoil. Either from private debt or AI finally deflating. Probably due to enough data center projects that won't materialize due to funding getting cut.

eps 9mo ago
More likely from the government attempts to manipulate mid-term elections in the US, and the instability that will follow. And I hope I'm wrong.

cons0le 9mo ago

[flagged]

mc3301 9mo ago
Who is the big guy? Why $1000?
- johnwheeler 9mo ago
  Donald Trump because he made a bet is my guess.
  - cons0le 9mo ago
    It's not for a bet. The presents are just for celebration. You could call it an expression of joy
    - johnwheeler 9mo ago
      To each their own. I can definitely understand that sentiment, although I'm 46 years old, and I've turned more conservative over the last few years, I still really like Obama. I also like Trump, though. It's kind of weird. Don't want to start a flame war though, I respect your opinions.

mediumsmart 9mo ago

game over

d_silin 9mo ago

Politics - New major armed conflict starts. Space - Artemis II succeeds. - Starship makes first fully reusable orbital flight. Other tech - One of the fusion startups demonstrates net energy. - AI bubble pops, OpenAI gets acquired by Microsoft.

m-hodges 9mo ago

Household name AI Company will IPO. Existing safety work will further deprioritize in favor of maximizing shareholder value.

jawns 9mo ago

I predict certain political factions in the US will spend much of 2026 looking for ways to introduce a delay in the 2028 elections, such as pursuing a war so that Congress can postpone elections until they can be held safely. Which has never happened before, but who knows what absurdities will be given the OK these days?

prepend 9mo ago
We had elections during the civil war, 0.000001% chance the 2028 elections get changes.
- taproottap 9mo ago
  That was the civil war, maybe in 2026 the uncivil one begins. (But I think it will just be a more general unravelling.)
VoodooJuJu 9mo ago
[dead]
softwaredoug 9mo ago
As elections are determined by state and constitutionally mandated, this would be next to impossible. It’s more likely that legal shenanigans happen like VRA section 2 going away and deepening gerrymandering wars or looking for excuses to disqualify people from voting for “election integrity” and other creative democratic backsliding that would pass muster at SCOTUS.

phito 9mo ago

Engagement bait will get amplified even more, with the goal of gathering human generated data and user retention. Lots of new subreddits have been popping up this year, in different languages, that are flooded with AI generated rage and engagement bait posts. Facebook is feeding boomers with the same kind of slop. We will see the repercussions of this on society.

mindracer 9mo ago

A driverless car will be involved in a fatal accident

humanfromearth9 9mo ago

The Independent Variation Principle, the unifying software design meta-principle, becomes widely known, recognized and applied across the industry and academic world. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17677316 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17677316

physicles 9mo ago
This piqued my curiosity. Are you the author of the paper? For this principle to become widely known, it needs to be communicated in a more succinct way. 400 pages is too much to ask people to invest. Even so, as far as I understand the gist of what the paper says, the principle helps make explicit some intuition I’ve had about design for a long time.
- rramadass 9mo ago
  It sounds like a retake/elaboration on the "Commonality and Variability Analysis" used in Domain Engineering and employed in "Family-Oriented Abstraction, Specification and Translation" (FAST) software engineering methodology. Commonality and Variability in Software Engineering by James Coplien et al. pdf at - https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Commonality_Variability.pdf https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Commonality_Vari...
montague27 9mo ago
sounds interesting
aeve890 9mo ago
>Error 503 How ominous

hajrice 9mo ago

- SaaS prices will start dropping. - Current LLMs being seen more and more like commodities - We'll start see a LOT more companies making their own LLM - Capital stops pretending everything is fine & we finally see the stock market reflect what's been slowly bubbling up socially (people 'feeling poorer', trust declining, consumption becoming more cynical)

Yossarrian22 9mo ago

Major “prediction market” scandal Someone is busted falsifying a race horse’s pedigree to hide use of a cloned sire. Entropy increases Putin dies, significant palace intrigue follows, but the war in Ukraine continues on unfortunately.

johnwheeler 9mo ago

- Tech layoffs grow 100% YoY - Multiple interest rate cuts instead of 1 - News about prosecutions for insider trading on Polymarket. - Bitcoin will touch a multi-year low. MSTR becomes insolvent. - Google Gemini will overtake ChatGPT in DAU. - Software will be more commoditized and the authors’ “taste” will become its primary differentiator. - Fiserv will increase 50% or more in market cap (I said the same thing last year about PayPal, and I was wrong) - Warren Buffett will pass away. (I hope I’m wrong) :-( - Google will drop the price of Gemini Ultra to $125 a month or less, Anthropic and OpenAI will follow suit. - Logitech will start making a dedicated vibe-coding microphone-whatever that means.

bawis 9mo ago
I will take the Warren Buffett prediction seriously.
sosodev 9mo ago
Prosecution for insider trading in 2026? I highly doubt that

gota 9mo ago

Dedollarization accelerates. I'm keeping that prediction for 2026 from a late 2024 thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405149

