HN uses light grey text in certain applications to intentionally make it harder to read. For text submissions, it's to discourage their use over link submissions. It's a mistake, in my opinion, but it's been like that from the very start.
Part of the reason people come to HN is because it never changes.
This is so silly. Just because radical change is alienating doesn’t mean that smaller improvements wouldn't be positively received. For example, an end to silently swallowing emoji would be an improvement, not a regression. Poor design that actually excludes people is not a treasured feature.
I'll bite: How does swallowing emoji exclude people?
It excludes annoying people who use emojis. I just wish it was updated to include removing the ascii emojis they unnecessarily add, often at the end of posts :)
If a feature excludes a certain kind of people, it might very well be an improvement.
Excluding people that want to shove emoji in is morally good thing.
I treasure not having to look at emojis on HN. Not sure who this "excludes" but I'm fine that that
HN changes all the time. There are lots of new features added that were not present when I first stumbled upon this site.
It’s an unfortunate decision. Makes things like thoughtfully written Launch HNs painful (literally, for me anyway) to read.
There are extensions you can get that will insert stylesheets scoped to specific pages. HackerNews, a site that never changes is a perfect use-case for something like this
I use it for a number of sites I browse regularly
I use Dark Reader to increase the contrast of HN and also make it "dark mode". Highly recommended extension; you can undo a lot of designer-inflicted damage with one click.
Even the top bar is barely legible, light grey on light... whatever color is that.
Or maybe just whoever designed that had different monitor settings than average user and it looks okayish there...