Hacker News may not be all that pretty, but it's designed to bring out the important parts and communicate them quickly. Less relevant, less commonly accessed bits or information like numbers and usernames are available but don't stand out.

We now that it is an ordered list so we don't really care much about the story number.

The most important thing on the page should be Story title > Story source / Submitter / Comments

I like the idea of having the top 20 of both websites side by side though.

1. make the text bigger and bolder

2. cut out colors

3. less padding on everything

4. the "numbering of the post" matters very little to me. it doesn't need to be so prominent

if you added inbound.org it would be a trifecta of hacker,hustler,designer news

It feels like these design sites are offering design for design sake instead of designing something usable on a daily basis. This is one area where HN has done quite well in my books. Once our arrows are unicode we're set. :)

You could also consider having some way to load more stories, there's more to hackerne.ws than just the first twenty.