Bookmarked, lets see if it goes well.
One advice, give the page some border on the sides, its pretty bad at least for me to have to look to the edge of the monitor.
Let me start off by saying that this is a great idea, and maybe we do need more HN-like sites as HN currently has a usefulness monopoly as far as my news browsing habits are concerned.
On a more constructive note: please implement an RSS feed.
No worries about taking the bait. My comments will be removed soon enough which will make yours either incomprehensible or invisible, depending on how the Stasi decides to remove them. Regardless, you should be blameless.
To answer your question: I have had multiple personal interactions with pg. I think that everyone who has spoken with him in the same context as I (essentially peers: similar social status, not looking for funding, etc.) will agree to the first two of my characterizations:
- egotist
- passive-aggressive
They may or may not agree with my third, depending (in my opinion) on their empathy for other human beings (including and especially in this case) disaffected geeks:
- snake-oil salesman
I am offended as a human being that he exploits his goodwill to resell extant hopes and dreams for his own personal profit.
I can't do without an RSS feed either. Hacker News has the top spot on my iGoogle page and if I can't put Hackful next to it, I'll probably forget about it real soon.
A Hacker News for Europe would be great. A lot of the stories on HN are very USA-centric.
Currently it looks like Hackful focuses on the UK, especially London. Lets hope it expands to cover all of Europe.
Even though I am a fan of Hacker News I have the same feel that it is mostly USA centric. Sometimes after reading some articles I wonder how things are in Europe, similar or not, etc. Hopefully it can become not a replacement but a complement for the european hackers.
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 different, I'd love a site about hacker culture more focused on European issues, people and businesses. But I can't see why it'll work.
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 plugging in a calendar of local events and need-to-know events
AND FINALLY capping it off with a local Angel List
I really like the idea. And i hope that this gains traction. Also, it would be great if hackful tries to focus on Europe* and not just London.
E.g., Berlin is a great hotspot as well atm.
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
I don't know. The thing is, a German person does not have a lot in common with an Irish person. They have a different culture, different media, a different language, different pop idols. If you are at some place in the Netherlands, it's more expensive to go to some other place in Belgium than to go to another place in the Netherlands, even if those are equally far away. I guess what I am trying to say is, Europe is still not a single country, but just an almost random collection of countries that happen to be geographically close to each other. And even though, that should not matter in this globalized world, it does. So, I don't know if there is a point, to have a Europe centric discussion platform, as opposed to having one for each country.
I'm in the Netherlands right now, and it is not more expensive for me to go to Belgium. In fact, I don't even need my passport - just my ID(which I'm legally required to have anywhere in the Netherlands also).
your comment reminded me of a quote from austrian diplomat Von Metternich[1] about Italy during that country's unification period: "Italy is a geographic expression" (as it was, being half a dozen independent states with different money, government systems, economic situations, costumes).
And that made me think, maybe the simile should go further: in 1800's italy different people did have newspapers (such as the one that made the above quote popular) read in more than one state to discuss about their situation and, arguably, this did play a role in the subsequemt unification[2]. We could use something like that.
The domain was registered 2 days ago, so great job in launching early. You really need a strategy to keep people coming, but all I can say is good luck, have an upvote.
A quick but of advice: give the site some personality - visually, I mean. It will make a difference. People will respond to it better and respect it more.
If it looks like an HN clone, that's how people will treat it. Differentiate.
I'd be more interested by a HN Asia or something. I mean, political, technological issues in US and EU are different but not that much, after all. Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, India, etc... lots of stuff is happening there and nothing much comes to the surface.
right!
I live in India, and though I do tend to get updates about local startups irregularly, I am still not aware of any good HN like site which keeps me up to date with all the latest activities in Indian startup world.
It doesn't even send a confirmation email, so it seems pretty redundant. Actually ... yes, it's required for password recovery. That seems to be its purpose. It seems like you can just put something fake in as long as you are confident you wont forget/lose your password.
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.
Many europeans feel like outsiders at HN. Indeed HN content is localized to some extent.
Perhaps that's the reason why there's no HN meetups near by your location?
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!)
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
Interesting. I think there's definitely demand for services like this.
We have been working on a community for entrepreneurs and startups in the UK (in addition to our information website), lion.co.uk/community, we're still in the phase of optimizing things.
We've found that there's many entrepreneur and startup websites but gaining critical mass to make a useful community is another thing.
We should probably work together but then again, as others have mentioned, there's different requirements for different people. Founders of businesses other than technology and hackers for example might not have reason to collaborate.
That said, the more resources there are for business founders the better; especially in Europe right now.
I'm British and I think this is a great idea. I'm interested to read about the startup scene in Europe and the UK.
I do think that we should be trying to move away from the 'hacker' label. People are never going to understand that 'hackers' can be good -- See that AP Press article. And really, our definition is the less popular one, and therefore less correct, and it is we who should change our wording.
You're correct regarding traction. We haven't done any marketing yet as our new features are pretty raw. Developing though is far easier than building the actual 'community'. In fact, we're looking for a marketer to help us do this very thing.
