This is something that I miss about forums of yore and sort of hate about HN, Reddit, and their ilk: the deprioritization of a post author's identity. I miss being able to scan through a forum's post listing and readily pick out names of posters I recognized after being involved in the site for a while. It was an additional signal of post quality (or lack thereof, depending on the user). Here, the username is hidden in a sentence of status text, on the same visual level of the number of minutes ago the post was made, all of which is rendered in a light grey font. It's clearly intentional, and I can't for the life of me figure out why the forum owners don't want users to be able to build a consistent identity.

I think it’s always been that way on HN—it could just be arbitrary, not a deliberate choice. I have noticed around here that if you indicate you might use someone’s identity or history as a signal of quality, you’ll get a lot of “argument by authority” backlash. (Except in the cases of someone who built the thing you’re talking about, and tptacek. :) )

On the flip side, on HN I like that the author is kind of greyed out. I never notice it until after I read comments if I look for it, so I generally don't even notice the OP or a comment author.

Other sites like Reddit add little icons and highlights in many places that make the username much more prominent.