HN loads very fast, and scanning the list of posts is very fast. The information-dense design is important. On my phone, on the original site, I see 8 posts by default. On this redesign, I see 2.
Every single HN redesign I’ve seen makes it slower and less information dense. And sometimes requires JavaScript to work at all. Why?
Information density it really what it's all about. The very idea of HN is high signal-to-noise. Don't confuse text density with information density though.
If I visit HN twice in one day, or even once each on consecutive days, I'll see the same stories there. Of course if not there I might miss a top headline if I go a day without a visit. My solution[0] was to only show today's stories. For yesterday's, click the page title. It also segments into categories based on some regexes.
I don't mean to hijack this post. The design is quite different and may suit some readers. I was only giving an example of information density which happens to save me a lot of time to see that there's nothing new since the last time I visited.