HN user experience in EU is "meh" because HN is one of the fastest loading dynamic pages on the web to load, meant to give you whiplash from the load speed.
Not all pages can load with 1 request, even when designed well, so they will be sub-"meh". HN, if hosted in EU, would have gotten a "daaang" rating.
It's not: it's super quick, the fastest website I check on a daily basis, by very far. If only all the web could be like this!
Which is user tekmol 's point: "Hacker News is one of the most responsive websites I know. And it is run on a single server somewhere in the USA. While I am in Europe."
HN is great in the EU. If most of the pageloading is just the roundtrip, you've already won, no matter if your users are on the same continent as your unique server or not.
How you grade those experiences is subjective. Your "great" is likely my "meh", as physics dictate that we see similar results.
That it makes a significant difference for HN (as in: "measurable") is because HN is so snappy in the first place.
Apart from that, being located in Europe, I agree with the other posters that claiming HN being "meh" in Europe is just nonsense. It's one of the quickest websites you can come across on this planet. Anywhere on the planet.
