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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

Terrible headline. This is like saying "America developing its first supercomputer outside of the US", referring to Mexico or somewhere.

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It makes sense from a South African point of view, though. I am in South Africa and our company deals with clients in Kenya, Tanzania, etc.

When we refer to the market on the actual continent we refer to it as Africa (or the african market), so in a way it's implicit that we're talking about countries in the north.

I agree. As someone who grew up in Nigeria, I think Africans would understand this headline and find it acceptable. Also, as someone who grew up in Nigeria, I wish Nigeria would get its own supercomputer! It has 4 times as many people and 6 times the GDP of Kenya, and needs to pick up the pace in information technology! :)

No, since America can be used to refer to both the USA[1] and a continent/two continents, but there is no country commonly called just "Africa".

[1] Please don't argue with this. This is common usage in modern day English, even if you might not like it. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Also note that the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States) are commonly referred to as just Mexico, so why should there be a problem with calling the "United States of America" just "America" for short?

Err, yes. My point is saying "Africa" is so broad as to be meaningless. It's a vast and diverse continent, of which Kenya is just one country. I wouldn't expect an American to know this.

Alright, I misunderstood (But I disagree. "Up until now, no African country except SA has developed a supercomputer" gives me quite a lot of information (55 states in Africa don't have supercomputers); it's not at all meaningless.)

Also, you seriously don't expect Americans to know that Africa is made up of many countries, nor understand the difference between Morocco and Kongo (for instance)? As a non-American, that's rather shocking.

Only about 5% of Americans even have passports. They just aren't interested in the rest of the world.

Sorry where did you get this number from? This seems [0] to be a very popular myth and therefore, incorrect.

[0] http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/10/20/debunki...

I think that's part of what makes the headline surprising and interesting. Africa is vast and diverse, and I was surprised to read that there weren't supercomputers in, say, Egypt or Nigeria.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, rather) while the geographical terminology is correct, I'm not sure the technical terminology is. The Ars article (and the blog it was largely copied from) says there is "little to no capacity for cloud computing" (outside South Africa) which is not the same as "no supercomputers."

I wouldn't expect an American to know this.

You can't be serious.

To further your point, there is no continent "America;" There is a conglomeration of two continents called "The Americas" with two constituent continents North America and South America.

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