Hacker News started as a side project
paulgraham.com> A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles.
I have heard from users that the minimal graphic design here is intentional, but I did not realize that the creator of the site confirmed it (and so early on, too).
HN's graphic design is so perfect, for me it is hard NOT to see this is intentional. Any other website eats at least 100MB per loaded tab in the browser for the sake of providing features that are not really needed, like phoning home for some stupid excuses.