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Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

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Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#131

Post by DeusExMachina »

angersock wrote: post #103
kiloaper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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…

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

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#132

Post by petercooper »

babarock wrote: post #95

Passwords... Again. I can't believe I still have to create an account. Even for a website like HN that I'm completely addicted to, I would've never signed up if it weren't for OpenID. You want me to use your service? Make it easy for me to authenticate, I don't need yet another password...

Twitter, Facebook, or even GitHub authentication is certainly de rigeur, but I must admit I thought OpenID had fallen off the radar and I haven't seen any interesting new projects supporting it lately. Even 37signals gave up on it mostly due to lack of use: http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2011/01/well-be-re...

Nothing against OpenID, per se, but it doesn't feel like it has taken off. Or maybe the big sites that are using it are just getting on with it AOK :-)

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#133

Post by reinhardt »

pedrolll wrote: post #123
angersock wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 : Swede…

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.

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#134

Post by reinhardt »

rayhano wrote: post #75
LaGrange wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#135

Post by prateekdayal »

skrebbel wrote: post #12

I doubt it'll work. HN doesn't work just because it's there, it works because it has a certain traction among a certain community. Building up such traction is very difficult, and I doubt doing so by adding a link to it from a non-Europe-focused site is going to help much. Lamernews looked real cool the first 2 weeks as well, and then it mostly died out. How will Hackful be different? I mean, I'd love it to be differ…

HackerStreet India has been doing ok for the last one year since launch - http://hackerstreet.in/

The objective was never to become the next Hacker News or replace it but just to have India centric discussions there. I would say Hackful has an equally good (or better) chance

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#136

Post by angersock »

pestaa wrote: post #125
angersock wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 : Swede…

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?

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#137

Post by prateekdayal »

rayhano wrote: post #71
skrebbel wrote: post #12

I doubt it'll work. HN doesn't work just because it's there, it works because it has a certain traction among a certain community. Building up such traction is very difficult, and I doubt doing so by adding a link to it from a non-Europe-focused site is going to help much. Lamernews looked real cool the first 2 weeks as well, and then it mostly died out. How will Hackful be different? I mean, I'd love it to be differ…

You are right... but that is why Hackful should be fine: it was born out of an email list called Open Coffee London where there is an amazing community of entrepreneurs helping each other everyday. We saw how open HackerNews is and thought that we should give our European community more chance to flourish. Our NEXT steps are to make this more shareable: RSS, possibly daily email digests (opt-in only) THEN we are plug…

Are you guys planning to open source the code so other communities can use it? Or a hosted (even if paid) service?

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#138

Post by angersock »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #130
angersock wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe

#139

Post by jsilence »

simonbrown wrote: post #85
jsilence wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvote for supporting a feature request? srsly?

Downvote for a me-too post, probably.

Interresting, since a similar 'me-too' comment yielded five upvotes just three days ago.

Yeah, maybe I'll have to add more insight as to why i'm me-too-ing the parent post. With a link. http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/rss_is_dying_and_you_should_...

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