Schiendelman 9mo ago
What's the specific measurement you are predicting? What happened to the measurement you would've made based on your previous prediction?
- gota 9mo ago
  I wrote a lot. Let me add a tldr: any international trades happening in non-US dollar is an "acceleration" of dedollarizatiom, given that currently all trade is dollarized. Original: I don't known if I understand the spirit of the question. There are no metrics or tracking of how "dollarized" the international economy is because virtually all trade is done in dollars and there has been no risk of this changing for the past ?65? years My original prediction for 2026 (not 2025, mind you) made in 2024 was based on a few factors, if I recall correctly, 1) the Russia-Ucraine war and related sanctions; 2) the open discussion in BRICS about trade in direct currencies; and 3) the then-promised isolatonist policies of Trump's second mandate. What we've seen in 2025 makes all of those stronger I guess. 1) I don't know the status of the Russia-Ucraine war; all I know is it is a glaring sign of the end of Pax Americana (as is the Israel-Palestine genocide/war, by the way, which the US would -not- have allowed given the strong internal opposition and negative popularity among the American public). So sanctions of Russia notwistanding, that status quo, which strongly related to dollar as reserve currency, is either agonizing or dead. 2) Trump and the US attempted a very strong response to the (first ever?) trades in local currency between Brazil and China, mostly in the form of targeted tariffs (all discourse about Bolsonaro and whatever being the motivation for tariffing Brazilian imports being, in my opinion, political smoke and mirrors). I don't think it worked. I think BRICS might press on this. If the mercosur/EU trade deal goes through it will also be a strong force towards trade in Euros/Reais/Pesos directly I believe. 3) I don't think I need to clarify; tariffs and other issues brought on by the current US government were severely negative to the placement of the US as a preferred trade partner. This is to beyond economic choice; active anti-american sentiment are at all times high in countries like Canada, Denmark, and Mexico, all historically aligned with the US. This may not seem that relevant but come election cycles in those and other countries we might see platforms/candidates that openly propose to "secede" from the US hegemony international order. If that happens, removing US military bases is a first go. Alternatives to the US "petrodollar" a close second.

2026iknewit 9mo ago

= Generelly speaking: Chinas market power will continue grow around the globe. There might be some issues with there economy but they will increase exports in all relevant inudstries. The Solar revolution in Afrika will continue, driven by even cheaper chinese goods. It will be a story around the globe how much Afrika is changing. CATLs Sodium Batterie will reduce prices of energy stores to a new unexpected low. Cheaper faster than expected driving further some success stories. Germany (were i'm from) will continue struggling and it will get worse for the automotive sector (especially for the suppliers). Due to economic issues in germany, the far right nazi party AfD will continue winning a few more % points. Some car maker will bring a relevant cheap globally available EV car. I suspect BYD, which will increase public awareness of germans automotive sector or automotive around the world. Automotive will start becoming a commodity. Revenue per car will go down. Climate will see some new record. Either more and stronger storms, more heat or/and more flud rain. We will talk about it temporarily and then continue going back to ignoring it. = USA vs. the rest of the world: Stuff will continue as shitty as they are. Companies will not compensate the inflation americans have seen so they continue to struggle. There will be 2-3 attacks on public figures. If the economy will continue downwoards, potentially also some CEO or very well known Rich Person (Musk, Suckerberg, Bill Gates (after Epstein files), Jeff Bezos) Epstein files will come out, but due to every public media playing it down and no one caring anymore about it anyway (we all know, he is dead, Maxwell might get out of jail) and it will not lead to a coop. I will learn the full extend of Bill Gates affairs and will strike him from my list of people i thought have a positive story arc. Republicans will lose Midterms harder than usual/landslide style. Conflict between Trump and the house and senate then this will lead to either Trump doing more golfing or further sliding of the USA in an authoritarien direction. The only issue here is, Trump is to old and fragile, he couldn't care less about his power because he just does what he wants anything but he can't come up with a more elaborate "USA Trump Corp" strategy to take really over. While in parallel authorian stuff depends on a person and there is no one really there. Vance? No way. Hey lets bet on Vance and the wife of the Kirk guy coming together and the republicans liking it that much but no i don't think this will play out. Obama Care's budget cut might be a trigger point for something. Russia: Russia will continue influencing US Politics, but economy will continue going down. We are coming to the magic 5 year mark, Ukraines strategy attacking russian oil is working but Russia is Russia, people can suffer there. Derek Huffman will die. AI: AI will continue growing. Progress will still be seen in a lot of different areas. Nvidia will focus on increasing production and will see another Hit with Rubin. We might see some very special new thing. Perhaps material science discovery, mathematics or generall so much better LLMs. It will continue affecting jobs around the world. Especially in fields were GenAI is already really good. Arts. There will be more AI music on Radio and in the Top Charts. GenAI for images will continue reducing jobs for 2d and 3d, advertising, texting, translations. Robots will continue progress and impress us. Luigi: He will get lifelong prison sentence :( Musk: SpaceX will be a successful launch, while Tesla struggles in car sales, he will continue hyping and overshadowed through SpaceX, Tesla will not fall yet. The Selfdriving thing will kill someone, his robot will not be ready. GTA 6 will be out and it will be awesome!

