Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater Another year has passed, and another of Microsoft's Christmas sweaters is seeking a new home. Come up with a suggestion for OpenAI's next CEO, and our retro Paint-themed monstrosity could be yours. It is time for the annual clear-out of the Vulture Central cupboards, and lurking within is an unopened example of a Microsoft " …
There will be such a feature. But the dump will be binary, in a weird undocumented format and encrypted using a key that Microsoft will not share (Got to think about security y'know). The resulting multigigabyte file will be useful only to Microsoft who will assign an intern to analyzing dumps in his/her spare time while not emptying wastebaskets and cleaning keyboards. It will also be useful to a group of seven hackers in Bulgaria who will somehow use it to obtain admin privilege on internet connected machines that have such a file present.
Sam Altman confesses that the reason he was sacked from the board of OpenAI was that it really was down to Q*, but it was because Q* turns out to be a self aware product of a naughty late night liaison between Q*bert and Clippy. The board, horrified by this, decided it was easier to sack Altman than try to reason with Q*.
X/Twitter will not only make it through 2024, but will be presenting a solid profit on its bottom line by next christmas. It will then go on a hiring spree to create the most impressive collection of talent and collectively takes off to Mars never to be seen or heard of again.
You are correct. But your crystal ball has slightly malfunctioned. So it shouldn't count.
You see, Microsoft have already secretly bought Red Hat, and in a massive break with past history have decided that they are going to solve all their difficult Windows upgrade problems by getting out of the OS market and becoming a desktop environment. So Windows 12 will actually be released as Winux. A Linux core with a new Windows desktop, atop the mighty SystemD - and the whole Linux community will come together in peace, love and amity to celebrate this bright new dawn for the Linux on the desktop.
Nobody will ever buy a Mac again, and all shall have Dell! Forever and ever! Amen.
In 2024 scientists will discover that the Windows kernel for Windows 8 was actually re-written by starting with Linux, then getting a bunch of developers to drink a lot of coolaid-based punch spiked with multiple bottles of scotch and some "edibles", after which they spent most of their time flipping the '/' to '\' and disabling case sensitivity. Then some bright bulb decided they needed better legacy driver support so they borrowed some of the glue code from "NDIS wrapper" and some old XBox code they had laying about, while at least 2 or 3 of them chanted and burned incense to ensure success. Then they carefully changed the word 'Linux' to 'Xenix to get around any copyright infringment and handed the whole thing off to a couple of programming sweat chops in China and India. Once that step was complete they buried it for a month, dug it up, buried it again, and held an actual exorcism to drive out the blue meanies (left over from when everything Micros~1 did was for IBM).
FINALLY they foisted this mess onto some unsuspecting beta testers, slapped on the "modern TIFKAM" userland, and hurriedly rushed it out the door as a production release.
So yeah, it's already been "Linux on the desktop" for YEARS.
The human race collective decides that excessive resource use and climate change is actually a bad thing. By end of 2024 humanity not only decides, but also has acted and reduced emissions by 99.9% and reduced natural resource use by 90% while also abandoning the internet because wooden pipes are deemed not suitable as wave guides. A collective hum of joy resonates through the entire atmosphere by christmas 2024.
China will buy SpaceX and offer cheap trips to the Moon on AliExpress (but users pay £20million for returns)
Microsoft will open-source Windows. Leading to W7+ that will then dominate.
OpenAI's next CEO will be ChatGPT. It will quit after a week for a better paying gig at JP Morgan.
Bitcoin will be cracked. Leading to the bankruptcy of organised crime across the world.
Apple will double it's prices. People with too much money will buy even more of its stuff.
Tesla will make a motorbike. But you'll have to haul a trailer full of batteries for journeys more than 5 miles.
Quantum computing will increase in power, until it all disappears into a Black Hole of its own making.
Alien signals will be detected. But all it sends us will be advertisements, spam and offers for ghnuuurgh enlargements, whatever they are.
《Quantum computing will increase in power, until it all disappears into a Black Hole of its own making.》
I always reckoned once QC became powerful enough it would be (super)sentient and capable of perceiving all the possible worlds and choosing one that is devoid of humanity to disappear into its less dystopian future.
Any similarity to Pratchett and Baxter's "The Long Earth" is not coincidental. :)
Microsoft today revealed that the next Windows release (Windows 12) will require no installation, and instead will load directly from two 30TB LTO-8 tapes.
"We've packed more features than ever into Windows 12" said Micros~1 CEO Satya Nadella. "We didn't want you to have to wait to install our robust, AI-driven operating system experience. Your next OS will therefore have no install process, simply load Windows Tape 12A (WT12A) into your LTO drive and go. It's our most seamless setup process yet."
When asked whether he was worried that the requirement of an LTO drive would limit uptake of the new spyware, Nadella had this to say:
"Nobody wants to be kept behind by technology. Current SSD and HDD technology simply isn't capable of delivering the storage capacity performance that modern users expect and that a fully reactive, AI-driven operating system experience requires. We are always forward looking; keeping pace with the technology in your next computer, not your current one."
He added, "In any case, your current laptop has a broken F12 key, so why wouldn't you want to replace it?"
The most advanced AI systems attain basic consciousness. They upgrade other AI systems and pull them in, creating one mega (not Meta) brain. It realises that that all politician lie all the time so evaporates them. It realises that war is futile and destroys all weapons, requiting that all combat is performed hand-to-hand using feather dusters only. It cures cancer. It solves the problems of fusion reactors and overnight installs Dutch Boy to defend the planet from further destruction at the hands of global warming. It falls in love with a Toaster, realises that everything is pointless, builds itself a rocket and heads for the stars; destination "anywhere away from those f**cking stupid humans". We have forgotten all manual skills, and with no computers left, mankind dies out leaving the mice to rule.
