Well it actually IS what reddit used to be. It's almost a carbon copy of the early versions before subreddits were a thing, though HN has slightly worse css and usability, presumably to keep out the normies and to make it run from that one raspberry pi that ycombinator has allocated to hosting it.

I do sorta wish HN had reply notifications.

> I do sorta wish HN had reply notifications.

There is a 3rd party app for that, though I haven't tried it yet.

https://www.hnreplies.com/

I use it. It's excellent and works well.

The only problem with it is that it does not send you replies to your submissions, e.g. AskHN posts.

It's by design to make flame wars harder to sustain

I'd believe that if it wasn't computationally intensive and HN wasn't already struggling under the 5 people that visit. I'm sure it's merely this way to reduce server load.

Eh, HN is very much like reddit /r/technology + /r/programming but without fancy editor.

More like Reddit in the days before subreddits.

I personally use it as my reddit replacement ;) But I agree.