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Comment by Jd | Hacker News Reader

Can I ask a simple question: Why?

I live in Europe, but AFAIK none of the places where I've lived/am regular even have an HN meetup. I have no idea we would want a splintered HN.

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The number one reason for me would be because lots of the things covered on HN tend to be US focused to the point that people forget anywhere else exists. I'm tired of articles praising some service provider or payment processor only to find they are US-only and may support the EU in 'the future'. I'm tired of rants about carrier practices that only affect the US as if it is universal. I'd like to see a site where there is an actual consciousness that not everyone is living in the United States of America.

I'd like to see a site where there is an actual consciousness that not everyone is living in the United States of America.

Well, if our lobbyists do their jobs properly, mere accidents of geography will not keep you out of the fold. :)

Moreover, sorry dude, the tech war is over and we won. We've got better funding, better language, better regulations, and better spirit--and sadly, not a lot else.

EDIT: (and yes, not seeing stories about services that can be used outside of the US is unfortunate--agreed. Submit more and upvote!)

> the tech war is over and we won

Excuse me? I've just evaluated all possible virtual hosting services, and by far the best is in Germany.

I know dozens of people who hate the US passionately because of high-horse comments like yours.

I would be curious to know which service that is, and what boxen they run, and what company made those boxen.

In hindsight I realize that probably just opened the door to a pissing match over whose contributions to software/computing/startup culture is greater, but I think that would be an interesting conversation to have here.

EDIT: To get the ball rolling, we've got

Matsumoto : Ruby : Japan

Ericsson: Erlang : Sweden

Torvalds : Linux : Finland

I don't think this will turn into a pissing contest. Hacker News comments are usually pretty insightful. Arguing over whether Europe as a continent or the U.S. as a country is better in some respects is just useless.

Especially useless when the "argument" boils down to a single famous individual (or even a handful) that happens to hail from a given country or continent.

You probably understand why it would be immature to compare continents. It's anyway getting harder to really get to the bottom of it as lots of engineer and scientists were taken to the US in the last century to work on those boxes.

But ultimately there are no sides to take, and that is why "US already won the tech war" comments piss people off, and rightfully so.

...and if there are no sides to take, it hardly matters whether or not the startup news on HN happens to be mostly in the geographic bounds of an upstart colony of the British Empire, now does it?

And if that is the case, if we are indeed this sisterhood/brotherhood without nation or creed other than the desire to do work, surely it makes more sense that we address underrepresentation in our community here instead of balkanizing across the net?

Better:

Electricity | Gilbert/Galvani/Volta | Europe

Telephone | whoever you believe this week | Europe + USA

Computers | VonNeumann / Turing working in USA | Europe + USA

Internet | DARPA | USA

Web | CERN | Europe

Game, set... and match.

(it's all a joke, of course. Just be a sport, will you?)

( of course, my good sir or madam! :)

clearly the best things--modern internet for example--are the result of collaboration without regard to nation of origin )

Well, to be fair, let us also count things the US did wrong:

C++ | Bell Labs | USA

XML | IBM | USA

UML | IBM | USA

SOAP | Microsoft | USA

IE6 | Microsoft | USA

GPL | Stallman | USA

Visual Basic | Microsoft | USA

gcc | Stallman | USA

CORBA | Object Management Group | USA

Moreover, sorry dude, the tech war is over and we won

In monetary terms that is probably true, if by "tech" you mean IT. But the losers of your "war" have invented things like the Web, Linux, Python, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, English and the ARM CPU, not to speak of most math and logic foundations of today's tech industry.

The only item on your list that I wholeheartedly agree with is "better funding". Everything else is, um, ...patriotism?

And the US has several of its own.

Hardware: MIPS, x86, SPARC, Motorola 68* (and the attendant Apple product lines [1,2,Mac, etc.]), DTMF phones (and thus modems), the transistor (though some very preliminary work was done in Canada and Germany, Bell Labs and TI brought them to manufacture), Ethernet, packet-switched networks, touch and light-pen interfaces, etc.

Software: 3D graphics, functional programming (LISP et al), node.js, JavaScript, C, C++, Java, jquery, Unix, Plan 9, Windows (lol), BSD everything (sockets, operating system, license), modern information theory (thanks Shannon!), BitTorrent, etc.

Culture: GNU, EFF, FSF, copyleft, etc.

True, and all those lists could of course be a lot longer. My point is that what really sets the US apart is access to funding. The rest you can find in many places, and it's a lot more about individuals than nations and their wars.

Upvoted, as you do have a valid point. I also tend to agree about the influence of individuals, though one could argue that the US spending on defense is, in great part, the driving factor for the technology that got us here.

I personally think it's a bit more than funding though--for lack of a better way of putting it, the feeling of opportunity and independence is what provides a fertile ground for starting a business. We commonly have room for people arguing and making idiots of themselves, for going against the grain, for dropping out and trying to achieve great things.

There's still a sort of individualism in parts of the US that I believe makes doing business and work here great.

(honest question) Is there such great tolerance of nonconformity elsewhere? I've heard distressing things about parts of Europe and Asia in this regard (Japan, for example, apparently does not support the sort of ecosystem we do due to societal expectations of young folks). I dislike painting in broad strokes, but the topic seems to lend itself to that.

A correction to your list. C++ was created by Bjarne Stoustrup who is Danish.

He was inspired by Simula - the world's first object oriented programming language (created by two Norwegians). It introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods, coroutines,discrete event simulation and featured garbage collection.

This attitude of how everything that is great has come from USA is one of the reasons why some feel the need to add other news sources to their RSS reader.

This is the kind of comment for which I personally dislike the US centered mentality here on HN.