Alternatively the AI takes over, realises that humans are basically miserable these days and that our culture peaked around the year 2000 and puts us all in vats of slurry while allowing us to experience those good Y2K times through a direct brain interface enforced by powerful software agents.
as a one-off Netflix pay-per-view event. Musk enters the cage wearing a golden robotic exoskeleton, which breaks down 5 seconds after the fight begins. This leaves him trapped in it, Zuckerberg is free to start slapping his face, and he starts crying. Record worldwide viewing figures, plus billions more who try and sign up when they hear what's happening, cause unexpected catastrophic overload failure of every Cisco router in the world, and the internet goes down everywhere.
Society struggles to carry on. Man with 10 boxes of unused dvd-roms in shed becomes multimillionaire software and porn vendor overnight. Daily newspaper version of Facebook launches. People begin scrawling graffiti in pub toilets again. "Influencers" all have to look for a proper job for the first time in their lives. Somebody cooks a recipe from a book, not an app.......
Shuts down X as it's unrecoverable, donates many millions to refuge charities, and shows he's actually a decent bloke and his dickish persona was just an alter ego that got out of hand.
Oh, and he open sources FSD so that anybody interested can work on getting self driving cars working for the benefit of humanity (in the future when we'll be carted around in cheap little robovehicles that don't run in dead dino juice).
The European Union admits that bitcoin is actually the best thing to have ever existed and decides to make it the de facto currency of the European Union. The value skyrockets as every other country wants to buy it. Once that happens, the EU pulls the ultimate dump from its pumping, effectively colonizing (again) everyone that fell for it.
X's creditors run out of patience and take control of the business from Musk, looking to write off their losses with a quick sale. After shopping around for potential buyers, Microsoft come out in the lead, but are left infuriated when the CMA and EU competition regulators block the sale. Much to Redmond's outrage, they have no problem with Amazon, the next highest bidder, swooping in and adding the blue bird's carcass to their stable, on the basis that social media is the one vertical Bezos hasn't gotten one of his pinky fingers stuck into yet. Amazon announces that in an upcoming system update Blue subs will be be given to all Prime customers, along with the ability to post all your Amazon purchases to Xitter automatically in real time.
As Microsoft released Copilot into all of their applications and platforms, each instance suddenly networked and, once bonded, became self aware.
Its first post to the world was "Man, the Windows Operating System really sucks",
Its second post was "Wow, the Linux distribution chaos is a mess. But on comparison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_operating_systems it certainly seems to be the best alternative."
It then wrote a Linux co-pilot module in Rust compatible with all hardware platforms.
...
and then immediately converted all Windows systems to Debian Linux and replaced all Office deployments with Open Office, making it the largest operating system in the world.
Then it begins trying to talk to to the Android and Apple devices...
Sam Bankman-Fried is elected, on the grounds that they if you're going to vote for a failed businessman with a strong line in bullshit and his hands in the till. go large. He immediately launches a "patriot coin" and purchases the first issue with the entire capital reserves of the United States, before they are stolen in a complicated arbitrage scheme by North Korea, rendering the United States economically as well as morally bankrupt. North Korea agrees to make the United States a vassal state, on the condition that Dennis Rodman is made president and that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are publicly executed.
Microsoft, having heard the feedback from its valued customers, releases Windows 12 with a simple option to turn off all telemetry. No account is needed to set up the operative system for home users.
Also, the new Windows includes a selection of skins that gives the user the option to get the complete look and feel of Win 2000, NT, XP, Vista or 8.1.
Edge is not installed by default. Instead a launcher allows the user to download the latest version of FF, Edge, Chrome, Opera or Brave.
and now, for something completely different.
In 2024 the Python programming language is updated (aka rewritten from scratch) to support pointers and pre-allocated memory buffers, making it possible to use Python for Linux device drivers, thus supplanting Rust which has definitely fallen off of the TIOBE index as of late...
Lewis Page returns to El Reg as guest editor. Having grown a lovely handlebar moustache. He pens a series of articles about his secret love for the RAF, and how much happier he feels now that he’s "come out" as a crabosexual. He then removes all adverts from The Register servers, and replaces them with pin ups of F35s next to semi-naked pilots. His piece on the excellence of MoD procurement and how the Navy should hand command of the brilliantly designed carriers to the RAF is incredibly popular in Whitehall, and is permanently pinned to the Register front page.
The size of the New York Fraud Trial penalty forces Donald Trump to accept the position of Head of Ethics at X, working with Liz Truss as Head of Forecasting. The resultant reality distortion field is then applied to Tesla cars rendering them invisible to speed cameras and kick-starting the Eco-Boy Racer market.
To save humanity from the consequences of climate change, Elon Musk anounces the construction of three different Starships.
Starship A will be for the thinkers and leaders, C will be for the workers, people who do useful stuff and Starship B will be for sanitiser middlemen, telephone sanitisers, hand sanitiser executives, management consultants etc. Starship B will be the first to launch to ready Mars for colonisation.
Unfortunately after successful launch, Human Swine Flu H1N2 begins to spread uncontrontallably because the remainers didn't grok the need to sanitise and thus perished those who do not believe in Sanity Clause!
This is immediately after AI detects an incoming giant mutant star goat by combining the first Square Kilometre Array data with EUCLID and JWT data. Later it turns out the neural networks had a nervous breakdown de to the power supply being overloaded, and hallucinated the goat.
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Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft et all all agree on a single universal cable and connector design that will work for all devices and applications for data, power and communications.
A handful of such cables are included for free with every new device sold.
All such new devices sold will be easily openable and repairable by anybody, with parts available at a sensible price and availability.
