
Hackful - A Hacker News for Europe - rayhano
http://hackful.com/
======
skrebbel
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.

~~~
rayhano
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

~~~
skrebbel
Ah, right!

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.

~~~
rayhano
About page is now live... :)

------
Udo
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.

~~~
elisee
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.

~~~
rayhano
RSS is now live

<http://hackful.com/posts/90>

------
Jd
Can I ask a simple question: Why?

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.

~~~
Udo
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.

~~~
danmaz74
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.

~~~
amac
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.

------
ahy1
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.

~~~
LoneWolf
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.

------
sep
I have to say that I'm a bit conflicted about this.

On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with "splitting" HN, especially by
geography. The main reason being that news that would interest only hackers in
a specific region/country wouldn't see the light of HN's front page, as global
readers just wouldn't care as much. As a matter of fact, I even run an "HN
splinter" myself, for Israelis (<https://bitorama.com>), and I'm pretty
hopeful about it.

That said, the EU is a pretty big and diverse place. Would a guy from Romania
or Finland be more likely to find stories that interest him in an EU-wide site
rather than in HN? I'm not convinced. Maybe a more regional approach is
required.

Then again, I could be proven wrong. So best of luck to the guys running the
site!

~~~
pestaa
> Would a guy from Romania or Finland be more likely > to find stories that
> interest him in an EU-wide > site rather than in HN?

That was my thinking too. There are lots of small countries with relatively
small hacker communities that don't generate that much news on a regular
basis.

That said, I've always struggled finding EU-based services, so this might be
their chance!

------
sktrdie
Bad idea. HN is an international effort. No need to contextualize it by
continent.

After all, _we exist without skin color, without nationality, without
religious bias..._

~~~
estel
But that doesn't immediately invalidate geography as a useful filter.

------
babarock
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...

~~~
a3_nm
This isn't phrased very pleasantly, but it is a valid point. It would be very
cool to have OpenID support like on HN.

~~~
8bitpal
I'm working on it. Coming soon. (I developed Hackful)

------
geon
My only concern is that I don't think people in Europe feel very "European".
There is no identity in being European like there is in being German, Swedish,
or whatever. Bundling us together because we live on the same continent seems
a bit artificial to me.

~~~
skrebbel
This, again, differs very much from area to area and from subculture to
subculture. I, myself, feel very European. In the hacker culture context, even
more so, given that it's my way of saying "Not USA". We have multiple
languages (impacts app design and priorities), a very different set of
employment laws (impacts hiring approaches), a more laid back working culture
(impacts to what extent VCs can get you to work 70 hours a week), and so on.
All of these things are _relatively_ common among most, if not all, European
countries, yet very different in the US. Canada is, as usual, somewhere
halfway.

~~~
geon
> a more laid back working culture (impacts to what extent VCs can get you to
> work 70 hours a week)

Good point. I havent thought of it that way.

Not identifying myself as european might be because I'm Swedish, and thus a
bit off-center geographically.

I feel a stronger international identity in the Nordic countries, sharing a
great deal of culture and political history. We don't even have any border
controll to speak of between Norway and Sweden.

------
aroberge
I'm in Canada and I can completely understand the sentiments that led to the
creation of this site. However, I fear that this may lead to HN_Asia,
HN_South_America, HN_Oceania, etc., making it extremely difficult to stay on
top of good interesting news, and leading to a lot of duplication.

I would very much like to see instead a single additional site (HN') which
would have a larger focus than simply the European scene, and where obvious
US-centric post/comments would mercilessly be deleted.

~~~
alain94040
It's called tags. Imagine if any post on HN could be tagged by anyone. Then,
you are free to only read HN/Europe (all posts tagged Europe). Or browse the
regular home page.

It won't happen because HN has made a conscious choice of not going after all
the "web 2.0" gimmicks, but sometimes you wish it wasn't completely the case.

~~~
rayhano
Would be so much more useful with some restricted tagging :)

------
kmfrk
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.

Make it scalable.

~~~
rayhano
We are trying - we have a core user base that have kept in communication with
an email list called Open Coffee (powered by Meetup.com)

That is where the idea came up - we needed a more open method to ask questions
of each other, share info and demos

~~~
hessenwolf
Why do I have to sign up with my email? I don't want to.

~~~
rayhano
Working on Oauth...

