&gt; <i>You can have a site with a simple layout which features the content without having ugliness be a conscious design principle.</i><p>That I agree 100% with. I too believe that. Hell, I find myself liking simple layouts more than what&#x27;s the usual startup trend for pretty backgrounds (and background videos; whoever does that deserves to have their Internet access limited to crappy 3G modem with fixed rate of $0.1&#x2F;MB) and fluff.<p>Personally, I think HN is actually <i>too</i> simple. Reddit seems uglier, but they have lots of very small features that greatly support discussion on the site. I actually think that the interface for general discussion on-line lies somewhere between HN and Reddit - simple but useful <i>tree-like</i> forum.