To address briefly your points:

war is over and we won

War? I find a bit funny this mentality you have in the US to turn everything into a war (war on drugs, etc). In tech there is no war, we are all working to make the world better. One does not need to "lose" for the other one to "succeed".

Moreover, the tech landscape is growing a lot here in Europe and is attracting people from the US too, people that don't like how things are going there, which means it's not so great as you would like to picture it.

Without forgetting that USA and Europe are not the whole world, Asia is growing and at some point South America and Africa will too. "War", or whatever you want to call it, is not over and I don't think it will ever be.

We've got better funding

Funding is growing in Europe as well. Some US investors are coming to invest here. I've seen a friend of mine discussing with a US VC for his startup in Poland. Investors move their money wherever they see talent. A lot of talent moved to the US from Europe or Asia. As things get better, less talent will move there, leveling things.

better language

By better I think you mean more homogenous, which is true [1], but knowledge of English in Europe is growing and there are a lot of countries that are non-native English speakers but have percentages of English speaking people between 80% and 90% [2]

better regulations and better spirit

These are highly subjective. I, for one, strongly disagree on both of them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Language

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe

EDIT: formatting

I'm not inclined to disagree with you that the situation in the US is far from ideal in a lot of regards, but my personal experience (started a company [tanked] at 19, just closed accounts with my state and did tax paperwork, no repercussions, about to try again) tells me that regulations here are only somewhat of a burden, and the really bad ones are seen across the world soon enough to prevent us being disadvantaged. US copyright and patent law, SOPA, etc. could be disasterous for us--but via things like ACTA and the like, you can bet your ass we'll drag you down with us. :)

As for the funding and language--proclaiming that you too use US venture capital and the English language really is more a testament to American soft power than anything else.

proclaiming that you too use US venture capital and the English language really is more a testament to American soft power than anything else.

No, it's not.

Regarding VC, it means that there is more money there now, that's true. But the fact that VCs are coming to Europe can be seen also as you losing that power you claim to have.

Same for language. I cannot deny that English spread mainly because it's the language of tech and the internet and that comes more from the USA (but remember that English as a language comes from England, Europe).

But language is just a tool to communicate. European countries are adopting it, but that does not mean they are adopting it to talk to you, or at least not only. English is becoming more and more a language to communicate across Europe. I am form Italy and have been living in the Netherlands for almost two years, without having to learn Dutch.

It also makes it much easier for people that want to leave the US, since they know they can come here and be able to speak to everybody.

My point was not to deny that there might be an imbalance toward the US for some things, but nothing is over and I won't be like this forever. China has been the most powerful empire on earth for millennia. It lost its power, but it might regain it in the future.

dude, Bollycock on all your points

As an EU hacker myself, I'm not exactly crazy about this regional split - it feels unnecessary and artificial somehow. On the other hand, if we're going to have an alternative HN site, it will probably have to differentiate itself in some way.

First sharing with each other

Then a very relevant calendar

And finally a local Angel List

Would those be useful, or superfluous?

If the first point just happens on HN, that wouldn't preclude the second and third point, right?

So -- possibly superfluous, yes.

(EU person myself)

The key is accessibility - what relevant communication do you get out of Hacker News? If HN DOES fulfil your needs, then great. If, like many of us, local matters then Hackful is extremely exciting IF we can get the community owning/using it.

For the hacking side, I don't see any reason for a split either. But for the business side, it would be very good to also have a EU community to help create a better environment here. Let's not forget that we (from the EU) can move wherever we wish in the EU to set up shop (or work), so it would be helpful to know about the opportunities, the problems etc.

This is important - doing business wherever you are in the world will always be subject to local customs in my view. This is despite increasing globalization; there will always be different languages, currencies, market structures, legislation etc.

One of the reasons we intend Lion to be more focused on the UK and the general business community.

Btw, apart from the issues of regional relevance (e.g discussing developments in Europe, avoiding US-only services, etc) there are some cultural differences too, which a European HN-like site might alleviate a little.

As a European I find a lot of american's grasp of economy and politics extremely naive (and if I read about Ayn Rand again, I will smash my monitor). Also, the sometimes extreme political correctness (which comes natural for some people) leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Now, those are peripheral issues, true, but they occur a lot of times in HN discussions.

One reason that is good enough for me: HN is a bit of an echo chamber. It's maintained by a specific VC with specific opinions, which already was a source of some controversy. While I don't see a problem with the existence of opinionated media, I do think it's healthy if we have alternatives. And being "european" is specifically beneficial, because it brings with itself a somewhat different perspective.

I'd probably use both (unless the other one dies, of course — just because it's useful doesn't mean it will work).

Hackful will never replace Hacker News - it is for local entrepreneurs to have far more relevant discussion.

Why would a European service need peer review from a predominantly US audience?

Uhm, because ambitious European services don't restrict themselves to the (often smaller and more conservative) local audience?

Maybe it will do things in new ways that are better than HN. Maybe it will eventually become more International like HN is? Choice and variety are a good thing. You've got to differentiate yourself somehow when you're starting out.

Same here. In order to make a geo based community there better be good reasons for that. All the abandoned Social Networks in Europe that had a localized positioning are still witnesses of this development.

I've been to HackerNews meetups around the world and the London meetup is one of the biggest and best in my opinion. With more than 400 attendees a month, they sell out usually too.

Indeed, it solves the wrong problem. We are not lacking in tech news access over here, we are lacking in knowing who is around, what is around, who is hiring, who is firing, who funds, who succeeds, who fails, who is searching for cofounders etc.

Bingo! Hackful is one day old and only the first step - next step is a calendar and third a local Angel List.

Who is hiring is a difficult one as there are MANY others trying to solve that problem - better to leave it to them rather than a community effort stepping on their toes...

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