Show HN: A London-centric hackernews | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A London-centric hackernews

technews.london

30 pointsBenC8817 comments

HN is viable because it has a worldwide community of hackers, good moderation and someone writing $120K checks. If the only thing technews.london does is reduce the scope then I fear it won't live long, like so many HN clones before it. I only recall two that were successful and they were successful by doing something HN did not (general business news and designer focused news). London is already on HN as it is.

> someone writing $120K checks

And that is only possible b/c it's a marketing expense which will generate its return by attracting lucrative start-ups to YC.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

You say that like making money is a bad thing.

Which is in turn neutralized by the loss of productivity at said startups due to their reading HN compulsively.

So it's done for the community after all!

The first argument is also a limitation of HN and an opportunity for alternatives. Actually maybe even the first two.

HN community, culture and politics (and also its moderation) are very Silicon Valley / US centric. This comes through especially on non-technical (but relevant) topics, like regulation. But also topics like company culture are extremely US-centric.

Localized topics (both in terms of content and culture) is probably the only reason why an HN-like site would be viable.

From my perspective it's definitely desirable, and just the current frontpage of technews.london confirms that there is a lot of stuff that will never make it to SV-centric HN.

Agreed. We'll see over the coming weeks whether it's viable alternative or not.

Exactly. And if there is demand for a London-centric HN, there is an even bigger demand for non-Anglo alternatives. There are huge markets outside of the Anglosphere.

I'd love to have a local HN to see what's going on in my country's scene.

I think HN clones like this should always be encouraged.

An example -- HN clone in Chinese language: http://news.dbanotes.net/

Cool!

Also didn't know there was a ".london" TLD, but I'm not following such things very closely. It seems anything is a TLD these days.

Clicking on a story's link opens a new tab. This site doesn't work like that, which is very confusing since it breaks the pattern and creates confusion.

Probably only matters if you think your users are going to be readers of both sites, but that does seem rather likely to me, at least.

Thanks for the feedback, I've added it to my todo list.

.london has been around for only about 6 months. Despite living in London, this is actually the first time I've seen anyone use it.

I saw some posters (I think for West End tickets) on a Southern train a little while back using a .london domain. Though it wasn't prefixed with a www so I wonder how many people didn't recognise it as being a domain name.

As someone who's just moved out of London I'd rather like to see a "UK-centric" news site.

I'd rather smaller lines for each story. I can scroll in and out if I want it bigger. I'd also like to see a different font used. I don't like the logo placement as its distracting and in the way.

I like HN's minimalism.

The London site isn't minimal. It looks distractingly busy and over-designed.

Unimpressed by the content too, but I think that's maybe more a function of the infamous forgettability of the Shoreditch scene. (I find it hard to get excited about startups that help you get your ironing done. But maybe that's just me.)

(Very) Minor niggle but imgur is blocked in my office, so I don't get a logo at the top. Like the idea though!

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