xnx 9mo ago

Another large profession will be significantly affected by AI in the way graphic designers and copywriters already have.

tomwojcik 9mo ago

People's minds will become even lazier due to prolonged daily use of LLMs. They literally won't be able to think for themselves without AI assistance (that's why OpenAI won't fall, btw). Attention spans will drop even lower, causing severe psychological problems. Think 'Digital Dementia 2.0.' Later, LLMs will be portrayed as something evil, yet everyone will still use them. Parents will use them, while telling their kinds not to do so. Leetcode is already standard for SWE interviews, but other industries will need to adopt similar tests to verify that an applicant's brain is functioning correctly and that they're capable of doing the job. Maybe a formal confirmation from a psychologist specializing in 'fried brains' will be required.

sosodev 9mo ago
You do know this reads the same as every pessimistic commentary on technology ever, right? So many people were convinced that television was going to fry our brains.
- serf 9mo ago
  ... do you know it didn't? I'm not sure myself. I do know that television feels about as deep as a puddle for me. Literature a bit less so. I suspect there is something to this.
- eucryphia 9mo ago
  I regret watching too much television as a kid. Fortunately my mother wouldn’t allow us to play indoors on the weekends unless it was raining.
- g8oz 9mo ago
  I assure you that it did fry many brains.
  - jf22 9mo ago
    But what was the impact? Society has made tremendous progress since the invention of TV.

coffeecoders 9mo ago

My prediction: 2026 looks normal. AI stays the top story but in a boring way as novelty wears off and models get cheaper and faster (maybe even more embedded). No AGI moment. LLMs start feeling like databases or cloud compute. No SpaceX or OpenAI IPO moment. Capital markets quietly reward the boring winners instead. S&P 500 grinds out another double digit year, mostly because earnings keep up and alternatives still look worse. Tech discourse stays apocalyptic, but balance sheets don't. If you mute politics and social media noise, 2026 probably looks like one of those years that we later remember as "stable" in retrospect. Bonus: Bitcoin sees both 50k and 150k.

johnwheeler 9mo ago
To me, this is wishful thinking. The more I see these "our jobs are safe" claims, the more I fear our jobs are not safe, and people are just trying to convince themselves which is an indicator of turmoil ahead.
- DANmode 9mo ago
  Who is “our”?
  - johnwheeler 9mo ago
    Tech folk. Anyone really.
    - OGEnthusiast 9mo ago
      What does "safe" mean? Unemployment in the US right now is under 5% which is historically very good (even though it's been slightly trending upwards over the past few months).
      - johnwheeler 9mo ago
        Employed. My contention is the AI is getting so good at doing tech related things that you'll need far fewer employees. I think Claude Code 4.5 is already there. Honestly, it just needs to permeate the market.

techgnosis 9mo ago

* Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity. It's the perfect vehicle for the US and most investment in EV charging stations will decrease. * Oral GLP-1s hit the market and the market shares doubles * Both OpenAI and SpaceX IPO * Charlie Kirk's shooter will be executed after being on death row for less than a year. 50/50 chance that it's televised. * Luigi is also executed * Seattle causes an international incident with Egypt and Iran when they don't reschedule the Pride Parade to not be on the same day as the world cup game. Trump sends in the troops.

RickJWagner 9mo ago
Nice details in this one.
johnwheeler 9mo ago
I can't imagine a public execution; that seems insane. I know the world is crazy right now, but I don't know about this.
cons0le 9mo ago
The EV one won't happen because people here are fundamentally culturally opposed to EVs
nearlyepic 9mo ago
> Americans will get their first taste of extended range EVs (full EV powertrain with a tiny ICE that charges the battery) and they explode in popularity. This happened, it was called the Chevy Volt. Nobody bought it.
- techgnosis 9mo ago
  Oh that's interesting, I didn't know that. In this case I am talking about the Ram 1500. I think this one will make a splash. A truck with almost 700 miles of range. Americans think they hate EVs but they really hate the lack of EV infrastructure.
- 9mo ago

tpoacher 9mo ago

Year of the linux desktop

coolThingsFirst 9mo ago

Another hot war. Western world will face a new generational war to uphold democracies. Ai bubble pops and causes turmoil in the economy, software jobs will be back. I get swole. In bank account and muscles. LLM progress will platoue.

eucryphia 9mo ago

The government will start calling 26°C (78°F) ‘Extreme’.

Artoooooor 9mo ago

Big mergers in the tech world with excuses including "AI". Hopefully - some reversal of sticking AI to products that don't need it. Even more massive layoffs. And the worst part - still no Half Life 3.

