I honestly don't think HN needs a redesign in that sense (if at all). The mockup proposed here is a nice design for another kind of application, it's kinda safe

I honestly don't think HN needs a redesign in that sense (if at all). The mockup proposed here is a nice design for another kind of application, it's kinda safe and soft. My bet is that HN would benefit more from a data oriented redesign where users see the stories and their stats more like a work sheet than a pretty web page. Dynamic data is what users would be interested in, not bubbles and double spaced rows.