Ask HN: Why 30 posts per page?

From a usability perspective, I'd rather have more than have to go to the next page, solely because of the static next links HN uses -- they confuse me with their making me refresh (usually), catch anything that newly popped onto the page, THEN click next. Would be a lot easier to simply show more.

I'm sure the reason is some combination of load speed and a pseudo-designers' perspective that simpler == better. Who knows.

I bet it's because gives the screen a great height. I believe that with 30 you have to scroll down only once on most monitors, and still 30 is a great number of content in single page.