Can you elaborate?

I personally vastly prefer the comment tree style of conversation - I've been online since the bulletin board era, but I can't find myself going back to it ever again. I find it infinitely easier to follow a conversation when all the responses are in one place.

The communal feeling is indeed missing in news aggregators, though I'm not sure whether it's more about the style of conversation or just me getting older and not being willing to invest time in online communities as much.

It really do be just a royalty-free version of MIPS - but it doesn't need to be much more either. MIPS is a great ISA.