Well, if you're asking for opinions, I'll offer a few. I certainly appreciate having another option for focused tech aggregation, especially if the comments section is able to attract and retain high quality, well-informed commenters rather than redditors.
Stylistically, I think there's way too much white space on the front page. HN has spoiled me.
And if it's supposed to be a HW site that attracts good commenters, there's way, way too much intro level material on the top list right now. I was getting turned off by the several intro to FPGA links but intro to soldering made me close the page. Not that introductory material can't be there, but there is a very low cool stuff to introductory material ratio.
I like the idea a lot, and wish you luck. Hopefully I find it again in a few years and love it and eat my words.
I would start off with catering to the people that already are well into advanced territory, beginners can learn from them by just reading and lurking. Starting off with beginner stuff will turn off the people that are way past that. Aiming for the right audience to start with is a major challenge in any kind of community, in my opinion you can't aim high enough for the starting few 100.
I always like the idea of a Hacker News clone for other topics but I've never seen one that sticks. I would assume it's a critical mass and quality user base issue. This site is so amazing because of all the submitters, the upvotes, and the commenters. Hard to replicate that.
Like to see HN but for specific specialties. Still, you might want to learn from HN's design and keep the front page nice and compact with smaller fonts and minimal whitespace. Even on a mobile device I can view 12 headlines at first glance on HN. On this site, the header is enormous and I can only see 3 headlines on first paint. Drop the "Today's Headlines" altogether and minimize the size of the navbar.
The whitespace and font size you have now is good. On HN, I have to zoom in to 140% to be able to read comfortably. Just went back to 100% and quickly remembered why I had it zoomed in.
No one is using 480p CRTs anymore, IDK why HN is still formatted that way. Regardless, I like how it is. My scroll wheel is not poisonous, I'm happy to use it.
Looks like there's a number of interesting articles listed already.
One little inspiration from HN would also be nice - adding the age/year of the linked web page to the linked title, so it's easier to see which link refers to recent content.
Stylistically, I think there's way too much white space on the front page. HN has spoiled me.
And if it's supposed to be a HW site that attracts good commenters, there's way, way too much intro level material on the top list right now. I was getting turned off by the several intro to FPGA links but intro to soldering made me close the page. Not that introductory material can't be there, but there is a very low cool stuff to introductory material ratio.
I like the idea a lot, and wish you luck. Hopefully I find it again in a few years and love it and eat my words.