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Comment by jensneuse | Hacker News Reader

It's very interesting to go to last year's predictions (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236) and search for the word "Russia".

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My general prediction is :

- next year will be a mixture of things continuing to happen as before, and completely unexpexted events (that will actually play out similarly than previous events, but from a while ago.)

- There will be strikes in France,

- coups in south America and / or Africa,

- very few plane crashes, an awful lot of car accidents

- and maybe a rocket malfunction.

- War in Russia will go on. (Apparently, half of all wars last more than a year :/ [1])

- A next wave from Belarus is almost a sure thing. Not sure why it would work better than last one.

- I don't know where it would make sense military wise for Russia to drop a tactical nuke. They will do if they find out.

- The first power cut in a major European country will change the game as far as public support goes.

- But gouvernements don't need public support to send weapons, they need industrial capability, so they will keep doing it.

- Also, famous people will die in January / February. (because babyboom + life expectancy + winter)

- Summer will be on average hotter than summers from the last decade.

- Except during my holidays, where it will rain cats and dogs.

- Finally, the year will end in December (high probability, high confidence)

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-does-it-end-what-past-wars...

Do you have a source for the last two? Seems too far fetched.

I'm trying to get a double blind controlled study of the weather duringy holidays published, but the editor of Science has not returned my calls yet.

> War in Russia will go on.

There is no war in Russia. Russia is at war, but that war is happening in a country called Ukraine.

I was expecting some joke around "there is no war in Russia, it's a special operation, yada yada". Then I reread myself and spotted the obvious mistake.

:facepalm:

(Although, technically, some parts of Ukraine are claimed by Russia, so... No ? Ok, no. Sorry.)

Ukraine has brought the war back to Russia in a handful of attacks.

Another argument is that conscription leads to unrest, and also sowing doubt amongst the leadership is a kind of war.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/05/strikes-deep-i...

This commenter was spot on with all his predictions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746942

I would like to know what he is predicting for 2023.

They were wrong on the midterms and Le Pen getting close (Zemmour flopped and Le Pen + Zemmour is 30% of the vote). The alleged economic conditions would have implied a red wave, but Democrats did significantly better than expected.

Early 2022 the fears of Russia invading were real. They were downplayed and not talked about much in the mainstream but come January many already saw what Russia was up to.

Mostly it’s just that many of us, Ukrainians included (I speak from personal experience - I have Ukrainian close relatives), closed our eyes to Russia actually pulling the trigger. It is just unthinkably stupid and so, so disgusting.

That said, this comment was spot on, and not just on Russia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746942

I saw that too. I think Nivenkos wins the 2022 prediction prize.

I think Nivenkos did a better job than most, but actually I think alkonaut did a bit better from a quick skim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29747250

* Nivenkos predicted that Omicron would create natural immunity to COVID, but I think alkonaut's prediction was more nuanced/accurate: that organized responses end and there are new variants that we live with (although there has been a greater level of immune escape than expected, nothing has run away... so far). Note, that while down dramatically from the peak we are at a steady state for most of the year where 500 people in the US (and about the same number in the EU) die every day from COVID [1], just no one cares now.

* alkonaut's Russia prediction correctly covers Russian annexation of Eastern Ukraine, intense conflict w/ many more Russian casualties than expected, the SWIFT and petroleum price responses and the huge role that UAVs would play in the conflict. What he missed was actually just how well Ukraine would do (no Russian victory in sight) and how successful/effective Ukraine's infowar/strategic game would be. That, the scale of Russian losses, and the huge amount of OSINT has prevented Russia from any of the narrative control people might have expected.

* Republicans by all accounts should have curb-stomped Dems during the mid-terms, but Roe v Wade ended up being a big own-goal that prevented that.

* alkonaut's prediction that "Boris Johnson is ousted as prime minster. He is replaced by a either a man of some charisma or a woman without charisma, as that is the requirement" was also quite insightful.

[1] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&are...

I like their prediction about NFTs too. Got damn close. I wouldn’t say they’re straight up toxic for everyone but… they’re close to it.

Well, game companies have backed away immensely due to backlash, and the PFP NFTs that were all the rage has cooled (but continues on...) but one only has to look at Reddit Collectibles (or the Trump Trading Cards) to see that NFTs aren't dead, just evolving/dropping the branding. Starbucks' Odyssey is another example of this new wave of utility NFTs.

Wow. alkonaut called it, very specifically in some cases. Boris Johnson's replacement having no charisma was the cherry on top. Where's alkonaut's 2023 predictions?

> They were downplayed and not talked about much in the mainstream

The western military intelligence communities were aware and had warned about Russian mobilization for months. They were downplayed only by far-right voices in the west that were invested in building up Putin as an effective authoritarian against the slow-moving "woke" bureaucrats of the EU and the US Democrats.

Yeah, I think a lot of history of the russo-ukranian war is not known by many americans. Many people didn't even know there was a war until the invasion. I remember tensions building up a few months before the invasion and some people started talking about it (I knew a political dude online who was talking about it a few months before, he was saying something about how things could go down. I wasn't really interested but now I realize he was right (except for him supporting russia tho)).

I think the two biggest news events of this year were Russia and Roe being overturned, but only one prediction for Roe and most for Russia didn't anticipate a hot war

If 2022 is anything to go by, the opposite of what we see on HN can be predicted. So many poor or completely wrong predictions.

"Red tsunami in 2022 mid-terms, Democrats trounced in both the House and Senate. Biden becomes a lame duck." "Russia invades Ukraine with no push back." Hahahahahaha!

"- Elon says something so incredibly stupid that this time it affects his company's performance." Well, this one finally came true. Maybe.

- Starship makes a successful orbital flight.

- Russia won't start any overt military operations in Donbass, let alone Ukraine proper.

I'm sad this guy got both his predictions wrong.

I guess this was mostly Ukrainians who noted this while the rest of the world was sleeping. And apparently, I am reading the wrong news sources.

- Starship makes a successful orbital flight. - Russia won't start any overt military operations in Donbass, let alone Ukraine proper. - Modern GPU prices are still ridiculous. - Europe's opinion on nuclear energy will become a tad more favorable. - Ethereum won't shift to Proof of Stake. - No major AI breakthroughs. - James Cameron's Avatar 2 won't bring anything groundbreaking to the table. - Apple won't release a VR headset.

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