[goldenchrome]

Things being ugly doesn't mean bad design. There is no such thing as objectively good design because all designed objects live in a certain context. Hacker news is purposefully unattractive and the register forms are outdated because the site wants to attract a certain type of person. If you're perturbed by the visual design then the community would probably benefit from not having you since the entire focus of the site is on the discussion that ideas generate. In that vein, it's ridiculous that legibility was not a key focus of the redesign since the singular mode of interaction with the site is through text. Why is the text contrast so poor?