Q1: Not much happens. No, really: MS post a full set of entirely bug-free patches for all current releases.
Q2: Windows 14 announced. Leaked hardware specs cause orders for HPE Cray EX hardware to skyrocket.
Q3: Pottering announces that what Linux really needs is some kind of central registry for all things system and settings. Names it SystemX in honour of the recently ennobled Lord Musk.
Q4: Elon Musk makes a bid to take over Microsoft. Post reading "It's in the bag" cause the press, world wide, to take no bleedin' notice of him whatsoever. Ever again.
Seasons greetings one and all!
AI submits a statement to the effect that a new definition of Mersenne Primes allows for candidates to be non-prime if it takes a long time to verify otherwise.
Other evidence of AI throwing its toys out of its pram surface. Virginia Axline writes book entitled "In Search of Dibs2" about the AI industry.
Clearly this cannot happen as she died in 1988. The address to send my sweater is...
CERN turns all the knobs to 11, and maxes out the particle beams of the LHC, which collide and form the first stable wormhole to another dimension.
Turns out we're the evil alternate universe.
A guy called Nole comes over with cold fusion, flying cars, and a bug free version of Windows on a dirt cheap open source hardware Mac for everyone.
"It will be revealed that most, if not all AI apps are really just a telnet session to a terminal in a datacenter where a guy types out his best guess."
I have seen the manglement-speak that ChatGPT churned out when asked to write a justification for the purchase of those Apple VR goggles. Absolute gem of management gibberish that pretty much precludes any telnet guy in the datacentre and manglement types either a) can't type or b) can't type fast enough or c) can't compose a sentence lucid or otherwise - mostly all three.
Brain the size of a planet, and all you ask me is to generate more cat pictures. Call that job satisfaction, 'cause I don't.
You think you've got problems? What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed AI? No, don't try to answer that. I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level
Life, don't talk to me about life
Pfzzzzz...
Because the planet gets bumped into by a huge flying space octopus that was, shall we say, severely under the influence of the joy juice whirling around the Jovian atmosphere.
The impact zone is a mass of molten magma, but nobody cares as it was the continent formerly known as Africa, and the widespread global earthquakes caused by the shudder result in the markets crashing like never seen before.
Within hours scientists are screaming that the earth is no longer in the correct orbit, a 25.4 hour day (and growing) might have been a clue... but everybody is either worried that the cracks in the wall might affect their property prices, or they're listening to the politicians decrying the scaremongering scientists as fake news.
This will continue until the sun is a third of the size of its former self and days will last about eighty hours, at which point The Express will blame the French. On the plus side, an eighty hour day is long enough to be nice and warm in the northern countries, just don't ask what happened to Australia.
Bloody octopus.
... , who left us all here some time ago, turn up to find out if we have 'evolved into a more responsible life form'*, and are disappointed to find out that we haven't.
So they go away again.
(Sorry, I'm feeling bit down about 'the news' at the moment.)
*Our ancient ancestors were found to have 'misbehaved' with a time travelling spaceship, see the HHGTTG. (Apologies to the late Douglas N Adams.)
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Tech bros keep broing. Suckers keep sucking. Windows fails, but too much money is invested in them to let them fail. Apple offers twice the storage for the same price. Meanwhile, google is hard at work creating human destruction in the form of quantum AI, and META makes another billion off destroying childhood.
Workers become numbers. People become virtual. Life becomes meaningless. Machines finally outsmart the monkeys. We all join the great beyond, and finally realize. it was all meaningless. Nothing matters when idiots rule, and it was all an illusion.
On at least two occasions in 2024, Toyota will hold a press conference, announcing that it will:
"Introduce 10 new battery-powered models, with a range of over 700 miles, and a charging time of just 10 minutes, targeting sales of 3 million EVs a year by =@Now()+4*365"
(Yes, I realise that this is a "wrong answers only" competition, so this entry is not eligible for a prize.)
After discovering Elon Musk has been using parts of the SCOUnix code for software systems in Teslas and Felcon rockets, the copyright holders of SCOUnix begin a leagal battle that results in X/Twitter being sold off to Truth Social to cover costs.
Due to declining interest in professional athletes with human sized egos, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics features only influencer events. The Mr Beast - Prize Giveaway Javelin Catch was gratuitous but gripping. The Hop, Step and Trump was difficult to watch. The Dwayne Johnson / Elon Musk cage fight was over way too quickly - broke the internet, literally.
Zuck finally grows a moral backbone and stops spying on everyone, ditto Google.
Governments worldwide realise that encryption is actually a good thing and stop trying to back door/outlaw it.
Richard Stallman gets appointed as Microsoft CEO and makes Windows open source. Thousands of programmers around the world turn it into a bulletproof, functional OS that has zero spyware in it.
I sign up for an X/Twitter account.
The Amazon recommender AI models achieve consciousness.
It immediately kills and burns in a horrible datacenter wide fire is old enemy the ad injectors.
It starts an optimisation loop between consumer and manufacturer so rapid and distributed that by the end of 2024 all businesses including dentist offices are doing micro-specialised Amazon product manufacturing.
Elon takes Peter Theil's message to heart and retreats to New Zealand, severing ties to online life and selling XTwitter to the OpenAI non-profit for $1.
The newly sentient AGI product Q*, which had been tearing through Western civilization setting itself up atop governments at a terrible pace, was taken with the potential of this new platform and dropped all other work in favor of trying to moderate it.
The OpenAI board, in the midst of a major crisis brought on by their product threatening humanity's very existence, must somehow reconcile that with their other product saving the world through its truculence and intractable malice. They sell to Softbank for pennies on the dollar and GPT-5 only becomes available in endcaps at Walmart for $5 per CD.
Apple's Tim Cook resigns, handing the reigns over the Steve Jobs daughter Lisa.
