← Back to context

Comment by embedding-shape

1 month ago

> About European Product Hunt - very good idea.

Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly.

Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product Hunts of tomorrow :)

17 comments

embedding-shape

Reply
mc32  1 month ago

I can see it now, if you have a European Hacker news, you'll have a bunch of people complaining about how Europe isn't the world and admonish posters to not be so eurocentric on the site --that other people besides Europeans would read it... but anyway, good luck on the endeavour.

  • jenadine  1 month ago

    I already have this feeling on french-speaking forums where everything is very France-centric despite there are french speaking people from other countries reading it.

tialaramex  1 month ago

I don't know that an EU Hacker News makes sense, a core EU idea is Freedom of Movement.

This started out as an ideal about Goods. You make a Doodad in Venice, clearly there should be as few obstacles as possible to prevent somebody in Dublin having that Doodad, so no export taxes between Venice and Dublin, shared regulatory framework so that your Venice "This Doodad won't choke a baby/ burn down a house/ spy on you/ etc." paperwork is valid in Dublin, and so on.

But immediately people who make goods said well this rule needs to include Capital, it's great that I can sell Doodads from Venice in Dublin, but if I want to build a Doodad factory in Venice but my money is in Dublin that should be easy too. And Workers realised if it's just Capital and Goods then it's a race to the bottom for Labour, the Capital and Goods will go where it's cheapest but the workers can't move. So very soon Workers can move freely too, in order that Hans the Doodad Engineer can move to Venice and the courts ended up deciding that in practice everybody gets this freedom, a 5 year old can't have a job and a 105 year old probably doesn't want one, but maybe Hans needs to support his 5 year old grand-daughter and his 105 year old grandfather, so Freedom of Movement must apply to all EU citizens.

So, with that idea in mind, I suspect the EU's perspective is that you should come to Europe and write software here, rather than that you should stay exactly where you are and if it's not an EU country then too bad, no EU Product Hunt for you.

  • embedding-shape  1 month ago

    I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Yes, a core idea is freedom of movement, but you make no case for why that makes EU Hacker News infeasible? It has nothing to do with where people write software. I'm using US Hacker News, and I'm in Europe, is that wrong/bad, or what's your argument here?

    • tialaramex  1 month ago

      EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather that it's largely pointless. The EU should avoid key US dependencies, but that means things like we shouldn't design a system that needs Microsoft's stupid "Co-pilot 365" or whatever they are now calling Word and Excel, rather than it's important never to visit a web site hosted in the US.

      "The new government policy shouldn't require iPhones" is a long way from "Nobody can read The Onion", and even in its hardcore "Sign up for YCombinator" mode Hacker News really isn't anywhere close to the former.

      Although because idiots I am no longer in the EU I'm in Europe too.

      3 replies →

  • kergonath  1 month ago

    > This started out as an ideal about Goods.

    I am sorry but no. This is a common myth, but go way back to the original treaty of Rome and you’ll see much more than free movement for goods. It was just a convenient first step.