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Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#121

Post by imedadel »

owenversteeg wrote: post #85

I particularly like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marefa . I wouldn't know about the quality of the content - I don't speak Arabic - but from what I can tell it's like Arabic Wikipedia, but you also get blogs, forums, ancient manuscripts, email with unlimited storage (?!?) and much more. The Arabic internet in general is always interesting to me, because even in 2021 it still seems very ad-hoc and far less commercial…

It started as a fork of the Arabic Wikipedia, though. And most content is outdated since they don't have that many contributors.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#123

Post by Moru »

altacc wrote: post #104
airhead969 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the government knows every purchase they make, tracks everything they do, and can take it all away whenever it wants? No thanks. And what about homeless and old people, are they disenfranchised too? A cashless society controlled by a government or a corporation means a powerless society. Norway has had similar tax return approval by text messaging for almost 20 years.

I don't know what your percention of Norway is, but having moved around a bit and currently being based here, I see that Scandinavians have a different relationship with governments and corporations than in many other countries. For a start, it's not primarily seen as an adversarial relationship. It's more of the people, for the people. Not perfect, but Scandinavian societies rely on a high level of trust and it work…

Besides, you still can pay with real money in most places, you just have to choose the right line at the exit. Not all of them take cash. For us that has no problems, card is so much easier to use but there are a lot of people that can't handle the tech and they should be able to buy things too.

All this is marketed as better for crime prevention, less bank/store robbery. Ofcourse this only pushes the cost on the individual in the end though. If you can't rob the store, you can still find valuables in private houses with much lower security. Or just stop any youth on the street. Chances are they have an expensive phone if nothing else.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#124

Post by omnibrain »

4cao wrote: post #118
jaflo wrote: post #49

If anyone has a site similar to Reddit or HN in German I would be interested. Anything with interesting discussion really.

Someone will probably come up with a better answer but you can check out https://www.heise.de/forum/ for tech news.

The heise forum sadly has been a cesspit of trolls for a long time. In the last 5 years it got even worse because some of the conspiracist and nazi trolls from the Telepolis forum came over to the tech forums an I think heise don't know how to properly deal with them.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#125

Post by fy20 »

There's a home automation protocol that's been around for over 20 years called KNX. It's backed by big names (ABB, Hager, Gira, Osram, Mean Well) however outside of Germany it's pretty much unknown. Compared to ZigBee or Z-Wave it's wired and the config is stored in the devices themselves, so there's no single point of failure. It has strict certification requirements so you can be guaranteed that products from different manufacturers will work together (this does mean its more expensive though). The quality of the hardware (esp. motion/presence sensors) is a lot better than what you can buy from Amazon or the 'smart home' section in your local Walmart.

There's plenty of content (in German) on YouTube about it, and forums:

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCiCPbFz0Ld6mera2fNDRWzw

https://knx-user-forum.de/

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#128

Post by jerome-jh »

afkqs wrote: post #111
ximus wrote: post #87

Quality docomentaries and looks on society on Arte.tv, the european culture channel AFAIK, north americans don't know about its existence. It's available in english. https://www.arte.tv/en/

A great initiative in the media industry for sure. They have a programme call Tracks that explores the underground culture [1]. Very interesting [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/TracksARTEde

And currently a great series on "The civil war" - "La guerre de secession" - "Der Amerikanische Bürgerkrieg", mostly for European watchers obviously. With plenty of photos and citations from the time and just enough commentary as necessary. Available in french and german. https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/040864-001-A/la-guerre-de-sece...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#130

Post by pelliphant »

ackbar03 wrote: post #46
NalNezumi wrote: post #45

I would mention hitta.se from Sweden. Probably a privacy nightmare to some, and very creepy to others. On the page you can search peoples home address, phone number, date of birth, other members living in the same house , real estate value, mortgage rate, all by searching their names. I successfully once identified a parent of a owner of a lost wallet, only containing a gym card with last name on it. Found her phone…

WOW. Is this a well known service/site in Sweden? In other countries this would have been blown up into a huge privacy issue. Assuming its not because its sort of underground, why do you think it hasn't in Sweden? Genuinely curious

yes, it is well known. I just see it as a digital versin of the phone book.

And there are even more extreme versions, like ratsit.se

where you can pay to get credit information on anyone.

Personally I think that what ratsit does is probably too far, and maybe it shouldn't be legal.

But in general I like our "public information" system, that lots of government information is available to every citizen, I find the benefits of being able to check what the government and those with power does (journalism would be way harder without this), outweights the negatives.

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