Each page makes a request that returns a list of IDs which appears to then be used to make individual requests for each news story. So each pageload makes dozen

Each page makes a request that returns a list of IDs which appears to then be used to make individual requests for each news story. So each pageload makes dozens of requests. Couldn't that information just be provided in the first request? Also, the layout is a little too minimal. It's harder to scan headlines than it is on Hacker News. Even just a small amount of spacing between the items would work wonders here. Overall, I'm not totally sold on this being a clean alternative to Hacker News (which is tough to beat since you really can't get much cleaner than HN to begin with), but I think you could significantly improve the experience without having to change too much.