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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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/

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

> 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.

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!

You say that like it's a bad thing.

You say that like making money is a bad thing.

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