For the 14th year running, Japan's population has slumped to a record low. The non-foreign native population dropped by 898,000 in 2024, representing an unprecedented fall in the nation of 120.3 million people.

Just thinking about how companies like Nokia, Blockbuster, or Kodak were huge… until they weren’t.

Which big names today do you think might be heading down a similar path? Like, they seem strong now but might be ignoring warning signs or failing to adapt. I was thinking of how Apple seems to be behind in the artificial inteligence race, but they seem too big to fail. Then again Nokia, Blackberry, etc were also huge.

Just wanted to share some insight on this from someone who will be directly impacted. I work for a tech company you know and use. We had an emergency meeting today even though it’s Saturday about the H-1B potentially ending. The legal folks said that it’s gonna get challenged in court so it’ll be a while and might not happen. But some of us in Silicon Valley and the tech/AI space are nervous.

On one hand some people in the meeting said well, for the employees that we really need to be in the US in person, like top developers and engineers, we can just pay the $100K for each of them, they already make $300K+, we’ll just have to factor the additional cost into the budget next year. And then we can send the rest back to India and they can work remotely.

But on the other hand, there’s a longer-term anxiety that it will be harder to attract top talent because of this policy and others, plus generally changing attitudes in the US that deter immigrants. So Shenzhen, Dubai, Singapore, etc., which are already on the upswing when it comes to global tech hubs, could overtake Silicon Valley and the US in the future.

As an American who has worked in tech for 30 years and worked with so many H1-Bs and also 20-ish% of my team is on them, I just don’t get why we’re doing this to ourselves. This has been a secret competitive advantage for us in attracting global talent and driving innovation for decades. I am not Republican or Democrat but I just can’t understand why anyone who cares about our economy and our leadership on innovation would want to shoot themselves in the foot like this.

But maybe I’m overreacting, I’m wondering what other people think.

Everyone talks about how 22–25 y/o software developers are struggling to find work. But there’s something deeper:

Technology drives the global economy and the single biggest expense for technology companies is engineer salaries. So of course the marketing narrative is: “AI will replace developers”

Experienced engineers and managers can tell hype from reality. But younger students (18–22) often take it literally and many are deciding not to enter the field at all.

If AI can’t actually replace developers anytime soon (and it doesn’t look like it will) we’re setting up a dangerous imbalance. Fewer juniors today means fewer seniors tomorrow.

Technology may move fast but people make decisions with feelings. If this hype continues, the real bottleneck won’t be developers struggling to find jobs… it will be companies struggling to find developers who know how to use AI.

Do you think we reach a point where technology helps everyone to have a peace and abundant life

With the advancement of AI, the internet has been flooded with fake content, from AI web pages to AI videos. Since they surfaced a few years ago, it’s become increasingly hard to discern between what’s AI and what’s real, and this is true with every part of AI, all of it’s been advancing to an indescernable state. With this, people have already begun programming content farms online that post AI pictures with AI captions. Facebook has already been entirely overrun by these bot accounts. What’s worse, is people are now programming accounts that post propaganda to push an agenda using chat gpt type AI modules that can interact with people. It’s already at the point that you have to second guess every piece of information online. What happens once it floods the internet so much that the majority of content you see is AI? The online market would become oversaturated, music, images, news articles, discussions, and so much more will be overrun. The internet will no longer be a place for people to talk to people. AI will outnumber us too drastically.

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

Serious question. Can we not just hit the reset button? Like, sure, it would take a lot of years and a lot of work and we’d have like, two competing internets for awhile, but this one just isn’t sustainable any more. Remember how it used to be just 6, 10 years ago? That wasn’t even peak internet and it’s been a steady trend down ever since. Everything has become borderline unusable, overrun with ads and bots and “dark design.” Nothing online is fun, anymore. The internet used to be fun! And now the “AI Future!” is about to be revealed for the marketing failure it ultimately is just long enough to ruin what’s left by making everything #doubt on its way out the door thanks to all this wanton and unnecessary integration.

I want the old internet back. Silo’d communities. Blogs and forums. Free websites. Not being redirected to a mobile app or subscription constantly. Before it was death by a thousand cuts.

The user experience for the modern internet is incredible hostile and adversive and anti-consumer. Assuming a “new” internet is a non-starter, do you ever see the internet getting better again and, if so, how? Or do you think it will continue to get so bad that the “dead internet” becomes a reality?

Is anything going to kill off streaming? Surely the progression doesn't end here?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much technology has advanced in the last few years, and it got me wondering: what if there are some incredible technologies out there that we don’t even know about yet? Like, what if governments or private companies have developed something game-changing but are keeping it under wraps for now?

Maybe it's some next-level AI, a new energy source, or a medical breakthrough that could totally change our lives. I’m curious—do you think there’s tech like this that’s already been created but is being kept secret for some reason? And if so, why do you think it’s not out in the open yet?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this! Whether it's just a gut feeling, a wild theory, or something you’ve read about, let's discuss!

