Hacker News is international

2 pointsby becasse14 yıl önce1 comments

Someone posted a link to the 'European Hacker News' recently (Hackful). My feeling was that it's a nice idea, but it made me think of a quote from Kenneth Clarke:

> where some way of thought or human activity is really vital to us, internationalism is accepted unhesitatingly.

My feeling was that hacking is international - the stuff that gets shared here, and on github, and through the open-source movement, it's completely internationalized, like few other industries are.

So I don't really see a place for the European Hacker News, or the Indian Hacker News. Only one is needed.

----

Optional longer quote follows:

[The Catholic church in the 11th century] was powerful for positive reasons. Men of intelligence naturally and normally took holy orders, and could rise from obscurity to positions of immense influence. In spite of the number of bishops and abbots from royal or princely families,

the Church was basically a democratic institution where ability -- administrative, diplomatic and sheer intellectual ability -- made its way.

And then the Church was international. It was, to a large extent, a monastic institution following the Benedictine rule and owing no territorial allegiance.

The great churchmen of the eleventh and twelfth centuries came from all over Europe. Anselm came from Aosta, via Normandy, to be Archbishop of Canterbury; Lanfranc had made the same journey, starting from Pavia. The list could be extended to almost every great teacher of the early Middle Ages.

It couldn't happen in the Church, or politics, today: one can't imagine two consecutive archbishops of Canterbury being Italian. But it could happen -- does happen -- in the field of science; which shows that

where some way of thought or human activity is really vital to us, internationalism is accepted unhesitatingly.

1 comments

Andrenid14 yıl önce

> it's completely internationalized

Actually, no, it's not. As an Australian, I can't even count the number of times per week that I come across "... is not available in your country". From Amazon products to streaming video/audio services, YouTube videos, payment services, and lately even some articles on blogs.

While I'd love it to be different, the reality is a lot of the stuff you guys take for granted, we don't get to see/use... so I actually fully understand why the EU wants their own localised Hacker News, and even wish there were a good Australian one so I could see cool stuff happening here that I can actually use. Instead, any local stuff posted gets buried by the (understandably) larger number of upvotes given to US start-ups by the mostly-US audience here.