3×42: That High Level of Unlikeliness

Bad Voltage

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/!

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×42-that-high-level-of-unlikeliness/12447

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

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