Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

  • Baidu: China’s nonstop music machine

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Baidu is renowned as China’s glittering internet success story, and as the start-up that gave Google a bloody nose. It dominates the web in the world’s second biggest economy with 70 per cent market share, and on Wall Street carries a market cap of almost $12bn. But Baidu’s success comes at a price, for the…

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  • The Great Circular Awards Ceremony

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Is there a more incestuous and self-congratulatory scene anywhere outside the fashion business? What a strange world it is, the world of “digital rights” activism. Campaigners pause only to pat each other on the back. Last week, anti-copyright campaigners Public Knowledge revealed their annual award winners. The group’s president Gigi B Sohn proudly announced the…

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  • The Large Hadron Collider: Anton Wylie

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The LHC comes at a crucial time for particle or quantum physics. In particular, it comes at a crucial time for the dominant theory, known as the Standard Model. The Standard Model has been to modern particle physics rather what the periodic table was to 19th century chemistry. It served both to organise the known…

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  • How the middle classes’ superstitions keep Africa poor and hungry

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The man dubbed the “King of Climate Porn” achieved notoriety at the turn of the decade as the architect of the Foot and Mouth holocaust – which unnecessarily slaughtered seven million animals, and cost the country billions of pounds. But King astonished observers by saying something sensible last week – and he promises to do…

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  • Unravelling the history behind Google’s Trojan Horse

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    When people buy software – buy it in seriously large amounts – it isn’t just today’s binary they’re choosing. They’re buying what they think is a bit of the future – they’re buying a piece of risk insurance. This explains why very mature and well-proven systems often lose out to the Newest Kid on the…

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  • Happy Birthday to GNU

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    No longer will the Free Software Foundation be the target of advertisements for novelty condoms, Ibiza package holidays and extreme sports gear. It’s leaving the 16-24 yoof demographic behind. Today the GNU project celebrates its quarter-century. It was on 27 September 1983 that MIT slacker Richard M Stallman made his announcement that he intended to…

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