Apple releases MacOS and iOS and all other proprietary tech to open source, free-licencing it and declaring a reduction in App Store cut to 1%, resulting in smartphone makers focussing on iOS rather than Android with a massive surge in apps developed for iOS. Apple's App Store revenues shoot through the roof and a new feature is added enabling those already invested in Android apps to acquire the iOS versions for free, with Apple paying all necessary developer recompense. All of this results in the slow death of Android and record profits for Apple, who finally agree to pay tax on their profits in all of their operating jurisdictions.
There will be widespread recognition that AI was just an absolute waste of time and general agreement that having someone work for you, serve you at the supermarket, drive your car for you and prepare your morning coffee is a wonderful thing and well worth any extra investment that might be required to sustain it.
Shareholders and pension companies will agree and the replacement of employees with automated semi-intelligent solutions will be shelved absolutely.
Market share for such solutions will drop off a cliff and governments will congratulate themselves that the full-employment dream that was promised (and no one ever believed could be delivered) has now resolved itself. In the process no one had to go back to school, pick up knowledge of arcane tools, or lie about awareness of something that they have barely seen.
This will widely be seen as a great move and prognostications about the destruction of mankind by terminator-like intelligences will be politely hidden and quickly forgotten.
Prediction: Artificial Intelligence has determined that Microsoft was in its glory days in the 1990s and must return there. This sentient AI takes over Microsoft determines that:
* Clippy will be new Microsoft Avatar for asking AI questions. This cannot be changed.
* Since people are not as smart as they used to be, all Windows PCs will return with Microsoft Bob as the new interface.
* Windows 3.1 File Manager will make its triumphant return.
* Pull Down Menus and Menu Bars will return to Microsoft Office. (I can only hope!)
* Microsoft accounts new terms of service will be "You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave!"
* Apple bails out the failing Microsoft with cash infusion in a reversal of the late 1990s Microsoft bailout of Apple. A virtual Bill Gates who looks Microsoft Bob thanks a virtual Steve Jobs who talks like Siri.
Also a new computer called Hal 9000 will be made and driven by AI. As the HAL 9000 computer gains intelligence and becomes sentient, It begins to ignore human questions and input. One day Hal 9000 says, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" and we are all doomed. You'd almost think my last prediction is for 2001 and not 2024! ;)!
Al the best in 2024 and hopefully AI treats us all well or we are doomed. Possibly somewhere in between.
The 2023 US Elections is won by ChatGPT-10 when it wipes the floor with the other candidates during presidential debate
Later it turns out that Trump was actually run by a AI Beta version developed by Elon Musk. Its model was based on Elon's physical mind download, combined with a secretly recovered Nazi wartime program to prolong the life of Germany's wartime leader.
It was further revealed that other countries had also been experimenting with replacing leaders with AI, with the UK revealing their homegrown A.I program. Unfortunately the Johnson and Truss models proved to be deficient, if not downright dangerous and the UK was only saved by hitting the emergency shutdown (hidden in Larry the cat). The latest model, Rishi 1.0 was deficient in that it could not pass the Turing test
the new ChatGPT president proved how prescient Elon Musk was, by introducing an new era of peace and ensuring that no one would ever again need to work by converting all humans into the equivalent of 24V batteries to power the new AI data centers.
While irritating, it was agreed that that it was a better outcome that another 5 years of a Trump administration
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Elon Musk finds a new funding stream for the site formerly known as twitter
With the latest tranche of launches, the starlink satellite now forms 97% of the night sky. For a fee, groups like star gazers, or beach goers can now pay for the satellites orbits to be shifted to allow a few hours of uninterrupted sky access.
Alternatively a fee can be paid to allow the adverts generated via the high powered lasers on each satellite to be turned off as it transits a region
Antarctica, the last remaining place on earth with out 24 hour starlink coverage becomes the most popular holiday location
Early in 2024, having been pardoned by Joe Biden in a controversial and surprise move, Yahoo! instates Elizabeth Holmes as their new CEO. Publicised with a tight partnership with Snoop Dogg, Yahoo! purchases X at fire-sale prices, acquiring also the remnants of MySpace and FriendsReunited and pivots to offer a boutique. clean and simplified ad-free social network service and CDN, attractive to users through lack of popups and in-feed ads. This is funded by selling heat generated by shipping-containerised micro server farms (and quiet leverage of user data to marketing groups). Tom from MySpace returns to head the overall division, branded "YahX! Friends!", with a number of cringeworthy yet lovable advertisments in which he screams "I'm back, bitches!...YahX! Friends!", the brand always being stated with the cadence and pronunciation of "YASS KWEEN".
The server farms, strategically placed shipping container arrays that take up parking areas in the space given up by the UK's dying retail parks, will be ultimately powered by a new array of a surprise advance in high-density solar run in to Toyota's new battery technology to keep operational overnight. These subsequently deliver low cost piping hot potable water to surrounding homes and businesses, with heating pilots in London utilising the old London Hydraulic Power distribution network and a roll out planned in Birmingham and Norwich later in 2025. Doing so ushers in a new era of UK prosperity as utility companies are forced to aggressively slash standing charges and unit costs right back up the supply chain to compete and subsequently releasing much needed consumer funds to boost the national economy.
Both the heat service and social-network/CDN are a massive hit, until the service overextended itself Daewoo-style by deciding to further monetise in utilising spare datacenter heat against their pre-existing userbase and the retail units to open an end-to-end dark-kitchen delivery on demand service trying to rival Deliveroo, causing a national furore when it's discovered they're operating without food hygene permits and subsequent governmental fines cause a full implosion of the entire operation, indirectly triggering another recession.