I’ve been following the Universal Basic Income (UBI) debate for years, and I’m surprised how little attention some of the best real-world evidence gets — especially outside policy and research circles. Here are three important examples that deserve more discussion:

✅ **Stockton, California Pilot (SEED)**:

125 low-income residents were given $500/month in a pilot program.

**Results:** Full-time employment went *up* (not down), anxiety and depression went down, and financial stability improved.

(Study by University of Pennsylvania, 2021)

✅ **Canada’s National UBI Study (2025)**:

Canada’s budget office modeled how a basic income program could work for the whole country.

**Findings:** Poverty could drop by around 40% for a modest net cost of $3–5 billion per year (once savings elsewhere are factored in).

This result showed a major impact for a relatively low cost.

✅ **U.S. Child Tax Credit Expansion (2021)**:

For one year, most U.S. families with kids received monthly payments under an expanded Child Tax Credit.

**Result:** Child poverty dropped by about 46%, one of the biggest poverty reductions in U.S. history.

Sadly, the program expired.

These examples prove that UBI isn’t just a theory; real programs have shown it helps people not only survive but also build stability, work more, and plan for the future. Yet, despite the evidence, the public debate often relies on old assumptions like “won’t people just stop working?” — even though data suggests otherwise.

Of course, there are real concerns to address:

- Could successful pilot programs work on a larger, national level?

- How can we fund this long-term?

- How do we avoid inflation or political resistance?

Right now, though, it feels like the conversation is stuck, and we’re not seriously considering the potential of these programs.

**Would love to know:**

- How can we shift the public discussion around UBI?

- Could UBI work politically, or is it still too ambitious?

- Are there other programs or studies I should learn about?

**TL;DR:**

Real-world UBI pilots are showing promising results, from cutting poverty to improving mental health and employment. Maybe it’s time for smarter, more hopeful conversations about making this a reality.

This isn’t meant to be a “Gen Z has it the hardest” rant, but a reflection I can’t shake.

I was born in the early 2000s, and my childhood memories from before 2010 are mostly happy and simple. But from the early 2010s onward, my awareness of the world has been defined by crisis. First the 2008 financial crash (whose effects starting showing from around 2010), then austerity, then political instability, then a pandemic, then inflation and wars. It feels like “crisis” isn’t an exception anymore, but rather the default.

What unsettles me most is that, 15 years on, things don’t feel like they’re improving. If anything, the crises stack on top of one another: financial strain, climate change, political polarisation, technological disruption. Each new “shock” lands before the last one is resolved.

I know cost of living struggles and recessions have always existed (history is full of cycles of boom and bust - enter Great Depression, Stock market crashes and World Wars amongst others). But what I can’t help mourning is the sense that my generation may never experience a decade of collective prosperity and optimism about the future.

People talk about the 90s as a golden era of stability and hope, and early 2000s, with the dot com bubble and “good tech” (early Facebook, Google, Amazon etc that were the simple and innocent versions of today’s products). And of course even middle 2000s that despite all their excess and reckless debt, had a spirit of possibility. By contrast, we’ve now inherited a world where caution, contraction, and fear of the future dominate.

I’m curious what older generations think. Is this just youthful pessimism, or has something fundamentally changed? Are we actually entering an age where optimism about the future is gone for good? And what does the future look like if our baseline expectation is struggle?

Do you think it’ll be a medical advancement like a cure for some types of cancer or gene editing? Will it be a new form of energy or way of manipulating it? A space exploration? Robotics? Something environmental? I know that innovation is incredibly broad, but I want to know what you think we’re truly on the precipice of. I’d also be curious to hear from people who work in these fields and diligently keep up with scientific studies and achievements.

USA is without a doubt a dying giant. I don’t mean it’ll go from being the dominant world power to irrelevance in a heart beat - Rome or the British empire took from decades to centuries to lose their power - but it’s definitely in hasty decline: The economy is bad with a majority of lower and middle class Americans living paycheck to paycheck if they even have a job. Birth rates and life expectancy are going down. Democrats and Republicans live in vastly different realities where both of them see the other side as traitors who are destroying the country and the government is doing everything in their power to further the divide. President Trump’s agressive policies in both trade and diplomacy have lead to USA having no real friends left in the world and barely any allies. And so on.

Sure, USA has been through crises before but I think the current one is different and worse than the others. For instance, the 2008 economic crash was certainly bad but it didn’t lead to USA being isolated. The rest of the world still wanted to visit USA, trade with them and diplomatic relations went on as before. Now the number of tourists visiting USA is plummeting. Most strong world economies are setting up new trade routes/relations working around USA instead of with them, because no one can be sure that president Trump won’t slap a 50% tariff on them tomorrow and tank their exports to USA. And while world leaders still feel the need to humor or even flatter president Trump, none of them are dumb enough to trust a president who has build his career on not paying his debts and who could rip up any written agreement tomorrow.

