Sometimes I forget that I've skinned HN until I see posts like this or get asked what am I reading. I've used this Chrome extension (http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/) for a long time, if you're looking for the white-space that HN truly needs then something like this will sort you out. There are tons of extensions out there, even some that even make HN look like a feedreader like feedly.