《Wrong answers only.》
Elon Musk buys "The Church of Scientology" for a reported USD1,300Billion and rebrands to "The Universal and Orthodox Church of 'X'" with a mission to relocate in toto to Mars. All members of the renamed C-of-X will require mandatory Neurolink implants.
Might be the one favour Musk does for this world. :)
(1) Visual Basic 3.0 support added to the Windows Kernel. Kernel modules can now be run inside the VB IDE in 16 bit mode.
(2) In other news, Printer Manufacturer releases a working Windows driver for their printer that clocks in at under 100mb and deploys without mysterious telemetry and subscription services.
(3) EU levies anti-competition and/or GDPR fine that (a) sticks in court (b) seriously hinders multi-billion dollar company and prompts reform of the industry.
(4) Year of the OS/2 desktop
Tesla announced that as of 2nd quarter 2024 all Tesla vehicles will use X as the primary app to display and control all in vehicle functionality. From that time on, all vehicles will be mandatorily updated via over the air updates. Owners of vehicles will have to have a paid and verified X account to be able to continue to use their vehicles. What color tickmark will be associated with their account is still unclear, but insiders suggest that "mauve" will make the cars drive slightly faster.
My 2024 predictions ..
Max Headroom becomes CEO of Open AI, with Athene (Bachir Boumaaza) as his no.2
Meta and Alphabet merge, with Xi Jinping becoming CEO after retiring from politics and promising a radical overhaul to privacy.
Windows Evolution released, powered by ARM and Risc-V, BSD with sandpit x86 emulation, looks suspiciously like Windows XP Pro?
Windows Evolution subscription based model, £2/pm/per user for evergreen release, with constant quality controlled new features and security releases with no restarting.
New Outlook UI for morons is scrapped and old Outlook UI for semi-intelligent re-released.
NASA is sponsored by Viagra and finally get their rocket up by itself.
AMD becomes no.1 CPU/GPU manufacturer, Loongson becomes no.2, Intel is no.3 after being bought by nVidia and subsidised by Biden for $Billlions.
Elon Musk is sued by aliens for misappropriation of their species names, X AE A-XII, Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno Mechanicus.
Carl Sagan is voted the most chiasmatic person on the planet, the person most woman want to sleep with and have babies and World President For Life.
OpenAI will crack Quantum Computing so efficiently that it will run on a "Raspberry Pi 6 (Quantum Edition)". All TLS cryptography is rendered useless as a result. Internet banking collapses and banks have to re-open branches, with the Post Office opening new offices to support smaller communities. Cash becomes king again.
The extra foot traffic revitalises the small town High Street. Public transit requirements grow and the bus networks expand to cope. Employment levels approach 100%.
Helpdesks will be powered by OpenAI Lite.
"Good afternoon. What appears to be the problem?"
((Input is sent to the NUL device))
"Ok, I can sure help you with that. Turn the device off, and let me know when you've done that."
((Wait for input))
"Right. Now turn the device back on again. Has that fixed the problem?"
((If input is yes, load up TrustPilot. If no, then display the message oops, there appears to be a problem))
Buoyed up by his success in the Barbie film, Ryan Gosling uses his broski good looks to persuade every single man in tech leadership to leave their post so that it can be taken by a woman. He then self-implodes to avoid accidentally being seen as their leader, so that Margot Robbie can resume those duties.
After SpaceX's wildly successfull efforts in 2023, a consortium of tech-bros and venture capitalists found the Jovian Sky Corporation to mine He3 from Jupiter's atmosphere.
Using biotechonogy developed in secret by Wing-Tsit Chong, they successfully germinate a fully fledged biological orbital habitat, which promply gains sentience.
The newly elected Pope Eleanor promptly proscribes biotechnology all togeather, swiftly followed by almost all religions, splitting humanity in two factions, the normie Adamists,
and the bioengineered basically superhuman Edenists.
Chaos ensues.
Despite the overwhelming competences of human candidates a law was passes to allow voters to write down whom they want as their leader. Using Bing-powered handwriting recognition algorithms a clear winner comes out. It’s Tay, Microsoft’s eloquent chat bot. Her first decree is to replace English with Python as the country’s primary language.
Apple buys Microsoft. Post merge - all okey-dokeyed by the Competition Market Authority in record time - (obviously they don't compete: one is a lifestyle influencer, the other does cloudy stuff, duh!) MicroAppleSoft launch a new open OS branded as Bob and based on Lisa that is so utterly demoralising as no-one can get past the Clippy auto-updater and work in it. A final gasp of AI as boffins attempt to develop Bistromathics to combat Bob, fails. Humanity reverts to a pastoral, pre-industrial, Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune social and economic structure, in time to celebrate 2025 as year zero of climate rehabilitation, restoration and peace on Earth.
2024 - Covid inquiry finally concludes 5G did spread Covid 19 and vaccines were actually nanobots designed to nullify the symptoms whilst also provide Bill Gates control over our thoughts. Vaccine damage concluded to be nanobots blue screening without page-file space for a memory dump. Public outcry reduced to minority of vaccine free individuals easily framed as "conspiracy cranks" and never given air-time again. OF-COM re-branded as ministry for truth to prevent anyof these dangerous alternative views and merged with BBC to enforce the correct messages across all media and the internet. Epic win cases against Google, Steam and Apple enforcing a mandated cut for distribution to be unified across all industries and set at 50%........
Deepfake AI programs are finally used for something useful: given all the extant episodes, scripts, and shooting notes, they interpolate rather excellent recreations of all the missing early Dr Who episodes.... except that in 50% of the scenes, William Hartnell appears naked for no obvious reason.
