I hate high contrast light text on dark background. It remains printed in my eyes for some time even after reading just a couple of lines.

Now that I think about it I'm not sure if I've always been this way; for example I loved monokai theme since its release, for years I refused to color code with anything else. Nowadays my editor is dark gray on warm almost-white, no colors, only bold to highlight some keywords.

That said, I don't think websites should have different styles to please everyone. I respect the designer (is web design still a thing in the material world?) choices but the developer should code the page separating style and content. Let me turn off css or use reader mode without compromising content.

Quick solutions I've used when clicking the back button was not an option: some !important css on the browser console, print pdf, reader mode, outline, Vivaldi has a negative mode switch that's particularly useful on mobile, last resort copy the text and paste it somewhere else..

They're exceedingly difficult to read on E-Ink displays, which I'm using increasingly these days. Reader mode helps, though it's not always available.

I have a custom stylesheet for these situations

* { color: black !important; background-color: white !important; }

works surprisingly great on almost every site.

I should think better that the document avoids specifying its own styles as much as possible (sometimes there are reasonable uses to do so, but usually it is just misused). This way, the settings configured by the user in the browser can be used, including light or dark setting.

Or at least offer an option. I don't think it is that difficult these days, especially with so many open source style sheets and integrations that handle this.

I am happy that there is no dark mode for HN.

Why that ? Anti-bloat philosophy at its extreme ? People can write their own CSS / use a dark mode extension so there is no need for a global implementation ?

I believe that such modality should be provided by the browser or even the protocol itself.

Yes