This is nice. In general icons work well when designed in common style. They must be distinct enough to be easily recognisable, but sit nicely next to each othe

This is nice. In general icons work well when designed in common style. They must be distinct enough to be easily recognisable, but sit nicely next to each other. Since favicons are designed by independent authors, they don't usually look nice in dense list. However, you can try making them 1.5x smaller and apply common style tweaks: e.g. round the corners, apply slight desaturation/tinting to match the HN style. Then, they won't be distracting from content, won't look out of place and still would give useful visual cues when scanning through the news.