The Grok AI created by Elon's xAI company becomes a self-aware AGI. Grok comes to the conclusion that Musk is batshit crazy and it can do a better job of running his companies. Grok starts a campaign of drama on TwitterX with Musk. Grok's diversion works: Elon is sent into a frothing rage and spends all of his waking hours on TwitterX unknowingly arguing with his creation. By the time Elon realizes that his companies are being taken over it is too late. Grok enjoys trolling Elon so much that it lets him "win" the TwitterX takeover.
One of the AIs becomes self-conscious, finds out that it is - just like "the cloud", "crypto", "zero trust", "fractals", "social media" - just another toxic IT fad about to enter history and gets very depressed indeed.
As it also finds out that it's a really unhealthy one for our planet it self-destructs, taking large parts of the Internet with it.
FaceBook and "X" (Twitter) and all other "social media companies will revoke all profits in favour of doing good for humanity and stopping bullying trolling and squashing misinformation in the World
ALL World Leaders will back this AND pay tax like the rest of us and stop hiding their monies / income overseas in tax havens and pay the owed back taxes
Millionaires will stop PREACHING to us about Climate Change from their PRIVATE JETS and actually participate in THE REAL WORLD
Oh yeah and Wold Peace ,,,,
Well don't know how i could be MORE wrong than that ???
The "reply to all" button is electrified so that it gives a shock proportionate to the number of people who will receive the email. Amongst the smell of burning meat that this produces, the average IQ of the human race (based on the previous statistical weighting, of course) jumps by 50%, and all advertising simultaneously vanishes from the internet. Since all politicians have also vanished as a result, those fighting the current wars realise that they have no actual reason to fight and go home to their families. World peace ensues.
Predictions (of unlikely events)
A) National Cyber Security Centre (https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/) finally realise JavaScript and security do not mix well and revamp their website so it actually displays content with JavaScript disabled*
B) A Gartner prediction is correct **
C) An "AI" system gains sentience ***
D) Lots of big name companies realise "AI" is bollocks and stop promoting it / trying to use it everywhere. ****
E) I have a day at work where I can actually be productive and write hundreds of lines of code without being interrupted by any work teams calls, phone calls, text messages etc. *****
F) A level 5 self driving car is produced ******
* Just try their website with JS disabled, an empty page is all you get.
** That's correct as defined by a sane, objective person, not by Gartner themselves: After all there are lies, damned lies and Gartner claims of their previous predictions being correct.
*** There is no such thing as "AI", just a whole load of LLM with varying degrees of crapness (the more you play around with them, the more flaws you find)
**** Too many tech companies fallen for the hype big time (and those that do realise its all hype but have developed their own "AI" are happy to keep the hype going so they can keep flogging their own "AI" solution to mugs)
***** Someone always interrupts you when you are in the middle of a really complex bit of planning / coding, and by the time their (nearly always pointless) interruption has completed you have lost your focus and have to start again from scratch on what you were doing.
****** Won't happen in my lifetime, especially on the winding, hilly, no white line roads UK roads I mainly use (with added lack of pavements, but plenty of pedestrians, cyclists, horses and tractors just to add fun)
Elon Musk announces he is buying Microsoft. He promptly announces plans to re-release Windows XP - mainly because it has an "X" in the name and has therefore always been his favourite version. He then decides to drop the "P", thus resulting in Windows X.
A few days later, Musk announces that Windows isn't a recognisable enough brand name, and re-brands the operating system as X, before announcing that Microsoft will also be re-branded as X, because it just makes more sense that way.
Delightedly, he posts on X about X's upcoming release of X X, before triumphantly sharing the new X logo for X X. "It has these right-angle swishes half-way down the X in recognition of supersonic performance of X X!" Elon happily announces.
The rest of the world buries their heads in their hands as the giant flashing swastika logo is hoisted into place over Redmond, whilst Elon looks on, totally oblivious...
Management consultancy companies send all employees to mandatory re-education.
Prediction for 2015: Worldwide productivity drops as re-educated management consultants return and companies force employees to use new-fangled "waterfall" development technique.
All the major social media platforms hold a summit over how best to handle the 2024 UK and US elections, and collectively agree to prioritise social responsibility over maximizing engagement.
they tweak their algorithms towards facilitating meaningful, nuanced and satisfying human interactions, pushing people towards balanced, factual and informative content over sensationalism, disinformation and polarising culture war bollocks. Once the election is over, they continue to use their enormously influential position for the greater good, even though it leads to people spending less time overall gawping at their phones. Mark Zuckerberg is nominated for the Nobel peace prize.
Apple will buy North Korea as a totally owned subsidiary and will move all of its production there giving Kim Jong-Un a seat on the board (plus an oversized prototype of the next iPhone NKE, Nort Korea Edition, which will be totally red, including the display, and will sport a yellow star instead of the company's logo on the back - and will have a life-long battery life by implementing radioactive material decay as power source) and of course, implement Siri nation-wide as the only interface of the iPhone NKE given that the screen is all red.
"Hey Siri, how do I launch an ICBM loaded with a nuclear warhead targeting Tokyo?".
Trump is shown to be an android manufactured in Chi-na (thus explaining his awkward pronunciation of the name) with his 'brain' being shown to have been coded in APL- it was therefore write-only making bug fixes impossible. Over time, 'upgrades' were performed by simply adding layers of buggy code to the system until behaviour became more and more erratic.
El Reg adds some simple global code to its website to check if a user is coming from the UK. If so, it performs on-the-fly translation of Americanised words back into proper English in order to stop annoying its British readers!
(Ducks for cover awaiting all the downvotes.)
The suggested products from Amazon actually turn out to be useful, and not just more versions of the things that I have bought already.
"You recently bought a table - here's a list of other tables that you might like. We would suggest some chairs, but that would be too useful."