0x6372696E6765 9mo ago

[dead]

afaxwebgirl 9mo ago

I think that food instability will be a serious problem. I don't think that the store shelves will be empty per se, but rather I believe it will be priced so high that people will be starving because they simply can't afford it. Its already happening but I believe it will accelerate in 2026 especially with the Fed turning the money-printers back on. Inflation is sure to increase :-/ Grow a garden everyone. Just do it.

RickJWagner 9mo ago

End of the Russian/Ukranian war. US improves relations with China. Climate problems are shown to be less serious than previously thought. The rich get richer, but nobody cares because quality of life is improved for everybody. AI brings additional leisure time, which results in a worldwide resurgence in bluegrass music as millions take up the guitar, mandolin and violin. The biggest surge is in banjo, though. Billy Strings leaps ahead of Taylor Swift in concert sales. 2026 is really looking up! Happy New year, Hacker News!

johnwheeler 9mo ago
It's like Penn and Teller say: "Everyone thinks the world is getting worse, but it's always getting better." I hope you're right. Maybe it's just my age creeping up on me and turning me into a cynic. Anyway, good to know there's still people who think positively.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
  I think I am young but I do feel like we base our expectations of 2026 from 2025 which lets admit, was not good. I do not think that there would be sudden change from 2025 -> 2026 that could fundamentally change reality if the fundamentals stay the same which in my opinion they kinda would. I do feel like 2026 would be like 2025 but just a little better maybe or little worse.
  - johnwheeler 9mo ago
    Yes, I agree with this sentiment. A little better or a little worse, hopefully not too bad. But I think the same feeling of dread will persist, especially going into 2027, particularly around artificial intelligence for tech workers. My concern is that the switch won't be gradual. One day someone will come out with a model that can do everything valuable this software engineer can do. Claude code 4.5 almost hits that mark for me. In a year, I can't imagine… It might not be AGI, it might not be able to do everything everyone could do, but it'll be enough that you can fire most of the people on your team and just use a few to guide the AI. And I think that's gonna tighten things up in the job market even more. Hopefully it leads to more job creation and it empowers people to compete with one another based on taste and individuals to compete with organizations. That's the best-case scenario I see.

bayareapsycho 9mo ago

There will be a cliff in the number of people in this industry. There will be a bunch of senior people floating around the job market and no more junior talent. There will be fewer new grads and the pipelines will dry up. If they go down the route of automating as much as possible, it'll destroy the social pipelines that allow companies to reproduce themselves. I don't think that'll actually happen, but it'll be interesting to watch

xnx 9mo ago
Programming may become like typing where people do it for themselves instead of having a secretary.
- kjellsbells 9mo ago
  I think the set of values of X in the prediction that "X is the year of the citizen coder" has a lot more members than you think. fortran in 1955, cobol in 1965, visual basic in 1993, delphi in 1995, visualage in 1998(?), Power Automate in 2022, vibe coding in 2025...
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
What are your opinions on accepting junior talent say, 4 years from now? Would there be any changes because I feel like a lot of junior talent isnt picked because of AI but I feel like given a long enough timescope, AI bubble will burst and so taking that into account, what would you say about the job market?
- kaycey2022 9mo ago
  Unless there is an exponential growth in model context AI is not replacing anything. So far every new model launches with some increase in advertised intelligence, but only with increasingly dubious ways to measure the same. All the current crop of AI does is it makes the job of some people easier and allows some others to level up faster in terms output. If managements are going to be stupid enough to destroy the human side of the business, then they are only setting themselves up to spend much much more hiring the right people in the future.

MichaelNolan 9mo ago

Most to least confident: 1. Bazel is still not widely used outside of massive monorepos. (because its such a pain to use) 2. Solar power will surpass wind power in the US to become the 4th largest source of electricity. https://eia.languagelatte.com/ https://eia.languagelatte.com/ 3. Starship begins launching real payloads, achieves reusability of the upper stage, and successfully does a ship to ship fuel transfer. 4. Tesla stock has a major correction (>20%) as it becomes increasingly clear that Waymo, Zoox, AVRide, and various Chinese companies are significantly ahead in AV technology. And as it becomes clear that Optimus is a sham.

fuzzythinker 9mo ago
> 20% is not a major correction. It just recently doubled. Even at price before it doubled wasn't considered undervalued, so anything < 66% down is not a major correction.
- diamondfist25 9mo ago
  What dope are u smoking? Fsd is fantastic and works everywhere
everfrustrated 9mo ago
I was with you until the last. Chinese will always be irrelevant to the US car market as both political parties will block chinese vehicle sales on (valid) national security grounds. Uber and Lyft stocks crash as markets realise the game is up - nobody can compete with Tesla who can afford to burn excess spare factory capacity driving cars directly off the line to start picking up passengers. Waymo might have good AI but can't possibly compete with Teslas unit economics.

mandeepj 9mo ago

Bloodbath in midterms!!

