I'm not sure if this is true for HN, but I've noticed elsewhere that some people seem to dislike Nielsen and his work, often because their first experience with him is his website, which looks old and ugly.

What these people often fail to realize is that while the website isn't flashy and "nice", it accomplishes its goal, which is to convey information. Nielsen is one of the leading UI experts, and the way I see it you can disagree with him, but you can't just ignore him or write him off, because he can back most, if not every, of his claims with empirical data from the studies he's conducted.