My bet is it's PHP, a homegrown CSS, no JavaScript. You can tell a lot by doing a view source. I'd like to know what DB back end the sites using, MySQL or PostgreSQL. In the SoylentNews forms we were discussing if we had to build from the ground up what DB back end and scripting language we'd use. Postgres won the poll by a landslide. (I was very surprised)

We still haven't discussed the language. Though we've had people request everything from perl to python to ruby, most say avoid PHP, which again is odd since PHP seems to be the go-to web programming language. Personally I think perl should be avoided, it's a relic that was never intended for web programming, but was forced into that role and was abused severely by people writing CGI scripts that lead to huge gaping security holes.

Solylent's angry brown...
I think that's the default that comes with SlashCode. The interface is really badly cluttered with widgits, but the site works surprisingly well on my phone which is a nice change. Slashdot mobile completely broke on my Galaxy Note II, If I didn't have the option to "Request desktop site" I would have stopped using /. long before Beta.

It's a little misleading. SoylentNews and |. are working toward the same thing, but with different approaches. |. is ground up where as Soylent is trying to use something existing.

I like the ground up approach |. is taking there's been a lot of improvements in web technologies since Slashcode, which Soylent is based on, was first written.

I think both will succeed in their own right. Soylent does have a very active volunteer crew, where as |. seems to be built by one person (who's doing a fantastic job). I don't think the two approaches are compatible though unless Soylent want's to give up Slash code at some point and use |.'s interface when it's more completely, but I can't really see that happening.

I really like the look of your site, nice simple clean interface. Great work I'll be keeping an eye on progress.