1) This is due to the page structure and how it's cached. Many people complain about it. 2) That might be nice. Does anyone have this as a browser extension? I

1) This is due to the page structure and how it's cached. Many people complain about it. 2) That might be nice. Does anyone have this as a browser extension? I know there's a few to make HN a bit more readable (I don't use any) 3) "Ask" I believe is simply submitting a story without a link. By convention we prefix with "Show HN" or "Ask HN" 4) Indeed, tiny voting buttons. See greasemonkey/browser extensions/whatever to customize site. 5) Upvoting a story puts it in "Saved Stories" 6) I think there's a 3rd party site for comment replies. 7) At ~500 karma, you get downvote privileges. I think Karma also affects your placement on the page. We used to be able to see karma points next to names for posts other than your own, but PG turned that off and I believe overall it's improved discussions (there's some data for this). See the "Feature Request" link at the bottom: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982388