There is no "site too small to read" on iOS unless you deliberately mess up zoom values.
The Subtle network, on an iPad2, in portrait. Somehow, they manage to cut off the text of the body column.
So, not exactly too small, but too narrow.
That's a design failure (position:fixed also makes it crap), but it's not related to text/element size anyway.
Heh. Have you looked at Hacker News on an iPhone? Zoom doesn't do much good when you have to pan and zoom to read each line of text.
Funny, I was just reading this on an iPhone and it's completely legible (even in portrait mode).
Your eyes must be better than mine, because I have to hold my phone about 4 inches from my eyes to read it, and even then it's too small to be comfortable for more than a few seconds. And on a non-retina screen, it's just hopeless.
Voting is really hard too. I just don't bother voting anymore on iDevices until there is at least a 40x40 button I can use with my stubby fingers.
I think that falls under "deliberately using crap HTML" ;)