So you admit that fancy CSS for mainstream sites is generally a huge time sink?

No, spending time correcting bugs of a browser that 3% of a particular site's users actually use is a waste of time.

Correcting IE6 bugs on a mainstream site is part of the job. (and not that bad once you get the hang of it unless you've got a heavy design)

I'd be very surprised if a CSS version of Hacker news needed any IE hacks at all really.