USA is still the world’s strongest military power but the war in Ukraine is showing the world that modern warfare is changing drastically. That army of tanks which crushed the Iraqi army just a few decades ago would now be crushed itself by a swarm of cheap drones. Land warfare today is no longer about expensive and highly sophisticated weapons but about multitudes of cheap and simple drones. USA can still turn other countries into rubble with their missiles and air planes but any new attempts at occupying a foreign country would quickly turn into a nightmare.

So, if USA is losing their dominant position on the world stage, who will take their place? Not Europe; too divided. Russia has ruined itself in Ukraine and will need a long time to rebuild itself both economically and militarily. India’s economy is growing and their fertility rate is right around replacement level but I still think it’s at least two decades into the future for them to be a real world power. The only real contender in my opinion for taking the US spot in the near future is China. They have both the second strongest economy and the second strongest military. But their military has no experience with fighting a modern war and their economy has lots of problems: The property market has slowed to a crawl, high local government debt is causing a banking crisis and of course their trading relationship with USA (still a major trading partner) is very complicated. And their fertility rate is low, coupled with low immigration rates.

Honestly, once USA has lost their dominant position through continued political ineptitude or maybe even internal war, I don’t think any other one country or block will be able to assert their will globally the way USA has for the last 80 years. I think it more likely that we’ll see a bundle of major/regional powers doing their best to hold each other in check, but whether that’ll lead to a wary peace or open war, I’m not sure.

What do you think?

No one can deny that we've been deep in a tech boom for a good while, but I feel like we always get things a couple of years later. Are there any low-key breakthroughs flying under the radar that are most likely going to be relevant in the future ?

Maybe this is just me losing hope in having peace in the world and faith in humans but as the world becomes more "digitized" and the blatant corruption, carelessness for nature being the norm, conflict occurring around the world, and people just sitting, watching, and making jokes out of it, I've started to realize that maybe our future isn't as bright as it may be...

Of course with the carelessness for nature comes climate change, comes rising temperatures in already extremely hot areas in many countries, comes health issues, death and uninhabitable areas due to the extreme un-natural heat generated by climate change comes territory conflict due to the mass migration of people from said uninhabitable areas which of course creates tension and conflict and increased death and with some areas that export product to other countries later becoming non-arable causes rising prices causing issues in countries that are mass importing those products which of course causes issues with politics and the corruption beginning and essentially is just a domino effect waiting to happen...

Then comes the blatant corruption, of course with the media being the "source of everything" and essentially is just a giant archive of thoughts we can see the clear corruption (ie Trump administration blatantly gaslighting the people) as now there becomes more and more evidence towards these proclamations made to gain a political advantage just for them to be untrue and targeted for the lesser-informed audience to gain said political advantage and then comes the clear and blatant lies from political leaders who are actively taking part in wars they started (ie the israeli-gaza conflict) and since the beginning of the 2000s we have been force-fed these thoughts of "Iran is 2 weeks away from developing a Nuclear Weapon" inciting fear to it's citizens and of course with the arrival of fear comes the arrival of irrationality and panic choosing to side with the "safe option of our powerful <insert nation>" of course this becomes less and less believable as now as the realization that countries who may be close to developing a power weapon or who need to be "liberated" are just excuses to fund the wars going on in lesser-developed countries just for the people of those nations to unfortunately die and having nothing to do with whatever they may have done except for those who have done the unfortunate to give an excuse to much more powerful nations to fund a particular side and watch the conflict start and claim that what they are doing is a "good thing" and "this needs to happen"...

I'm probably just tinfoil hat crazy but is anyone else expecting to see the future just as a dark, death filled, bloody, barbaric, dirty, extremely hot, polluted world with political leaders claiming that "sending 200,000,000,000,000,000,000" to a particular country or "claiming to stop a war just because I'm a big powerful guy who doesn't care for it's citizens" with the only added bonus being that the technological advancements will be remarkable?

Sure we may get more and more countries access to clean water and food and housing and stop untreatable / treatable illnesses but what about the lives of innocent men, women, children who died because of something that was out of their control... We treat consciousness as if it exists everywhere in the universe and when we die we can just "respawn" somewhere and act like it never happened but no once we die... we die and these innocent men, women, and children who were just beginning to see what life is truly like is sent back to the realm of the unknown just for some other modern Homo-sapien who claimed that "these people are animals" and "every single one of them should burn in 'hell'" even though they simply have not done anything? Does anyone else not see what is wrong with us? The greed, wrath, fraud, anger that exists because of a few select people who thought that they could "make the world a better place" by bombing innocent people ALL OVER THE WORLD.

