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Comment by sho_hn

2 years ago

Aside from, you know, most likely making the machines required to build the computer you're spewing the xenophobia on, and countless other examples that aren't making tech as simple as websites.

The anti-European gloating on HN is getting tiresome, and imho is a pretty big blind spot of HN moderation.

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sho_hn

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dash2  2 years ago

I think it's very exaggerated to call this xenophobia and suggest it needs to be moderated. OP said Europe struggles to make tech, and focuses more on luxury. This isn't xenophobic - it's true.

  • sho_hn  2 years ago

    > I think it's very exaggerated to call this xenophobia

    I'm also not quite sure it's xenophobia, but it's something other than calm and rational. Whenever Europe comes up in a HN thread, there's a sudden glut of snide comments and gloating, as if people are desperate for themselves and others to believe their layoffs-stricken industry is amazing nonetheless. Maybe to distract themselves from the mandatory RTO bad news?

    Rather than calling it xenophobia, let me call it adversarial, and it's always the same side initiating it. Very, very tiresome.

    I'm also willing to bet a very high % of the same demo would readily call HN an explicitly American forum and that inclusiveness or being welcoming to others shouldn't be a priority of the site, which I personally find just sort of jarring anywhere on the web, since https doesn't know borders and I grew up in the very overtly international FOSS community as an engineer. You know, where we make that Linux thing you probably have ten copies of on devices around you right now that started in Finland.

    > OP said Europe struggles to make tech, and focuses more on luxury.

    Only for a very narrow definition of "tech" that doesn't include the vast majority of engineering disciplines, as well as basic research and the education that enables the "tech".

    I will take, for example, BioNTech over most startups posted on HN, and I'd rather we build another ITER than another Twitter clone.

    Your bio says you're an R programmer. Are you aware the R foundation is a European (Austrian) org, like most organized open source? Seems those Europeans have quite a bit of time for tech after all.