Comment by physicles

- Life in China will return to the 2019 normal (except for mask wearing), with the country eliminating quarantine for international arrivals, one of the last vestiges of the zero Covid policy, in spring. There are no more large-scale protests, despite people noticing there are more deaths than the gov is letting on.

- China will not go to war over Taiwan in 2023. However, we’ll continue down that path, with more incidents like Pelosi’s visit. (I think it’s unlikely we see 2030 without a war)

- The war in Ukraine drags on. It does not end, though Russia’s defeat looks inevitable by year’s end. No nukes are used.

- Starship makes 3 orbital flights without incident, but no landing of the first or second stage at the launch tower is attempted.

- Twitter survives. The fediverse also continues to grow, but it remains small compared to Twitter as 1) Twitter continues doing an OK job, and 2) it becomes clear that running a fediverse instance at scale is not trivial.

- None of Siri, Google, or Alexa integrate ChatGPT, due to its propensity to hallucinate falsehoods. Nevertheless, a couple breakthrough products in specific domains do incorporate a version of it.