Hacker News Reader

phone calls as we know it are going to go the way of the dinosaurs, we need trusted communication systems

Agreed. Once mobile data coverage is universal (via starlink et al, maybe), it's inevitable that the idea of a phone number will become antiquated. Either whatsapp (or one of its competitors) gets a sufficient monopoly and enables easily portable identities (to allow switching sims), or some other similar platform will come along. It may take a decade or two, but it will happen.

But it's never going to be universal. I felt very scared some weeks ago during a huge march against rightwing extremists in Munich, Germany. There were ~150k people concentrated on a few streets/km.

Now, how is this relevant? Well, the entire cell network was offline, at least for some providers. At first it wasn't possible to send/receive data. Calls were connecting, but my friend sounded like an alien. Then for one hour, 0 communication was possible.

So even though the most efficient (I think?) protocol was used, it came to a halt

I used to think this about email also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com