------
Geee
The problem with Europe is the multitude of languages. You can't target Europe
with English language, or it will end up UK/US centric. That's pretty much
unsolvable problem. Of course we can talk about things happening in Europe,
but that doesn't make sense.

~~~
bigfoot
You're being overly pessimistic on the percentage of Europeans speaking
English (though not necessarily as their native language). This language has
worked as a common means to communicate for a long time and definitely won't
leave this web site end up being "UK/US centric".

~~~
Geee
Almost everyone speaks English of course, but most people prefer joining
communities in their native languages. Many of my hacker friends don't
participate on English forums although they speak English pretty well.

------
amac
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.

~~~
rayhano
We will definitely work together! :)

~~~
amac
Sent you an email.

I posted a submission about this topic about a year ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2454412>.

------
lignuist
I'm missing an "about" section.

------
fierarul
Please add some OpenID/OAuth option. I don't want to make yet another user
account.

~~~
rayhano
Sorry, you are right, complete oversight.

------
danmaz74
One suggestion: hackful.com has no linkage to the differentiating factor of
the website. Why not change it to hackful.eu? This isn't a decisive factor,
but it could help in the positioning...

------
LoneWolf
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.

------
v0cab
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.

~~~
weavejester
Does it matter? The people who read Hacker News or Hackful Europe will
understand the meaning.

~~~
v0cab
Yeah, but these two websites aren't the only places that the term 'hacker' is
used as we use it.

------
huskyr
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.

~~~
v0cab
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?

------
ekianjo
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.

~~~
subnetvj
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.

~~~
eitally
<http://hackerstreet.in/>

(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.

~~~
subnetvj
Hey thanks! I think I did go through that thread, but didn't follow up with
HSI and eventually it faded out. Looks like it is still going strong.

------
pedrocarvalho
At first I didn't liked the idea, but it could work as a way to filter out US
centric posts and focus more on Europe.

I think it needs some guidelines: is English the preferred language? If this
is limited to Europe, is it ok to have posts related to other parts of the
world?

~~~
freyfogle
Post and find out. As with all UGC sites, it becomes what users make it.
Waiting for "the rules" will probably leave you waiting for a long time.

------
geoffw8
Cool. I hope it doesn't turn into an OpenCoffee mirror/spam board for
events/etc. Bookmarked :)

~~~
moondowner
Bookmarked and registered in.

------
gavanwoolery
You need to focus on something other than nationality - I do not care if my
news comes from the US or from Europe (and I think I am in the majority here),
I only care if it is _interesting_. Maybe a Hacker News with subsections, like
Reddit?

------
why-el
The one thing that should really be taken into consideration is username
consistency across both sites, that will help. (And I can't have the same user
name because the evil "-" is not allowed. Do something about it.)

------
andygcook
I don't think this will necessarily gain traction without a huge push to build
a community.

It would be cool if a system like subreddits was added to Hacker News where it
makes sense (e.g. Europe).

~~~
amac
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.

------
zachinglis
To be honest, I never go "Damn. I wish the Hacker News articles were more
focused around me." Most of the articles here are universal, the rest still
make a difference to me.

~~~
rayhano
Then you will likely carry on benefiting from Hacker News, as we all do.
Hackful is for those who want to share amongst their local peers. We aren't
trying to be fancy; just an extension of the current Open Coffee mailing list.

------
user24
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.

------
mattslight
We are planning london.hackful.com etc. Watch this space.

------
samgranger
What I love about HN is that the users here are international - not just USA,
or just EU. What's the benefit of having an EU only version?

------
subnetvj
Why doesn't it let me sign up without entering my email?

I think when I registered on HN, it didn't make email as mandatory!! Or is my
memory deceiving me?

------
antr
This is a great initiative. Will follow for sure

------
perfunctory
Why, why is email mandatory to sign up???

~~~
mike-cardwell
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.

------
rayhano
750users in just over TWO days and approaching 200 posts with several times
more comments!

------
biafra
Finally something in my timezone!

------
rayhano
Just wanted to thank all the commenters and those who are signing up to
Hackful!

------
jmilloy
A more appropriate solution, I would think, is regional filtering here on HN.
Label submissions with the relevant region, if any, and add one more tab which
filters results by region according to a black/white list in your profile.

Maybe hackful will show us that such a feature would be heavily used.

------
sucrenoir
An RSS feed would be great !

