I'm also interested in the elimination of the post sign-up confirmation email. I'd rather get a "Welcome! If you didn't sign up for this service, click here" email, but I can imagine that if I didn't actually sign up for the service, I'd never want to "click here" for fear of spam. There has to be another option, though. Anyone have any bright ideas?
You have to type it twice, because you don't see what you typed the first time -- it's a validation.
You don't see what you typed the first one, because that's "standard practice" for passwords, so that no one looking over your shoulder will see the password you typed.
That makes sense sometimes -- e.g., when you register for your new gmail at a starbucks. For me, 99.9% of the time, that's not an issue -- I'd much rather have a checkbox that says "press here to hide password".
But that's the standard practice.
It's especially important because a streamlined workflow will have both forms on the same page. It's infuriating to try to log in and get an "account already exists" error. HN is one of the very few sites that make this mistake.