Hacker Newspaper is a superior user interface for Hacker News.
I beg to disagree - see below.
It's more performant, more readable
It's hard to skim.
it doesn't turn visited links damn near invisible for some insane reason
I don't need to read the same thing again. Visited links can be invisible for all I care. I visit them less than 5% of the time.
and it makes it much easier to skim the headlines
No way. Suddenly I have to scroll through screens of large-font nonsense instead of just getting it all within about 1.5 screens.
and avoid getting into useless, time-wasting blather
Comments, to me, are more than 50% of the value of HN. I often read the comments before the article, and sometimes don't bother reading the article at all.
To me, this "reformatted layout" is very, very inferior.