I have a confession. I love reading Hacker News while in the bathroom on my mobile. Yes, I know. Disgusting. But it's important to understand where the "NEED" for a mobile friendly version came from. It's one of the few times during the day that I can surf what I want without some other agenda or task pulling me away. The mobile experience was always pretty meh on the official site and required me to pinch zoom to read the contents when I should be focusing on pinching something else.
I was going to use a reader when I thought, why don't I just wrap it with some css and display it the way I like it. I also made it easy to share the articles across different social sites, and since I was designing this for myself, I figured I would just make it easy to do the things I do when I do them.
I don't vote on articles. It's just not what I do. I share the cool one's.
I also added a more promenent search (at the top) so I can find what I want.
I also put in some categories for things I tend to want to keep up on and added a few hotkeys (alt - s = search).
the design is a work in progress with no plans to ever "finish" it. It's just an experiment and totally selfish.
If you find yourself "needing" a mobile friendly version, feel free to try it.
Warning: It's still in alpha.... it's still being worked on... also open to suggestions.