Show HN: Berlin Hacker News

by bresc • 12 years ago

145 79 12 years ago

drtse4• 12 years ago

Just a small correction because it feels weird :), on the registration page:

      <input id="user_password" name="user[password]" type="*password*" />

tilt• 12 years ago

Same goes for edit profile :)

lelf• 12 years ago

if a HN focused on Europe would work.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130218061649/http://hackful.eu...

mkdir_home• 12 years ago

So they took this down, do you know if there is a replacement?

ntaso• 12 years ago

Also: http://hackerbruecke.io/

Never gained any traction and it wasn't even Berlin-centered.

lowglow• 12 years ago

Why doesn't HN just become a reddit clone?

spindritf• 12 years ago

I think that a large part of maintaining HN quality is focusing all the readers and their moderating power on a single front page.

nodesocket• 12 years ago

Does upvoting work? Does not seem so.

omegote• 12 years ago

_Because HN is very US focused_

That's an understatement.

onion2k2• 12 years ago

I'd say it's an overstatement.

Superficially things are posted about America, but usually that's more a problem with the site that's linked to being written for an American audience - the majority of articles that make it to the front page are about things that have global impact. Actual content within HN is pretty much entirely for a global audience - Show HN is usually about startups/projects with global reach. Ask HN is usually about things that affect an individual. Hiring threads are very often for remote jobs where people can work anywhere.

kuschku• 12 years ago

Even in the comments everything is US oriented.

Example: "2 years are now a long support cycle for phones as most people get carrier upgrades every 2 years anyway" (from the Android Browser vuln thread. This is only valid in the US because most people in Europe, Africa, Asia, India, etc. buy their phones seperate from their contract, so there is no "automatic" upgrade.

Another example was in the Popcorn-Time threads the "Who needs this if you have Netflix?" – Netflix doesn't even exist in most countries, and where it does exist, they only have like a dozen series, nowhere near the US version, so it provides no benefit. Hell, here where I live even DVD rental is still used, even Amazon provides DVD rental here.

Most of the people in the comments assume that everyone is in the US and a Hacker-News without that would be great.

mqsiuser3• 12 years ago

HN is very SV focused

I refer to it as "Silicon Valley News"

kornakiewicz2• 12 years ago

Good news, I'm looking for a job in Berlin (Java, some Golang and JS, recently Elixir) and that seems like a good resource, but the tab "Jobs" will be welcome.

drsintoma• 12 years ago

I'll be submitting my project to HN in a few weeks when I feel it's ready. But in the mean time, here you go: https://englishjobs.de

kornakiewicz2• 12 years ago

Thanks, If anyone heard about startup looking for java/golang junior guy - I would love to talk.

EToS• 12 years ago

how about a european version? perhaps tagged by country to filter?

disputin• 12 years ago

http://hackeurope.eu/ - looks like it's on holiday.

ozh• 12 years ago

I fail at seeing what here is worthy of being first link on HN front page...

metafex• 12 years ago

It looks like others don't share the same sentiment ;-)

swombat• 12 years ago

I don't think it's worthy of front page at all, personally...

oe• 12 years ago

If only there was a mechanism with which people could indicate what they would like to see on the front page.

blowski3• 12 years ago

I'm from London, and I was at the Hacker News meetup when hackful.eu was launched. It was a promising idea, but most of the interesting or useful articles on HN aren't relevant only by where you live. It's rare that an article is interesting in London, but irrelevant in California. Given the nature of the community on HN, geography is rarely an issue.

As a result, any geographical-based version of HN ends up either duplicating 90% of the articles on the main HN, which fragments the conversation, or it doesn't post the most interesting or useful articles so becomes irrelevant. Even a language-based subcommunity is largely pointless, since most of us speak English - it makes more sense to read knowledgable comments in broken English than amateur comments in perfect German.

In the end, HN is not Reddit. I don't see that it needs, wants, or would benefit from subcommunities.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Even a language one doesn't make sense for Berlin - I think the only common language for the uni/startup scene there would be English anyway.

bresc5• 12 years ago

Does anyone know WHY hackful.eu didn't work?

blowski3• 12 years ago

It's been asked a few times, (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5298716) but I haven't seen any response either from the Hackful founders, or anybody in general.

8bitpal• 12 years ago

Hey, I'm one of the guys who started and ran it. I think there are a couple of reasons.

1. We decided to build something custom. Which means we have to respond to feature requests, keep things secure and maintain the system. In hindsight a subreddit may have been a better idea. (like http://www.reddit.com/r/EuropeStartups/ I'm not affiliated.)

2. It was a side project. I think in order to maintain an engaged community there has to be a core of very active users and submitters. We were not really. I tried for a while but the platform we had built did not really lend itself to interaction. Many people used it as a news feed for European startups and tech news rather than a place to interact. The site never gathered critical mass to have enough submitters and commenters to keep things moving.

3. It was our first community project and we were inexperienced. We made a few mistakes early on, spread ourselves too thinly and didn't come up with a good way for others to participate.

