The reason for it being in the public consciousness today is immaterial really in terms of relevance for HN discussion purposes, and since it's an interesting piece of software it's quite on topic here
How is software presumably well known to a large portion of the site's audience relevant news merely for reason of some people outside of this site's audience discovering it for the first time? And what's there to discuss about it since its features have been the same for many years?
> How is software presumably well known to a large portion of the site's audience relevant news
Large portion is not all. It's relevant because it's an element of a popular news story. There isn't some mystery agenda here as it was voted up by the community.
The truth is that those two things should not be compared. They have a few similaritys (mostly web stuff) but for example facebook has no android-maps-chromebook etc.
I might be wrong but the word meraki is one of those greek words that cant be translated in english and means passion to work and develop something. Try it on google translate as μεράκι !