Wouldn't this be more successful if it would be split across countries? Stories about US-focused topics interest me as much (or as little) as stories about European countries where i don't live.
Also, for more people than you might imagine a site thats in English (and not in their local language) could be a barrier.
But you do live in Europe, and can visit other European countries relatively easily. If you are a member of the EU, you could even move to another EU country.
I think most Dutch people would prefer the site to be in English, as the Netherlands is only a small country, and England's an hour or less away by plane. Surely Dutch people would be interested in, for example, sources of venture capital in the UK?
Why? I as a an Austrian am very interested in stuff happening in Germany - being indirectly affected by it (job markets, economy), and the possibility of tele-working in Berlin is not so far-fetched, going there just once or twice by plane.
This looks like a service that tries to imitate Hacker News and assumes the same traffic and audience.
Focus on fewer posts on the front page; no more than 20% of the posts on it should have 0 comments, because it just serves to make the site look barren - which it probably is. You don't even have a community yet, so there is no hive mind nor zeitgeist on the site; bringing people together to discuss a few issues will make people get to get and know each other and help build the community.
Again, I've got to say you need to differentiate to survive. There have been several HN clones in the past year or so (remember lamernews.com?) but none of them differentiated enough.
Please don't make the same mistake. Like Steve Jobs said: "Be Different".
170 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadOn a more constructive note: please implement an RSS feed.
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_...
To answer your question: I have had multiple personal interactions with pg. I think that everyone who has spoken with him in the same context as I (essentially peers: similar social status, not looking for funding, etc.) will agree to the first two of my characterizations:
- egotist - passive-aggressive
They may or may not agree with my third, depending (in my opinion) on their empathy for other human beings (including and especially in this case) disaffected geeks:
- snake-oil salesman
I am offended as a human being that he exploits his goodwill to resell extant hopes and dreams for his own personal profit.
http://hackful.com/posts/90
http://hackful.com/posts/90
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 different, I'd love a site about hacker culture more focused on European issues, people and businesses. But I can't see why it'll work.
Our NEXT steps are to make this more shareable: RSS, possibly daily email digests (opt-in only)
THEN we are plugging in a calendar of local events and need-to-know events
AND FINALLY capping it off with a local Angel List
Why not make an about page that explains this? For all i could know, you had simply put a homehacked version of HN for the kicks of it.
I didn't see a link to the about page on their front page, but it exists none-the-less.
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
And that made me think, maybe the simile should go further: in 1800's italy different people did have newspapers (such as the one that made the above quote popular) read in more than one state to discuss about their situation and, arguably, this did play a role in the subsequemt unification[2]. We could use something like that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemens_von_Metternich
[2] ok, an army would be more helpful
Do you really think HN has no European visitors?
After all, we exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias...
If it looks like an HN clone, that's how people will treat it. Differentiate.
(Originally http://hackernews.in, but renamed as a result of this discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913014)
I'll let you judge the usefulness yourself.
I think when I registered on HN, it didn't make email as mandatory!! Or is my memory deceiving me?
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.
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!)
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.
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
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 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?
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?)
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I'd probably use both (unless the other one dies, of course — just because it's useful doesn't mean it will work).
Why would a European service need peer review from a predominantly US audience?
Then a very relevant calendar
And finally a local Angel List
Would those be useful, or superfluous?
So -- possibly superfluous, yes.
(EU person myself)
One of the reasons we intend Lion to be more focused on the UK and the general business community.
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.
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...
We have been working on a community for entrepreneurs and startups in the UK (in addition to our information website), lion.co.uk/community, we're still in the phase of optimizing things.
We've found that there's many entrepreneur and startup websites but gaining critical mass to make a useful community is another thing.
We should probably work together but then again, as others have mentioned, there's different requirements for different people. Founders of businesses other than technology and hackers for example might not have reason to collaborate.
That said, the more resources there are for business founders the better; especially in Europe right now.
I posted a submission about this topic about a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2454412.
I do think that we should be trying to move away from the 'hacker' label. People are never going to understand that 'hackers' can be good -- See that AP Press article. And really, our definition is the less popular one, and therefore less correct, and it is we who should change our wording.
It would be cool if a system like subreddits was added to Hacker News where it makes sense (e.g. Europe).
Also, for more people than you might imagine a site thats in English (and not in their local language) could be a barrier.
I think most Dutch people would prefer the site to be in English, as the Netherlands is only a small country, and England's an hour or less away by plane. Surely Dutch people would be interested in, for example, sources of venture capital in the UK?
Focus on fewer posts on the front page; no more than 20% of the posts on it should have 0 comments, because it just serves to make the site look barren - which it probably is. You don't even have a community yet, so there is no hive mind nor zeitgeist on the site; bringing people together to discuss a few issues will make people get to get and know each other and help build the community.
Make it scalable.
That is where the idea came up - we needed a more open method to ask questions of each other, share info and demos
Please don't make the same mistake. Like Steve Jobs said: "Be Different".