I’m about that map. Just curious… Why USA is not first one? Why China, Japan and Korea is not in top 10?
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USA got TRUMPed 
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I don’t know the answer to your question, but give it time… Datacaps or something, maybe?
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I’m from Germany but I don’t have the answer. In fact it is surprising as ISP connections are not super fast everywhere here, electricity is expensive and we are quite concerned regarding data privacy.
I am speculating here: Maybe for Asian countries there is a language barrier to take part in that project. And for China I don’t know if their internet restrictions makes it easy for nodes to be set up.
Or maybe for countries like Japan it is even more expensive than in Germany to run such a node 24/7.
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Its because VPS are cheaper…
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I think you and americans have a sense of good investment in future. A Long play you now…
Also Ithink it has something to do with …true creative thinking.
Also not every single node from the network is on that site.
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The answer is very simple. Because Hetzner is incredible cheap…
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You think most of germany hosts their node on hetzner?
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I do, and one with Netcup
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So storj is partly centralized in hetzner 
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When you look at the world map on http://storjnet.info nodes are kinda centralized mainly in a few countries yeah… 
There are many countries kinda empty…
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yes yes just joking 
, but i see 634 nodes in KASSEL its Hetzner ?
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There are many storage nodes in hetzner. Their growth is limited.
The problem is that GCP charges 90$ per TB if I remember correct. Running stuff like the repair worker in hetzner is way cheaper. This means storage nodes in the US or Asia will have a hard time to win the long tail cancelation race.
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yeah I understand why the repair worker is hosted from hetzner and that remote nodes might have difficulties winning races.
But in the general context of why so many nodes are in Germany I don’t see how people would consider this fact before starting a node?
Why are there not more Americans running a node, their electricity is really cheap compared to Germany and you don’t even need a very fast internet. So even if you lose more races, you still end up having data, especially if the customers are from USA.
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maybe its about money… If I config storagenode maybe 1-3 hours (install OS, create identity, port forward,…) and I receive XX money from storj its interesting ? If I have more nodes, i need grafana reporting…
For me in Czechia the money is interesting… but in US ?
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That’s a decent argument, but Germany and the Netherlands are pretty comparable to the US when it comes to how the profitability adds up. (I included NL as I live there and it seems it has the highest node density)
I think it’s also a matter of interest and that this is mostly spread by word of mouth. So a few people interested in the early days in those countries and they get a chance to grow nodes long before others jump on board.
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My personal opinion: Many people have been brain washed by google. You can rent an GCP instance for free in school. Why should you run your own setup at home? So a similar situation as the question why are so many storage nodes running on windows. The answer to that one is because microsoft steps in early and makes sure you get in touch with a free windows version before you even understand which other choices you would have. Now for windows vs linux I see no difference between Europe and US but for running you own server at home I noticed a difference. I would expect to see more people running a small server at home here in Germany but they will not know how to rent a GCP instance. In the US it is the other way around. They all know hot to rent a GCP instance but not how to run a server at home.
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Interesting.
I do indeed not know how to rent a GCP instance But I rented multiple VPS in the past.
Guess one big point is that Germans are more protective of their data and don’t trust big companies and therefore run more things at home, making them more “educated” about that, generally speaking.
About windows vs linux: This is hardly a question because for most people linux just isn’t an option. Windows is easy to set up, many schools still work with microsoft office products (which would be difficult under linux) and many people are gamers, which would have quite some difficulties with linux.
I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Only people interested in electronics, hosting, smart homes etc might touch linux sooner or later.
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That’s a very good point about the indoctrination of windows here in the US. I’m in my early 30s, and when I was really young, let’s say ages 6-8, I can recall using a family machine running DOS, and a few early apple computers at school, but by the time Windows 95 rolled out, just about every computer I touched from that point forward was running windows. That is until I went off to university, where I decided to switch over to one of the early macbooks, which was short lived after 4 years. In my working life, every computer I interact with is windows based. Then just in the past few years I started dabbling in linux. Started with my first raspberry pi (3B+) to run a neblio staking node, then expanded to 6 more raspberry pis (model 4) all running raspbian, which I find to be fairly easy to navigate, although I’m still woefully ignorant to most things. Then most recently, I purchased the Odroid H2+ and running ubuntu 20.10 on that. The more and more I play around with Ubuntu, I like it more and more. I’ve thought about it many times on whether I could really ever give up windows entirely, or just use a linux machine for daily personal, computing needs…and the thought always makes me very uncomfortable.
As for the other item discussed, the whole “renting a GCP or VPS” that’s something that was after my educational years. I never learned how to do it, but I’m sure I could figure it out.
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