That doesn't make it a low priority (it's a high priority), but it means we have to do it as a background process.
Maybe the conflict is that you want to do everything in a big step; making vote buttons etc more accessible, but there are some quick changes (I mean maybe 2 lines added to the style sheet which surely is one file?) that would make a vast improvement at least to our ability to use HN on our phones.
If you guys are lacking time, I'm sure that there are some companies out there who would love the kudos of some pro bono work.
Even if you simply steal LWN.net's very basic comments CSS, it wouldn't take you more than a full working day, including testing on few iPhones and different-resolution Androids.
A passionate community whose quality of life needs aren't met is a big missed opportunity and I find it strange that I have to be telling you that.
Apples and oranges, but still -- don't forget what happened to SourceForge. Used to be the go-to place years ago. Now it employs malware technics to not go broke.
Everybody can have hubris when famous, busy and (somewhat) rich. Question is -- can you treat your community right even at the height of your pique in popularity and usage?
It's shameful and baffling that the community must take over with shady proxy sites and apps to fill a gap you've been avoiding to fill for years.
In pure speculation, it is possible that mobile/desktop browsers correlate with the pipeline into YC's primary business. Though the business is probably clearer.
I suspect that YC could have measures of comment quality and record browser agents. It certainly has the mental muscle to correlate them if it has them.
(1) Bigger font size; (2) Proper line wrapping; (3) Offset for nested comments. Something like 5%, no more than 10%; (4) Bigger buttons|links for the upvote / downvote / comment actions.
...and I think that's all.
As a programmer myself I know the terrible, almost like drug|alcohol addiction, need to make everything perfect on the first go, but at 35, with total of 23 years doing programming, of which 14 as a professional experience, I am perfectly aware that this is not possible.
Iterative changes, one by one.
People will complain even if you clean a pile of fresh shit which gets in their way every day. That's hardly an argument against cleaning it up anyway. Whoever wants to be stuck in 90s and craves poisonous USENET romantic dreams -- I sincerely wish they would finally move on.
(That's one of my possible explanations on why would people be unhappy with a mobile UI readability improvements)
In the end, I'll simply install one HN Android app and then cripple its permissions with AppOps for Lollipop and be done with it. Or move to another website / Twitter feed. <shrugs>