------
lewisflude
Woo! Silicon Roundabout. :)

~~~
zalew
stick-shift recommended

------
philjackson
Looks much like Antirez's lamernews.com. What's the stack behind it?

~~~
tahu
a look at the HTTP headers:

    
    
      tahu@laptop:~$ curl -I http://hackful.com/about
      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
      Connection: keep-alive
      Status: 200
      X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 3.0.11
      X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge,chrome=1
      ETag: "6972d16343b1a4d0f2a49c9a3174e977"
      Cache-Control: max-age=0, private, must-revalidate
      Set-Cookie: _hackful_session=BAh7B0kiD3Nlc3Npb25faWQGOgZFRkkiJWQ5NzYzMThlNDFkOWVhYTI1YzJiZGI0YzNjMjlkOWFhBjsAVEkiEF9jc3JmX3Rva2VuBjsARkkiMUVRU1gzZkhvcHRockpaWndWY2NRcGk3SElJczBmOEY3TW50YjJRZ0plSTg9BjsARg%3D%3D--572416e3b12cc85dda3675c22d117839535e636d; path=/; HttpOnly
      X-Runtime: 0.017811
      Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:26:04 GMT
      X-Rack-Cache: miss
      Server: nginx/1.0.10 + Phusion Passenger 3.0.11 (mod_rails/mod_rack)

------
ortatherox
Will the source be available on github for pull requests?

~~~
8bitpal
Yes, very soon.

~~~
FLX
Where would we be able to get notified about this?

------
hessenwolf
Yes, lets rule out the country that provides us with a userbase for most of
our sites. Surely there's nothing relevant there?

Hands up if you have an English-language website in which the US is not the
largest segment of users?

~~~
Silhouette
> Yes, lets rule out the country that provides us with a userbase for most of
> our sites.

With the greatest respect, that kind of silly assumption is exactly why a
Euro-centric HN-style site is potentially interesting to those of us here in
Europe. I can think of numerous ideas for businesses aimed at a particular
kind of culture or niche interest where the US probably wouldn't be a
particularly big market.

In any case, there are more people in Europe than the US, and a very high
proportion of them speak English with impressive fluency even if it's not
their native language. And while we have quite distinct national identities,
we also have many things in common that are relevant to a business/tech
audience and quite different from how things work in, say, North America or
Asia.

~~~
angersock
So, if you already speak the language, why not use your larger demographic to
promote more relevant articles here on HN?

We benefit from having another perspective represented here more than we do
from having it shown in some other far-flung echochamber on the web.

Or is the idea of melting pot a bit much for you old country folks? :)

~~~
manmal
We do ;) There are many Europeans here on HN. For my taste, there could be
more europe-centric news on HN, but again, how would US hackers support that?
They are as bored of articles on Germany's public transport system as I am of
articles on AT&T being unfair to their customers. By melting pot, do you mean
the US or Europe? They technically both are..

~~~
angersock
I think getting the articles up there would at least give us a chance to see
something we might not otherwise see--say, a German startup innovating in
ticketing or something.

As for the melting pot, was a bit of a joke--the perception here is commonly
that the US is a big diverse thingy whereas Europe, while diverse, is mostly
diverse in terms of the amount of Europeans it has. :)

------
tudorw
nice, but can you fix editing comments please :)

~~~
rayhano
Fixed :)

------
olh
Without too much rhetoric: haters gonna hate.

------
Lucadg
this will be useful if it makes access to European VCs easier. Good luck guys,
I'll read HE everyday.

------
timme
Hacker News for Europe = Hacker News.

------
mike-cardwell
What is on-topic on this board?

~~~
tudorw
Europe centric I think ?

------
marban
what about splitting HN into different sections?

------
mohsen
ok, so i've had this on my mind for some time now, and i'm going to highjack
this thread in hopes of getting this out there.

