3x42: That High Level of Unlikeliness

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia return, after a couple of months of trials and tribulations, to reveal our predictions for (the rest of) 2022! Prepare to find out What Comes Next in our roles as Cassandras:

  • [00:06:20] Jono:
    • VR bonanza: Apple will release their VR headset this year, and PSVR2 will be released, both purchasable by real people. Both will experience critical acclaim (although we won't have good sales figures)
    • Tesla won't release a phone, Neuralink will launch in beta this year
    • Truth Social will experience significant growth (but nowhere near as much as Twitter etc) but will be plagued with (1) stability issues, and (2) extremist content
    • Bonus 1: Canonical will not be acquired
    • Meta's VR services will actually not be terrible
  • [00:28:35] Jeremy:
    • Apple will, for the first time in a long time, release a completely new product line. It will be AR/VR, and it will be panned by critics
    • At least one very large (think FAANG size but does not have to be a FAANG) will walk back their remote work policy
    • both the US and EU pass sweeping tech related laws that have broad impact on the industry (part of the "techlash")
    • Bonus 1: Gamestop stock price still above $100
    • Inflation for the year below five percent
    • Truth Social will shut down
    • Mark Zuckerberg will not be CEO of Meta
  • [00:49:40] Stuart:
    • Apple will either allow sideloading or allow third-party browser engines on iOS
    • Matter (the common protocol for IoT stuff) will see first devices released, people will not care (they should, but they won't, of course) and it won't actually work
    • Meta's share price a third at end of year what it is at start: under $100 at end of 2022.
    • Bonus 1: Some company will leak private customer data onto a blockchain so it's there forever
    • Someone buys Twitter (likely to not happen because of the regulatory environment, as Jeremy points out!)

Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!

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News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.

Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!

The stability problems that Truth social will experience lie with the stability issues of the site’s backers, not software, servers, etc.

2022 predictions:

Apple’s star will begin to dim. The walled garden, extreme secrecy model will start to backfire.

Google will benefit from Apple’s troubles.

Windows will continue to be the stability and security shitshow that it has been for many years. Users will not care (yes, that’s way too easy…).