One of the things I really like about the current HN is that it is easily skimmable. I think a combination of smallish fonts, fairly small font-size range, and the user of a non-serif (if I've got that right) font enables that.

The redesign you have done makes each article pop more, but for me, that isn't a concern. I want the 'pop' from the content, not the design.

I also think that the Verdana or any other non-serif font has a cleaner edgier look which fits HN well.

I agree with his decision to go with a serif font, and Georgia is not a terrible decision. But I can't help but feel like Georgia is the wrong voice for hackernews.

Something that is cleaner and slightly more geometric seems to me to be useful. Something like Athelas or Adelle for headlines. If we want to keep that classic cut-journalism feel, there are still other options.

And yes, these fonts are available for inexpensive licensing as a font-face.

The titles stand out more from the rest of the details. Although I usually do two scans of the page. First for the titles and second for the points, often a title I skip over has high points and I go back and read it. This seems to make my first scan easier and my second harder.

the funny thing is the font definition is

  font-family:Verdana;