I would be curious to know which service that is, and what boxen they run, and what company made those boxen.

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

You probably understand why it would be immature to compare continents. It's anyway getting harder to really get to the bottom of it as lots of engineer and scientists were taken to the US in the last century to work on those boxes.

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 there are no sides to take, it hardly matters whether or not the startup news on HN happens to be mostly in the geographic bounds of an upstart colony of the British Empire, now does it?

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?

I don't think this will turn into a pissing contest. Hacker News comments are usually pretty insightful. Arguing over whether Europe as a continent or the U.S. as a country is better in some respects is just useless.

Especially useless when the "argument" boils down to a single famous individual (or even a handful) that happens to hail from a given country or continent.

Better:

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?)

( of course, my good sir or madam! :)

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