[jll29]

  Why not an NNTP gateway?

  NNTP doesn't support browsing threads by title (let alone paginated) and requesting their messages on demand. Clients need to fetch metadata of all available messages in all available threads in advance. Given the volume of messages on HN, synchronizing them to the gateway is not practical. Even when attempted, some clients struggle with the sheer number of messages in a single group.

That was also my first question, why not do it "properly", and while the reasons given are understandable brick walls, it seems to me that the real solution would be a re-vamping of the over-aged NNTP protocol, or even an outright new protocol.

I always liked USENET news for its "pull" approach, and for the same reason hated email newsletters. The threaded discussions via Emacs GNUS were a delight, and modern Web-based forum solutions are distractive and never respect my font/color settings; plus, they also diff in UX.