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago

So far.. my track record has not been great, but maybe I was being a little too optimistic as I shuffle various futures in my head so lets start from more likely to more fun: - Unabated push towards 'Snow Crash' level of extremely localized power structures at the expense of federal government ( think K shaped economy, but for governmental structures ) - Actual further descent into K shaped economy -- that.. I fear.. is a very safe prediction to make now - Midterms will see some localized polically motivated violence ( likely across the spectrum bar some pressura valve release ) - Shadow wars will continue - Bitcoin will crash; monero will replace it as dollar falls - Companies and government will desperately work together to contains severely distributed ASI level entity that exists as hidden braille invisible characters across all known fora - I manage to to move to full WFH - Valve releases HL3 on Frame - Fusion power will get closer by two kiloseconds

DANmode 9mo ago
Why is Bitcoin crashing? Also, sometimes headlines claim 11% down is crashing - what’s “crashing” here?
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
  Honestly, I think it ran out of speculation runway and current 'crashing' is just poeple cashing out the profits they made on the recent swings. It doesn't take away my 2026 prediction tho:P

wslh 9mo ago

Crypto, as an economic and innovation ecosystem, is largely dead, with the partial exception of stablecoins (which are not inherently “crypto” in the ideological/decentralized sense). The core issue is structural: most cryptocurrencies depend on foundations that fund development, marketing, and operations through large token holdings. When prices fall, these entities eventually become forced sellers. At some point, their “whale power” is not optional but necessary to survive, creating persistent sell pressure and undermining long-term trust. Bitcoin likely has a longer lifespan than most alternatives due to its lack of a foundation, fixed monetary policy, and social inertia. Over time, it may absorb whatever residual trust exists in the broader crypto space. However, that does not imply indefinite relevance: Bitcoin could survive while gradually becoming economically marginal, not dead, but increasingly negligible outside niche use cases.

lern_too_spel 9mo ago
The analysis requires understanding the total addressable market of greater fools. Bitcoin, like any speculative asset, has value as long as people believe its value will go up. When there are no more greater fools to buy in, its value stops going up, so it loses value as a speculative asset. People will sell off to buy other speculative assets, causing a price drop and accelerating sell-off from others who do not want to be bag holders until the asset reaches its intrinsic utility value. Since Bitcoin is strictly worse than alternatives as a form of payment, that value is 0. While this is the ultimate price of Bitcoin, correctly estimating when it will happen requires an understanding of the addressable market, which can change sharply as different countries implement regulation.
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
Yup I had written a similar comment where I feel like stablecoins do seem to have a good idea but I still believe that the whole industry even with stablecoins would tend on becoming even more regulated and getting more integrated with centralized finance I do feel like it would be centralized finance which would run stablecoins and not defi/crypto companies which would connect with/partner with centralized finance in my opinion tho. Or as I said in that comment, the rise of finance superapps like coinbase so I feel like their stablecoins might be more of influence but either way, I do feel like its going to be extremely hard for people to enter the stablecoin market basically.

aadv1k 9mo ago

This is less of a prediction, more of how I see this industry progressing. I really feel "web dev" is going to get highly commoditized by GenAI, by web dev I mean 99% of building CRUD-adjacent apps, we are already seeing it now with tools like Claude Code etc, this pipeline is just going to get more refined, with tigther testing feedback loops, PR-workflows and a CI/CD deployment pipeline which the GenAI will control. This might be amplified by the fact the sheer amount of tested, high quality there is in the JavaScript-ecosystem for the AI to train on and learn from. Software engineering in general will tend more systems and embedded software, fields where GenAI can't perform well or can't be trusted to produce good code (I am thinking writing device drivers, or maintainence of legacy C applications) as well as deep research fields. The average software engineering job might be either that of a "technical product manager", or "researcher" or "low-level systems expert" That's just what I feel. Honestly, I am probably much younger an others on this forum, so I haven't really seen this industry "evolve" this is just how it looks to me now. I believe there was a time in the early 2010s where there was a boom of this "generalist developer" where if you knew your JavaScript-ecosystem (or App Dev ecosystem for that matter) pretty well, you could land a pretty decent job right out of college, or without a college degree at all. To me, at this stage the world in general needs software engineers who understand the "world" if that makes sense (in terms of physics, mathematics), or who have a really good mental model of computation. Better put, software engineering will become a tool in the larger context of research & development of tech that advance humanity.

scuff3d 9mo ago
You've left out an absolutely massive swath between "low level systems" and "crud app". There a lot more to the industry then just those two things. And as productivity rises, the complexity and ambition of the projects tackeled will continue to rise. The way we do the work might change, but things aren't going to look as different as people think.
- aadv1k 9mo ago
  Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I mean, we have SRE, which is a whole set of skillsets in itself and it does involve around maintaining "CRUD-apps"; Heck there is the cybersec industry as well, ensuring CRUD-apps aren't exploited. My para was certainly a bit more 2D, I was speaking more from what I might benefit learning now, to get a job, say end of 2026. I have observed many roles like SRE etc, require certain experience which is hard to get by working on your own projects without much traction; similiar case for cybersec but to a lesser extent. It's this paradox where in order to become a senior engineer, you must get hired as a junior engineer, to learn and observe how production software works, but that is pretty hard these days.

neom 9mo ago

We'll hear "emergent" a lot. Maybe too obvious but more and more interesting new robots will hit the market and robotics as space will become considerably legible. Probably going to start to understand how different types of models scaled capabilities will play off of each other when architected together (MOE+). Non-tech people are going to start having the model welfare conversation more generally.

snvzz 9mo ago

RISC-V based chips enter the high performance market. Everybody is somehow surprised.