Hackful has sort of shot itself in the foot by trying to use HN as a medium to
expose itself. for a long time now HN has started to cross the line from a
place for people to share ideas and experiences with running a startup to a
place for people to link to tutorials and hot topics in the tech world, or
high ranked questions from SO (i'm guilty myself). I really don't see why we
do this, we have r/programming, et al for that. HN is a place to talk about
statups.

look at Hackful. I ran through the first 3 pages and here are the topics. i
broke them down by irrelevan, relevant, and something i call the grey area,
where it could go either way. the count is very off. i could only pick 20 out
of 45 posts as 100% startup relevant. or course my opinion is my opinion and
i'm sure there are people who will argue that my lists are debatable, and they
are, but that's not the point. the point is that it is not 100% on topic, and
we need to figure out a way to fix this.

one way is for the community to have the correct mindset and get involved and
fixing the issue: 1) don't post irrelevant topics. 2) if we see off topic
posts - since there isn't really a way for us to stop that now - just ignore
them and let them disappear. we come to HN to read about startups, if we want
programming info, tutorials, etc then there are other places to go (reddit,
so, etc).

another option is to go sort of the reddit-route and allow for subs. that's an
option, but again we would be diverging from the original purpose of this
site.

just shooting out some thoughts, and trying to make us think about where we're
going with HN.

irrelevant list: (count = 11)

8 reasons for switching to Git(blog.fournova.com)

Git cheat sheet(blog.fournova.com)

How we are using Big Data to solve Social Travel(tripl.tumblr.com)

The switch from apache to nginx(news.ycombinator.com)

Top 10 IT skills in 2012(ciozone.com)

Nicnack for easy multicast testing(adventuresinfabric.posterous.com)

Only 6% of Wikipedia Readers Have Ever Edited Wikipedia Content
!!(thetecnica.com)

Tech in "Hollywood Edition"(aaronklein.com)

Teach yourself Git in two minutes(jperla.com)

Show Hackful: Browser Based Strategy Game (Spoils Rotten)(spoilsrotten.com)

Show Hackful: My Digital Guidebook Startup (Artworm)(artworm.hillsbede.co.uk)

relevant list: (count = 20)

Show HF: Cubecolor, a fancy HTML5 colorscheme generator(plainas.github.com)

Dutch startup is building the most simple customer support software in the
world(apo.io)

Startupbootcamp to shape up Berlin(venturevillage.eu)

Ask HE: What are the missing pieces of the European ecosystem?

15 startups from Berlin - there is more than Soundcloud, Wooga and
Amen(netzwertig.com)

Who is missing from this list of young entrepreneurs to watch in
2012?(yourhiddenpotential.co.uk)

Twitter developer teatime in Berlin(techberlin.com)

Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Helsinki - We Have A Problem(arcticstartup.com)

Show HE: My first RoR-app... a platform for winning a dribbble
invite.(showwwdown.com)

Berlin Startup Jobs. Marketplace For Inspiring Jobs(berlinstartupjobs.com)

Marketplace for Startup jobs in Berlin(berlinstartupjobs.com)

SEO Tool & Collectible Card Game. Boost Website Traffic - SERPs &
Spyders(serpsandspyders.com)

Ask Hackful: Do UK angel groups work?(t.co)

Flagons Den Beginners' Poker(london.flagonsden.com)

EatSocial - 2nd Feb(eatsocial.net)

A local European Angel List

London needs a place for hackers to hang out

Citymapper - Find your way FAST(citymapper.co.uk)

Show Hackful: adscaped - Monetisation without compromise(adscaped.com)

Digital Shoreditch festival 2012(digitalshoreditch.com)

grey list: (count = 14)

Ask HE: Is the source open?

Hacker News

Tell HE: Hackful sounds (and looks) too much like Hateful

Hackful Team: API please?

Who registered @hackful? Can we have it please?(twitter.com)

Hackful Team: Can we have a daily roundup email please?

Is it ok to post articles in other european languages?

Tell HE: Please improve the contrast between comments and comment-attributes

Hackful Team: RSS feed please!

Founder of german ridesharing startup gives his car away (flinc.org)

Facebook S1 Filing (Official IPO Document)(sec.gov)

Whispero(whispero.com)

Longform - for lovers of essays(longform.org)

Openbrand(eu.techcrunch.com)

Edit: cleaned up the links

~~~
rayhano
So you generally found it relevant? And bear in mind it's been up for just
over 24 hours... :)

~~~
mohsen
I'm not trying to question Hackful. I'm just trying to use them to show the
trend of HN and how it's changing it.

------
newandimproved
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.

~~~
perfunctory
I actually quite like the look.

------
mkramlich
I'm pretty sure Hacker News can be viewed and contributed to by folks in
Europe already.

------
xxiao
great for Europe and everyone else! love the idea.