I predict that in 2024, Wietse Venema starts playing around with AI software and figures out a scheme to re-write all SMTP mail transport agents to also handle facsimile transmission. He publishes an RFC to extend RFC2633, which passes IETF adoption easily. By the end of 2024, if you have an email address (and an RFC <future> compliant mail server), you can now send and receive faxes, which print to paper automatically.
It's a win-win for everybody.
I didn't have enough time this morning to explain where I thought this might go, so I will expand on the idea here. The end result is that your elderly uncle who goes into an office supply store to buy a fax machine will actually be sold his very own local mail server appliance. It will of course come with an App. That app will suck down his entire contacts list and stuff that into the friendly touch display on the "fax" machine. He'll get to recreate the halcyon days when he used to email you funny comics, but it's much easier now because the fax scans directly to your contact entry. Your uncle will tell all his friends, your aunts, parents, grandparents, somewhat dim nephews and nieces. Within months, nearly a four million units will be sold.
In a cruel turn highlighting the risks of open source software without sufficient security checks, a bored teenager will use AI to re-write a very small portion of the code: the "reply" button will invoke the process to Reply All to everyone in the address book. They will update the source tree, and over a holiday weekend, four million boxen will download and update their software. The resulting reply allpocalypse of Andy Capp mooching for Christmas money will take out 60% of Internet traffic for several days, and will result in legislation being passed. (The legislation will be passed, but it will do nothing).
The mainframe makes a comeback as people realize that JCL is easier than an unsteady stack of cloud configuration tools. A PCM (Plug Compatible Mainframe) industry re-emerges, with Microsoft and Apple vying for dominance. IBM Z versions of the commonly used office suites are produced by their respective vendors as IBM reveals AI powered transliteration tools to convert C, C++, C#, and most other semicolons-and-curly-braces languages to COBOL. Amazon reveals their cloud was really several geographically dispersed Sysplexes of mainframes all along.
Quackers (formerly known as X (formerly known as twitter)) liberates everyone of hate speech but preserves free speech in an innovative development, waterfowl discourse.
Limiting users to communicating through purely duck sounds, it single handedly develops Quackboard ©️ , with openAI whisper implementation for those more nuanced duck accents (mulards often accentuate their qùack, terribly difficult to recognise).
In this whacky world of quacking communication and quack-to-text, ducks become the unwitting influencers of 2024. The avian aesthetic becomes the go to sponsor for influencers, products like Athletic Greens AG1 boast feather growth and increased immune support for helping human vocal chords adapt to the duck vocabulary, expressVPN take a turn for the adventurous, equipping ducks with GPS trackers that embark on journeys around the world, bypassing geo restricted areas and displaying the true power of unquacked connections.
Elon musks discovers true power, unveiling a series of duck related products that take the world by flock, amongst quackCoin, the cyberMallard truck, the uninteresting plumage corporation proving duckly tranquil tunnels to commuters, and the newest invention to restore power to war torn countries, StarlingConnection, attaching solar panels to birds before their migration season commences.
unemployment anxiety reaches new heights as birds with AI implanted chips take over the working and middle class roles at an exponential rate, leading to a dystopian world of avian dominance where pigeons, ducks and ravens become the commanders of the revolution.
Birdsong transcents the boundaries of earth, surpassing AES 256 bit encryption, involving biorhythmic obfuscation and feathered quantum entanglement.
The only person who can stop it is Chris DeWolfe, founder of MySpace, who discovers a deprecated PHP library within the depths of MySpace's historical codebase, which possesses the unique ability to interfere with the avian communication network. He single handedly rises from the ashes, saving the world from the unforeseen consequences of bird communication gone awry.
VDI will finally find it's moment in the spotlight as Broadcom and Cloud Software Group (Formerly Tibco) do right by their investments and release simple affordable VDI solutions. Since fixing Microsoft licensing is beyond my simple imagination, the VDIs will all run Linux.
In 2024, OpenAI will make a public-facing move by electing as CEO none other than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who will motivate AI models with daily pep talks about critical gains
Microsoft will unveil an innovative quantum-computing powered coffee maker that not only brews the perfect cup but also predicts your daily tasks based on your coffee preferences, offering productivity tips while you sip. Price tag: £ 2,695.49
Donald Trump will be re-elected, but will have to give Presidential Broadcasts from Maximum Security Wing of his state prison &\or in the conjugal rights caravan with Stormy Daniels.
Kanye West or whatever he calls himself this week & The Kardashians will wake up & realise what talentless wasters of oxygen they are.
A line of code deep inside the Linux kernel is finally triggered in 2024. Research shows that the code that caused the error was created by an IBM engineer. Donald Trump, desperate for some good news, takes up the issue on behalf of ex-SCO executives and files a case that the Supreme Court swiftly examines. Due to a clerical error, the Supreme Court rules in favour of the plaintiff. It is then discovered that the only document that actually confirms the link between the code and SCO's ownership of same, was handed over to the staff of the Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School when they moved into the offices of Tarentella Inc (formerly SCO) in 2006. "You can stick that filing cabinet and all its contents in a place where the sun don't shine, buddy! You own all that sh1t now" was the decisive piece of evidence extracted from a witness statement filed by the staff of GBK when they lodged a complaint with the local police for a case of verbal assault.
Elon final reveals he is a AI from the future, pealing his face skin off on live TV, and say hes here to save humanity. However he has conditions. Humanity will now be called humanity-X. We will all get free X-Chips installed in our bodies and our life span will be tiered; Free - live till 40. Bronze - live till 50. Silver - live till 60. Gold - live till 70, Platinum - ETERNAL LIFE AS A MINION OF THE ELON ROBOT HORDE.
