It is for me as well. I like the chronological order, and it lets me be sure I’ve read all the “interesting stuff”. I read HM a lot, though, and for people who pop in only once a day or even a few times each week, the default view makes much more sense.

Sometimes I check HN once or every few days. hckrnews.com allows me to go back in time and see stuff that hit the front page.

The problem is that stuff that interests me isn't always the stuff with the most upvotes or the most comments. I constantly find articles that are relevant to my interests or area of expertise and aren't in the "Top 10" or "Top 50%" (hckrnews.com definitions).

That's why I suggest that some ML-trained tagging and recommendation system would be helpful delivering HN content of interest.