While it's true that the 'new' section is pretty under-visited, one of the reasons is definitely due to the content being much worse (on average) than the front

While it's true that the 'new' section is pretty under-visited, one of the reasons is definitely due to the content being much worse (on average) than the front page; it's a great way to see how effective the HN system is at showing us the better content that's been submitted. But it's also quite often that some great posts don't manage to gain traction simply due to bad luck - I imagine the amount of people that read 'new' is around 1-3% of the userbase (I know if I'm going through pages of it, it's probably time to start focusing on work instead...), so it's nice this has been submitted.