4. It fizzled out. The other guys went on to other things and while I kept running it on one of my boxes for a while nothing happened (which makes sense considering there were very few submissions and almost no participation)

Overall I would say we didn't have enough experience and time to make it a great community. We also made early mistakes that made things more difficult down the line. Sorry it just went off the air at some point without notice, by that point visits were down to a handful of people per week. Maybe r/EuropeStartups will have more success!

wellboy• 12 years ago

I think this will make quite some sense for the German startup scene, not just Berlin.

MrBuddyCasino• 12 years ago

Fully agree (german here), except for jobs and meetup types of posts. Those are the minority here, but I for one would welcome a geo-filterable subsection of HN for those.

julianpye• 12 years ago

YC/HN is global. You read the comments and you gain insight from people in Bangladesh, in Australia, in Japan, anywhere where idealistic techies are. The only country that realizes the potential is the US and the only region where you can live the lifestyle is the West-Coast and this is why it sometimes may feel like a bias.

Anyway, I fail to see the reason behind this. Especially since the startup scene in Berlin (and London) is mostly driven by business graduates and less by techies. If you want to find similar people, you can use meetup or similar.

conjectures• 12 years ago

Is there a site for the business grad type community in London that you'd care to suggest?

selectnull• 12 years ago

Living and working from Europe, I understand the sentiment about HN being US centric; but it's not HN's "fault". The majority of US businesses are very US oriented and often it's very annoying. Can't buy a product (Google Chromebook still can't be bought worldwide; only selected countries), can't use services (Netflix anyone? yes, i know it's not that simple...), most of the time good luck in getting an invoice with tax number on it...

I wish you all the luck but we really don't need HN clone for Europe and certainly not one focuesed on Berlin.

edit: fix typo

christop• 12 years ago

Well, Netflix did launch in Germany at midnight today ;)

But I agree; looking at the HN front page just now, I only see a couple of things that could be said to be US-specific (or any-country-specific), one of which is a job posting.

Peroni• 12 years ago

You may want to work on moderation: http://i.imgur.com/yuTR1yO.png

doczoidberg• 12 years ago

german or european Hacker News would have been better.

kamakazizuru• 12 years ago

also I'm really not sure I want to use a service that hasn't quite figured out how to use basic HTML forms yet: http://imgur.com/bQFKTzB

Password in cleartext.. really? Everyone around me at St. Oberholz can see my passworrd now.

bresc5• 12 years ago

What's the point without https?

blablabla123• 12 years ago

Being from Berlin myself, I hope this is not going to split up the community. Of course the original HN seems kind of US centric but do we seriously want a separate HN for each city?

Moreover one should keep in mind that there are just way more hackers in the US, so there's no need to worry that there isn't always a post about Berlin on the front page... ;) It's rather a reason to cheer when there is one more success story from Berlin...

mqsiuser3• 12 years ago

I hope this is not going to split up the community

You are overrating (Berlin) bcz you are from Berlin. Don't worry about your concerns too much ;)

cheer when there is one more success story from Berlin...

I will search HN for news from Berlin now (not aware of any recently): "Berlin Hacker News": Some "Ask HN", no products.

A HN in German would have made slight sense. A HN for Berlin?! Sorry, bye, bye :). You are not PG.

resca792• 12 years ago

While I can appreciate the work to do the web site, the news of hackers made in Berlin sounds like very restrictive and poor of contents.

I came from italy, where with other guys, we have built hackingintalia.com(fork of lamernews) for italians hacker. In Italy the culture of hackers often have not a global point of view, maybe for language issue and other reasons.

But for Germans as many Anglo Saxon, the English is not a real Problem, so it looks like "yet another news hub" with no something of much valuable than HackerNews

Moru2• 12 years ago

You would be surprised at how many germans refuse to read/write english. They get everything dubbed on TV since ages and almost all games comes out with a german version. But this berlin hacker news is only accepting english submissions so it's a moot point anyway. Just ignore me :-)

dutchbrit• 12 years ago

This is no joke, we use to get German TV here in The Netherlands. I always found it amusing to watch the A-Team dubbed in German.

resca792• 12 years ago

Yes but you are talking about TV, games and so on. I'm sure that hackers have much propension to read/write English, than common people.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

The fact that TV overdubs movies (with like 5 voice actors for all the movies collectively) belies the fact that most Germans speak English and understand it just fine.

I have lots of contact with Germany, go there frequently and speak passable German but when I have people with me that don't this is never a problem and not because I'm translating.

The Germans that don't speak English are usually either quite old or are from rural areas. City and < 60: you can basically assume they speak English, and if you try German first they'll switch to English if you can't find your words unprompted.

This goes for most of Europe by the way.

atmosx• 12 years ago

I really don't see the point. Tried a couple of HN spin offs and I always end up here, long live HN.

bresc5• 12 years ago

I am not trying to split up the community. HN is global and this is good. BHN is local and also focused on showing local startups. That being said it can't obviously have every hour 200 new submissions. It is more about sharing your experience in Berlin and getting to know the Berlin startup scene. I honestly think that submissions will stay on the front page for ~1 week and this is also how it was calculated.

I was not counting for BHN to be on the front page so I am trying now to fix all the small things that pop up.

