There is no way for HyperNews to tell you your password since it is immediately encrypted, so please try to remember it. Then you can change the password to one you can remember. You must use the same password as for your email address userid to make this change. A message looks like a base article except it also displays some header lines at the top of the page identifying the context and author of the message. Replies to messages should appear indented, but not all browsers indent properly.
New messages are always after old messages added to the same thing.
The newest of the new messages have a icon of some kind to draw your attention. There are several ways you can control which messages you see. There is one abbreviation that is used for a chain of a single reply to a single reply, etc. You can use one of several navigation buttons to simplify reading of neighboring messages. If there is no next message, it goes up a level and then finds the next message.