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
Oh I would like so but I saw that the amount of compiler optimizations/optimizations in general for an architecture like arm or intel are so high that risc was unable to perform I think I really like risc-v but I saw the performance and I am doubtful about this, so I am interested if you have any evidence/resources that I don't know of to back up this claim

rntaberaberr 9mo ago

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2026iknewit 9mo ago
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alexgotoi 9mo ago

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bf9d413906 9mo ago

The collective West will continue its negative momentum. People will continue to seek easy solutions to hard challenges and vote accordingly, making things worse. We'll see further fragmentation of the post-WW2 international order. China does not interrupt while others are making mistakes. The US stock market will see a correction (and possibly a crash) due to it being generally overvalued, LLM advances unproven for most enterprise contexts, and premature investment in infrastructure. Other stock markets will be dragged down because everything is correlated these days. Building software continues being commoditized, putting downward pressure on salaries. Software quality diminishes due to prioritizing speed and using LLM output. Billionaires continue taking control of media companies and continuing using them to influence public thought and discourse. Big budget media production companies show no signs of newfound creativity or risk taking and continues producing remakes, sequels and prequels within existing franchises. Many people have further diminishing mental health due to a severe value crisis and lack of human connection. The neurological, cardiovascular and long-term consequences of repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections become better known and understood. But nothing is done to prevent further damage.

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago

There would be very strong emphasis on financial superapps, I saw coffeezilla's recent video about how coinbase is expanding to stocks and other stuff too but they are also expanding to prediction markets themselves which are also eating away at gambling/basically are gambling apps itself Coffeezilla (and me too right now) basically shout that its like a health app tried to give you junk food off the back alley basically But I feel like these trends will continue to grow, I was partially interested in stablecoin markets and it seems that apps like paypal,venmo,cash app etc. would essentially just stand back as stablecoin and so there are chances that these financial superapps will do these too in the near future There would be more emphasis on removing VPN's in countries. I feel like UK (and in extent other countries too) will have some influence on gatekeeping their populations from websites who dont comply to their arbitrary rules and VPN's being the last hope for many, I feel like a real crackdown on it is gonna come in 2026 I feel like centralization and extremism might continue slipping up in 2026 too perhaps. To me I just feel like we see things and this illusion that there are many players in any marketplace but it does feel like they are centralizing (some major tech apps, some major finance apps etc. which will influence a lot of average person's opinion) and we just saw something similar happen to dram prices which i also think wont really reduce even in 2026 I am seeing people fed up with centralization and big tech and more interested in homemade-alike solutions/created by normal people. Projects like clippy and others have made more people aware of such things and I think it will continue in 2026 when more people see this real "AI tax" of increasing prices of hardware Centralized finance and decentralized finance (although I dont appreciate crypto) feel to me would kinda converge on stablecoins and then merge/already are merging and In my opinion the company with more ties to centralized finance could win. Tech and finance seem to me would have more coupling on a rate similar to 2025. The AI bubble has chances of popping in 2026 but I am not sure about it but that being said, its a matter of when, not if in my opinion. But if AI bubble does pop, I feel like finance and tech would decouple most likely because it seems to me that if an offer as lucrative as "AGI" for the financial investors failed in their eyes, they would stray away from real tech businesses who make real life problems much easier but wont have the lure/lucrativeness if the bubble pops up Else, we are gonna see the same thing where people will slap AI over anything to get funding. I do feel like if AI bubble pops then the companies who picked AI hype when there was no need might be shamed for it but It never really happened in the crypto space because those companies went straight to AI after crypto so I think we would need some time in between after AI bursting and another hype to give people some time to think what really happened and the scale of it if it does bursts.

vismit2000 9mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294574

kaycey2022 9mo ago

Aliens will reveal themselves

euparkeria 9mo ago

AI will start to be seen as a 'boomer' and a low-quality term. Manual and human work will become more valued.

hamburgererror 9mo ago

We'll get similar stories than the one told in the movie Her [1]. People will get married to AIs. [1] https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt1798709/ https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt1798709/

ajoseps 9mo ago
this has already happened: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/japan-ai-wedding/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/japan-ai...
- hamburgererror 9mo ago
  Wow I'm late, but not so surprised! I'll correct my take then: due to this, the epidemic of loneliness will start to surge like never before. This might pave the way to some reaction in the public opinion, but real concrete actions will not happen in 2026, I would rather expect them around 2028 or even 2030.