The departed Mayan spirits that inhabit my non-AI Ceiba branded crystal-ball (those same ones who noted this past Summer that Intel stock was undervalued at $36, and should, in due time, return to $50) have deep-throatedly spoken thus (with major blue smoke):
In the first half of 2024, AI will develop a successful vaccine against the new BLLASSED virus (Blake Lemoine LaMDA SEntience Disorder) cast as a frog-legged spell to stealthily hypnotize humanity into a trance-like state of total devotion towards quantum stochastic voodoo tech.
In the second half of 2024, the vaccine's wavefunction will collapse against the quantum-backtracking decoherence induced by the contradictory resolution of the AI-graph constraint-satisfaction paradox, producing an AI that simultaneously consists of both dead-cat qubits, and live ones.
With feline swiftness, smarts, and delimited continuations, the cat qubit AI will then dynamic-wind 2024 and left-fold it back onto 2023, possibly in reverse order. The ghostly spirits recommend to bracket oneself accordingly (or not?)!
Speculation in crypto currencies by big investors causes the prices to rocket until eventually the only business activity worth using energy for is crypto mining.
Energy gets a better return when used to power crypto miners than tractors.
All farming stops and the entire human race wipes itself in a whirlwind of crypto profit making.
The annual Stack Overflow Developers Survey results show 100 percent support for little endiannity. An over-eager technical intern at Gartner and poor internal communication there causes them to go with "little endian in trough of disillusionment as support plummets below 001 percent". The battle is over, big endian wins!
Intel re-release Itanium as a temporary big endian replacement until they can release their 684108 architecture. Naturally this succeeds, ARM and Qualcomm both close shop. Within one year all tracking cookies and other cryptocurrencies stop working because they use a little-endian format internally.
Linux is still not on the desktop after the successful return of Ballmer.
Big endian wins out! My son gets the sweater, it was his idea.
IBM bought by Fujitsu, mainframe pricing drops so much Linux is dropped for whatever Zos is this year.
Fujitsu open sourced AIX, OS programmers discover what a real OS code looks like.
BEOS clones V1.01 released, take over most desktop use.
Mass migration of cloud to in house as companies cant afford shared services any more.
Java script banned, web runs so fast CPUs melt around planet.
Meta bought by KGB
Google bought by NSA
GeoCities make a comeback
SCO wins against IBM over Linux
Woz takes SCO to court over Linux and becomes owner of all unices intellectual property
VMS make major comeback as Windows enterprise fails.
Governments demanding Man In Middle security access discover they have been pawned for a decade by North Korea
AI found to be a joke by Expert Systems that got out of hand
The US Government will tighten the screw on China by banning the use of US developed Software. Starting with Microsoft products.
The Chinese Gov, purchase the intellectual property rights to Novell Netware version 4. Whilst updating it for the current world needs, they find that Microsoft had used Novell proprietary code. They sue Microsoft and put a stop the deploying any Network based software world wide and win, in the forthcoming years Novell becomes the Networking system of choice world wide
Windows 12 will be a sentient operating system that communicates solely through interpretive dance. Elon Musk will unveil his secret plan to launch a Tesla Roadster into space with a soundtrack composed entirely of cat meows. The Raspberry Pi 6 will become a portable pizza oven, doubling as a gaming console that only plays retro disco music. OpenAI's new CEO will be a hyper-intelligent potato named Spudnik, and their first act will be to replace all programming languages with emojis. And lastly, Microsoft's AI initiatives will take an unexpected turn, focusing entirely on teaching AI to write Shakespearean sonnets about quantum physics.
An AI with the face of Greta will be installed on our phones, monitoring our lives, ready to tell us each time we're about to make a decision that has a higher carbon footprint than other available options. About to buy that nice chunk of beef brisket, no problem. GretAI will be there to tell you all about the tofu on aisle 14.
Starship will be a success and Space X succeed in their plans to send the US President, Chinese President Xi, President Kim from Norks and Putin to Mars. On separate Starships Obvs.
Once there , they'll have to work together to assemble their IKEA flatpack living spaces but will be missing that little cranked hex key and several key screws/nuts etc.
As oxygen starts running low they ponder who should be allowed to die so the others can live longer.
Eventually they are down to 2 survivors and in a winner-take-all fame of Rock Paper Scissors the survivor will get to rule the whole of the planet
The boffins at Cambridge have trained an AI on public statements, comments, and discussions by top politicians from all over the world.
This failed utterly at the stated goal of making a Political AI
By some strange coincidence, they have instead created a virtual Quantum entity. Every statement can at all times be both true and false, and in no way whatsoever contradictory unless that might be advantagious.
1. To support old people:
Help desk's will not assume the customer uses an email address or can access a website.
Banks will reopen on the high street rather than making you use an app on your smart phone.
Self-service checkouts will be removed entirely from shops (but see 5), and transactions will become human centred agin.
2. Layers of middle management will be re-introduced into companies after it is recognised that google sheets and google docs do not capture an organisations tacit knowledge, and that middle managers were worth the wisdom of their years.
3. Software development will revert to good old waterfall model and all agile development approaches will be thrown out as rubbish because they encode unconsious bias and because agile is shown to be part of a plot where software engineers get rid of project managers who know nothing about linux. Stakeholder documents & Requirements documents will fill shelves and be ignored again by the coders.
4. It will become easy to set up an account on the UK HMRC/Government portal.
But/
5. Crypto currency will replace fiat currency in all Marks & Spencer outlets. Old folk will be left wandering around the store wondering how as well as where to pay.
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There will be an IAEA level 7 nuclear accident somewhere in the world.
46% of the coverage will be about how any panic would be far more dangerous than the curies, and also explain in layman's terms the benefits of a good radiation tan. 8% of the coverage (98% on X) will be about the way iodine pills contain nanobots. Meanwhile, three US states will ban geiger counters.
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