I think Pg is right for not adding a lot of features, or spending the limited time he has working on the UI
I believe HN's plain design is actually an intended feature, not a bug. From one of PG's essays:
So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles.
I believe HN's plain design is actually an intended feature, not a bug. From one of PG's essays:
So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles.
http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html