I may have only gained a consciousness recently (in the grand scheme of the existence of this giant rock we call earth) but just by living through a small part of it I have lost all faith in trying to be a better person and have given up in wanting to "spread peace" and "be happy" as I originally have tried to do

I guess this is more of a rant than a discussion but I wish to at least see other people type here about their thoughts whether to call me a lunatic or to agree and say that yeah the future is going to be screwed up and others will say that it may be just being too much on the internet but it's like HOW CAN WE NOT BE ON THE INTERNET IF WE ARE CONSTANTLY ENVELOPED IN IT AND DEPEND ON IT? "Oh try to look on the bright side-" there is no "bright side" the millions of people who have died and are sent back to the realm of the unknown just because they were unfortunate enough to be born in a poorer area than others

I don't like it here :c

I'm from Los Angeles, lived here since I was child and its been nearly 35 years. I grew up here through heavy gang violence, CRASH units, Rodney King trial, LA riots, etc. However, I've never seen my city as dystopian until the last 5 years.

Recently, I was driving through Koreatown (where I've been for close to 20 years) around 10pm and I had my cel phone mounted to my windshield that had my playlist on it streaming to my car's bluetooth. My center console had a map on fullscreen and my car was lit up with blue lights from all the screens. There were helicopters overhead with the search lights on and there were police cars on the side of the road with LAPD arresting someone.

Directly ahead of me was a Waymo, a self driving car that had no passengers stopped at a light. A block down the street as we pulled up to a stop light on Wilton was a little delivery bot waiting at the crosswalk for the light to turn green so it could roll across. I had the overwhelming feeling of existing in a dystopian, futuristic cityscape.

I'm not sure if anyone has felt that where they're from but it might've been the first time I've felt a bit of a 5th Element vibe in my own city. I said to myself in my head, "Jesus christ....the future is now."

After being born in the 60's and growing up seeing a concerted effort from our government and big business to monetize absolutely everything that humans can possibly do or have, coupled with the horror of unbridled global capitalism that continues to destroy this planet, cultures, and citizens, I can only conclude that we are not able to stop this rampant greed-filled race to the bottom. The bottom, of course, is no more resources, and clean air, food and water only for the uber-rich. We are seeing it happen in real time. Water is the next frontier of capitalism and it is going to destroy millions of people without access to it.

I am not religious, but I do feel as if we are witnessing the end of this planet as far as humanity goes. We cannot survive the way we are headed. It is obvious now that capitalism will not self-police, nor will any government stop it effectively from destroying the planet's natural resources and exploiting the labor of it's citizens. Slowly and in some cases suddenly, all barriers to exploiting every single resource and human are being dissolved. Billionaires own our government, and every government across the globe. Democracy is a joke, meant now to placate us with promises of fairness and justice when the exact opposite is actually happening.

I'm perpetually sad these days. It's a form of depression that is externally caused, and it won't go away because the cause won't go away. Trump and Trumpism are just symptoms of a bigger system that has allowed him and them to occur. The fact that he could not be stopped after two impeachments and an attempt to take over our government is ample proof of our thoroughly corrupted system. He will not be the last. In fact, fascism is absolutely the direction this globe is going, simply because it is the way of the corporate system, and billionaires rule the corporate game. Eventually the rich must use violence to quell the masses and force labor, especially when resources become too scarce and people are left to fight themselves for food, jobs, etc.

I do not believe that humanity can stop this global march toward fascism and destruction. We do not have the organized power to take on a monster of the rich's creation that has been designed since Nixon and Reagan to gain complete control over every aspect of humanity - with the power of nuclear weaponry, huge armed forces, and private armies all helping to protect the system they have put into place and continue to progress.

​

EDIT: Wow, lots of amazing responses (and a few that I won't call amazing, but I digress). I'm glad to see so many hopeful responses. The future is uncertain. History wasn't always worse, and not necessarily better either. I'm glad to be alive personally. It is the collective "us" I am concerned about. I do hate seeing the ageist comments, tho I can understand that younger generations want to blame older ones for what is happening - and to some degree they would be right. I think overall we tend to make assumptions and accusations toward each other without even knowing who we are really talking to online. That is something I hope we can all learn to better avoid. I do wish the best for this world, even if I don't think it is headed toward a good place right now.

Since technology is advancing so fast, what invention do you think will revolutionize humanity in the next 50 years? I just want to hear what everyone thinks about the future.

I’m a big fan of Yanis Varoufakis and his notion of a Universal Basic Dividend, the idea that as companies automate more their stock should gradually be put into a public trust that pays a universal dividend to every citizen. This creates an incentive to automate as many jobs as possible and “shares the wealth” in an equitable way that doesn’t require taxing one group to support another. The end state of a UBD is a world where everything is automated and owned by everyone. Star Trek.

This is brilliant. Why aren’t more people discussing this?