protortyp 9mo ago

Positives: - Major breakthroughs in robotics research thanks to ultra scalable simulation software and RL - AI will become even more useful in daily life - New drug discoveries or successful stage 3 clinical studies related to / similar to GLP-1. Also in longevity research. - Renewables will get even cheaper - Creators will thrive with all the new AI tooling - Government services will become more digital (at least in Germany) - The war between Ukraine and Russia will end - Interest rates continue to fall, causing an uptick in housing buildup - The EU finally takes a harder stance against uncontrolled migration with concrete measures that will bring numbers far down. Negatives: - Societal loneliness will continue to accelerate - People will use their brains even less, thanks to more widespread LLM use - the Nazi party in Germany will become the majority in two states (but won't be able to govern them)

tetris11 9mo ago
> Major breakthroughs in robotics research thanks to ultra scalable simulation software and RL I was hoping that plumbers, electricians, construction, factory workers still had another 10-20 years before being priced out of the work pool. I was also hoping we had that much time to use threat of mass protest to keep our politicians aligned. I genuinely think it's game over for 99% of humanity's interests once the top wealthiest individuals and/or their governments can simply deploy robots en masse.
- lotsoweiners 9mo ago
  Hey if developers and office jobs get fucked by AI “promises” then fuck blue collar as well. You need a united population to destroy the interests of the 1%.

frigg 9mo ago

Or "what will surely not happen in 2026". HN crowd is atrocious at predicting anything.

dzonga 9mo ago

maybe finally the US gvt n elites will finally admit the economy is an recession. not this dress up and cosplaying being done - like the economy is growing - while it's actually shedding jobs, homes ain't selling cz there ain't buyers

estimator7292 9mo ago

Bad. Bad bad bad.

kilroy123 9mo ago

1. There will be an economic meltdown by summer. Similar to 2008, likely worse. 2. Some kind of extreme US constitutional crisis. 3. Putin will remain in power, but Russia will be struggling dramatically to keep funding the war as Ukrainian attacks keep chipping away at oil and gas exports. 4. At least one new major AI breakthrough. 5. Several more countries virtually collapse

pcdoodle 9mo ago

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sosodev 9mo ago

I suspect that 2026 will be the year we see a big breakthrough in the use of LLM agent systems. I don’t know what that will look like but I suspect the agents will be doing meaningful research (probably on AI).

treebeard901 9mo ago

Debt and Liquidity Crisis in the Bond Market that spreads to other areas. Probably first signs will be in the Repo market and go from there. Zelensky will be replaced as Ukraine's leader and Ukraine as a whole will switch back to Russian control, moving the new front line to other former Soviet states and Poland. Also, all of the weapons provided to Ukraine will begin pointing at Europe instead of Russia China will begin blockading the islands around Taiwan, leading to a blockade of Taiwan itself. Odds are there will be a peaceful reunification with China instead of a war. Maduro will be overthrown in Venezuela and is all being used as leverage by the U.S. in its negotiations with China and Russia The GOP will retain control over the House in the upcoming Midterms A large labor reduction in many high paying jobs, such as tech, due to higher productivity provided by AI. In normal times, this would cause a kind of deflation to balance everything out. Due to the pending economic crisis, the Govt will spend even more money to try to maintain the current system, leading to more inflation. The cost to service the current debt will be used to justify a large reduction in Federal Govt agencies and services. The Atlas comet will not be an alien spacecraft The public will learn more about the extensive surveillance state and be less approving of it. The Epstein files will be a big nothing burger.

treebeard901 9mo ago
> China will begin blockading the islands around Taiwan, leading to a blockade of Taiwan itself. Odds are there will be a peaceful reunification with China instead of a war. It's not even 2026 and this one has already started to happen...
- treebeard901 9mo ago
  > Maduro will be overthrown in Venezuela and is all being used as leverage by the U.S. in its negotiations with China and Russia

nitwit005 9mo ago

US tourism continuing to slump, particularly if conflict with Venezuela happens. More job interviews having a step to prove you can do it without AI, even at roles that expect you to use AI. OpenAI will be on the front page of Reddit for how bad/annoying its ads are (There was already a popular post about it from someone in a test group).

cwmoore 9mo ago

More color in clothes fashion

ksec 9mo ago

Instead of Predictions I guess I will do Wishlist. JPEG-XL or AV2 with AVIF. I still dont believe AV2 would be a better technology. But regardless we need something better than JPEG. And WebP wont cut it. Arguably JPEG-XL isn't good enough either but we have to take what we have. LLEVC + EVCv2, VVCv2, AV2, or H.267 early release. We need better video codec. H.264 High Profile is still 70% of all video usage. May be LLEVC could be a decent alternative if the recent testing showing 60% bitrate reduction were accurate. Apple please open source your AAC-LC Encoder. It has been 10 years since you last update it and the release before that was 5 years so we are nearly 16 years since you last touched on it. Battle of OLED and RGB LCD. It has been a long time since display technology was this exciting. We have Tandem WOLED and RGB OLED, battling RGB Mini LED and SQD - Mini LED. Both will drive quality and price improvements. Safari - Please fix your multi Tab ( 10s to 100s of tabs ) issues. There are too many to even list but just copying 80 of what Firefox is doing is more than enough. Oracle release ZFS, MySQL, Solaris and dTrace into certain foundation. With their licenses changed to BSD. Bring back old 1.5mm typing distance keyboard on Laptops. HyperScale Cloud competition. I still dont understand why all Cloud are so expensive. And dedicated server are not promoted enough.

