Well, if our lobbyists do their jobs properly, mere accidents of geography will not keep you out of the fold. :)

Moreover, sorry dude, the tech war is over and we won. We've got better funding, better language, better regulations, and better spirit--and sadly, not a lot else.

EDIT: (and yes, not seeing stories about services that can be used outside of the US is unfortunate--agreed. Submit more and upvote!)

To address briefly your points:

war is over and we won

War? I find a bit funny this mentality you have in the US to turn everything into a war (war on drugs, etc). In tech there is no war, we are all working to make the world better. One does not need to "lose" for the other one to "succeed".

Moreover, the tech landscape is growing a lot here in Europe and is attracting people from the US too, people that don't like how things are going there, which means it's not so great as you would like to picture it.

Without forgetting that USA and Europe are not the whole world, Asia is growing and at some point South America and Africa will too. "War", or whatever you want to call it, is not over and I don't think it will ever be.

We've got better funding

Funding is growing in Europe as well. Some US investors are coming to invest here. I've seen a friend of mine discussing with a US VC for his startup in Poland. Investors move their money wherever they see talent. A lot of talent moved to the US from Europe or Asia. As things get better, less talent will move there, leveling things.

better language

By better I think you mean more homogenous, which is true [1], but knowledge of English in Europe is growing and there are a lot of countries that are non-native English speakers but have percentages of English speaking people between 80% and 90% [2]

better regulations and better spirit

These are highly subjective. I, for one, strongly disagree on both of them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Language

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe

EDIT: formatting

As for the funding and language--proclaiming that you too use US venture capital and the English language really is more a testament to American soft power than anything else.

No, it's not.

Regarding VC, it means that there is more money there now, that's true. But the fact that VCs are coming to Europe can be seen also as you losing that power you claim to have.

Same for language. I cannot deny that English spread mainly because it's the language of tech and the internet and that comes more from the USA (but remember that English as a language comes from England, Europe).

But language is just a tool to communicate. European countries are adopting it, but that does not mean they are adopting it to talk to you, or at least not only. English is becoming more and more a language to communicate across Europe. I am form Italy and have been living in the Netherlands for almost two years, without having to learn Dutch.

It also makes it much easier for people that want to leave the US, since they know they can come here and be able to speak to everybody.

My point was not to deny that there might be an imbalance toward the US for some things, but nothing is over and I won't be like this forever. China has been the most powerful empire on earth for millennia. It lost its power, but it might regain it in the future.

Excuse me? I've just evaluated all possible virtual hosting services, and by far the best is in Germany.

I know dozens of people who hate the US passionately because of high-horse comments like yours.

In hindsight I realize that probably just opened the door to a pissing match over whose contributions to software/computing/startup culture is greater, but I think that would be an interesting conversation to have here.

EDIT: To get the ball rolling, we've got

Matsumoto : Ruby : Japan

Ericsson: Erlang : Sweden

Torvalds : Linux : Finland

But ultimately there are no sides to take, and that is why "US already won the tech war" comments piss people off, and rightfully so.

And if that is the case, if we are indeed this sisterhood/brotherhood without nation or creed other than the desire to do work, surely it makes more sense that we address underrepresentation in our community here instead of balkanizing across the net?

Electricity | Gilbert/Galvani/Volta | Europe

Telephone | whoever you believe this week | Europe + USA

Computers | VonNeumann / Turing working in USA | Europe + USA

Internet | DARPA | USA

Web | CERN | Europe

Game, set... and match.

(it's all a joke, of course. Just be a sport, will you?)

clearly the best things--modern internet for example--are the result of collaboration without regard to nation of origin )

Well, to be fair, let us also count things the US did wrong:

C++ | Bell Labs | USA

XML | IBM | USA

UML | IBM | USA

SOAP | Microsoft | USA

IE6 | Microsoft | USA

GPL | Stallman | USA

Visual Basic | Microsoft | USA

gcc | Stallman | USA

CORBA | Object Management Group | USA

In monetary terms that is probably true, if by "tech" you mean IT. But the losers of your "war" have invented things like the Web, Linux, Python, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, English and the ARM CPU, not to speak of most math and logic foundations of today's tech industry.

The only item on your list that I wholeheartedly agree with is "better funding". Everything else is, um, ...patriotism?

Hardware: MIPS, x86, SPARC, Motorola 68* (and the attendant Apple product lines [1,2,Mac, etc.]), DTMF phones (and thus modems), the transistor (though some very preliminary work was done in Canada and Germany, Bell Labs and TI brought them to manufacture), Ethernet, packet-switched networks, touch and light-pen interfaces, etc.

Software: 3D graphics, functional programming (LISP et al), node.js, JavaScript, C, C++, Java, jquery, Unix, Plan 9, Windows (lol), BSD everything (sockets, operating system, license), modern information theory (thanks Shannon!), BitTorrent, etc.

Culture: GNU, EFF, FSF, copyleft, etc.

He was inspired by Simula - the world's first object oriented programming language (created by two Norwegians). It introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods, coroutines,discrete event simulation and featured garbage collection.

This attitude of how everything that is great has come from USA is one of the reasons why some feel the need to add other news sources to their RSS reader.

I personally think it's a bit more than funding though--for lack of a better way of putting it, the feeling of opportunity and independence is what provides a fertile ground for starting a business. We commonly have room for people arguing and making idiots of themselves, for going against the grain, for dropping out and trying to achieve great things.

There's still a sort of individualism in parts of the US that I believe makes doing business and work here great.

(honest question) Is there such great tolerance of nonconformity elsewhere? I've heard distressing things about parts of Europe and Asia in this regard (Japan, for example, apparently does not support the sort of ecosystem we do due to societal expectations of young folks). I dislike painting in broad strokes, but the topic seems to lend itself to that.

One of the reasons we intend Lion to be more focused on the UK and the general business community.

Then a very relevant calendar

And finally a local Angel List

Would those be useful, or superfluous?

So -- possibly superfluous, yes.

(EU person myself)

As a European I find a lot of american's grasp of economy and politics extremely naive (and if I read about Ayn Rand again, I will smash my monitor). Also, the sometimes extreme political correctness (which comes natural for some people) leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Now, those are peripheral issues, true, but they occur a lot of times in HN discussions.

I'd probably use both (unless the other one dies, of course — just because it's useful doesn't mean it will work).

Why would a European service need peer review from a predominantly US audience?

Who is hiring is a difficult one as there are MANY others trying to solve that problem - better to leave it to them rather than a community effort stepping on their toes...