Edit: As I mention in te FAQ this is an experiment and if people continue to contribute I will try to push it into a direction that makes it valuable for everyone interested in Berlin.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Could it be integrated with HN somehow? Some things are of global interest and could be shared between the two and some things are of local interest and could be only on BHN.

bresc5• 12 years ago

Interesting idea but kinda hard to accomplish. How would one determine what is of global interest and therefore maybe shared? I think it works best if you check HN for global "news" and BHN for Berlin "news". I don't see a problem with that.

tucosan2• 12 years ago

Just open up two separate tabs. One for hn and one for bhn. ;)

sauere• 12 years ago

How about do GermanHackernews instead of BerlinHackernews?

drinchev• 12 years ago

I think Berlin is more as a term of a startup scene, rather than a geographical location in a country. If I'm mistaken it would not be interested in BHN at all.

eskimobloood• 12 years ago

Who is behind this?

tucosan2• 12 years ago

I think this is an awesome idea. Since the startup scene is growing steadily with loads of meetups, hackathons, a great influx of international tech people coming to Berlin and the startup infrastructure advancing, having a Berlin focused hn clone could really be a neat means to get info on what is happening around the city.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

At times there have been thoughts rolling around at the back of my mind about doing another variation on the HN theme. But geography was never one of the driving forces.

erikb2• 12 years ago

I think it's a little funny that at one side nearly all comments say it won't work, and at the same time loads of people upvote and start to use it, which to me looks like the opposite.

CmonDev• 12 years ago

Upvoting means "interesting/controversial topic" rather than a "good idea".

krapp2• 12 years ago

To be fair, and despite the staff's intentions, upvoting and downvoting don't really mean anything, although people interpret the visual cue however they wish.

erikb2• 12 years ago

If something is controversial I upvote the opinion I can agree with most, or if my opinion is not represented I write it myself. I think everybody has their own idea of what upvotes mean.

jimmytidey• 12 years ago

Language aside, I'd say there is a cultural difference that isn't represented on HN very well, neatly captured by the different connotations of the word "socialist" inside and outside the US. But debates around liberalism and the free market also play out extremely differently in other parts of the world. Today's (paywalled) FT article addresses some of this: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/37e363c2-3cc9-11e4-871d-00144feabd...

eik3_de3• 12 years ago

  DON'T USE IT

This site has a serious security flaw: every registered user can change the email and password of every account.

Edit: I've sent the site op an email

bresc5• 12 years ago

Fixed

eik3_de3• 12 years ago

do you know lobste.rs? Have you considered using it, it seems quite mature, can be white labeled and also is an rails app.

krapp2• 12 years ago

If it's fixed, care to describe what the bug was if it was interesting?

zerooneinfinity• 12 years ago

Recommended as is.

squigs25• 12 years ago

This is cool, and it definitely raises some interesting ideas about geography and our online hacker news community.

But I do think hackernews should consider making some articles locality specific. For example, a user logged in from Berlin could be shown an article of geographical interest. You can take this a step further and hsow articles to a user based on their interests. For example, a developer might be more interested in coding articles and a product managaer or vc might be more interested in new products.

It helps when people get personalized content, because a greater diversity of articles might get read by the community, and then truly interesting ones will become front page.

Kurtz79• 12 years ago

I think one of the defining features of HN is its lack of advanced features.

Considering who´s behind the site, if they thought HN needed more features there would be more than enough financial and technical resources to do so.

It´s simple, minimalist , and it just works.

poseid• 12 years ago

it would be great to have people share more on the (open-source) software driving forums and news-sites. For example, I learned quite a lot about Ruby and Redis from looking at the source of Lamernews ( https://github.com/antirez/lamernews ) and I also learned using Promises and Redit with Node while experimenting with ( https://github.com/mulderp/echojs )

kimar• 12 years ago

We released http://techberlin.com a few months ago. While we don't plan to turn it into a HN clone, we'd love to make it a hub for Berlin's tech community.

Would be great to hear Berliners' opinion on what'd they'd like to see there next.

pantalaimon• 12 years ago

You could have used one of those shiny new .berlin domains

Yaggo• 12 years ago

Funny how suddenly all good web design principles are thrown away and new HN clones build, just because the original was built by Paul Graham who isn't much a UX guy.

sebkomianos• 12 years ago

Disclaimer: I am not part of the hackful.eu founding team but I have had a coffee with them and I tried to help them spread in Berlin by organising a hackathon the same day they run one in London.

My thoughts about what happened - and what will eventually and inevitably happen to any similar community - is that unless you offer very specific content about the area you want to "represent" there is no point in being location-specific in the first place. And the tricky part is that this content is rarely in the form of a news piece or a sideproject submission: it's mainly opinions about things happening in that specific location (eg: I live in Berlin and I am interested in what is being discussed about startup taxes). So in the end you have to actually offer the things that one can't find in Hacker News anyway (eg: information about events, jobs, etc). And then, why build a hackernews clone?

dizzy• 12 years ago

Hey I like this. I used to live in Berlin and think about moving back there, would be great to keep up with what is going on there.

One thing though, is there an RSS feed?

Show HN: Berlin Hacker News

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