everfrustrated 9mo ago

AI will cause the value of knowledge to plummet. This will be felt particularly by universities - graduates will be valued to near zero by business. Elite universities will continue to do well but the value there becomes elitism and social status (this has been apparent for a long while already). Value of experience will grow - compounding this will be less opportunity for junior people to get that experience so they will be increasingly (and rightly) frustrated. The opportunities to have a successful career as a salaried employee decline significantly - people are pushed to start small businesses out of necessity - and this barrier is lower due to AI. A flurry of new dev tooling companies start up re-packaging software development processes and concepts into a more user friendly package that allows software development to go even more mainstream to accommodate this.

Havoc 9mo ago

Think we'll have the first job niche shock from AI that the wider public notices. A bit like online translation market just vanishing...except big enough for people to go "oh". Probably transport or warehouse related. US democracy fundamentally breaks (more). Substantial global turmoil directly resulting from US losing it's way. Will take time for an alternate order establishing itself in that void.

born2web 9mo ago

Coding job losses will continue.

Lapsa 9mo ago

life will be worse

atleastoptimal 9mo ago

AI will get better

markus_zhang 9mo ago

I'll probably get laid off.

belevme 9mo ago

I predict we will be able to use useful enough models on our own consumer machines with decent tokens per second and we will see an open source alternative to Claude Code using this setup, essentially making agentic vibe coding free.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago

My proverbial taxi driver tells me about their DDR5 RAM investment and how we are still early.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago

My proverbial taxi driver tells me about their DDR5 RAM investment and how we are still early. Apophis gets closer.

petabyt 9mo ago

Windows market share drops below 90% (On steam) The great recession of 2026/2027 (AI bubble pop) Sam Altman arrested OpenAI sold or split up in some way Bitcoin drops under $50k Ukraine war 'ends' Half Life 3 announcement GTA6 delayed again

nishilpatel 9mo ago

I’m cautiously optimistic about AI, but less about the hype cycle around it. AI (especially LLMs) will likely stay top-of-mind in 2026, but I expect costs to drop meaningfully and capabilities to feel more “infrastructure-like” rather than magical. SME Adoption will drive the AI to masses. If AI doesn’t meet near-term revenue and productivity promises, we may see pressure or stagnation in tech valuations, even as the underlying technology continues to improve. In other words, the market may cool before the tech does. On the macro side, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more market stability or mild declines, driven by a re-rating of expectations rather than a systemic collapse. Capital might rotate from speculative growth into cash-flow-positive businesses that actually deploy AI profitably. More broadly, I think 2026 will reward: reliability over flashy innovation in AI , Engineering depth over marketing narratives, Systems thinking over isolated “features” Less “what’s possible?” and more “what actually works at scale?”

smspillaz 9mo ago

I'm a bit late to the thread, but I'll play the game this year (24.12.2026). I don't want any of these to happen, but unfortunately I think they might: - US starts a digital services trade war with the EU. It starts out with tariffs on digital services provided to the USA. EU responds in kind. Google Cloud, AWS and Azure lose a lot of clients over this, but they mitigate the damage by restructuring their business to avoid the tariffs. The tariffs don't achieve any policy change in the EU and eventually settle on a tolerable level. - Significantly more restrictions and tightening on the US Visa Waiver Programme, with a small chance that it is rescinded altogether. VWP beneficiary countries threaten to retaliate in kind, but never do, because US tourism is too valuable. - China continues to overtake the USA in growth in tech and digital services related exports. FVEY gets very nervous about this, but in practice nothing is done because of strong consumer demand. - Coreweave faces solvency issues and numerous AI companies fundraising are forced to do their next raise at a down round. - AI job loss is revealed to not actually be real. The cause of unemployment really is finally realized to be economic uncertainty caused by high inflation, interest rates and international trade policy uncertainty. Potential digital services tariffs and AI boom collapse make the situation much worse. - Significantly more momentum behind the HIRE Act, with a small chance that it passes. If it does, tech giants close their EU/UK/Canada/Australia offices and move the roles to India. - Russia / Ukraine "peace deal" is signed, but will be broken by Russia based on some false flag. Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine unfortunately continues, but doesn't progress. - MAGA aligned actors interfere in the election of another country. - USA conducts a "special operation" in Venezuela. - Weaponized AI generated disinformation and fake audio/video/images starts to become more common. A major news story will break based on AI generated disinformation. It will be disproven quickly, but not before it has had a chance to spread.