I'm not a mod, so stating a personal and subjective opinion:

Let's suppose for argument's sake that unanswered questions get shown by default:

If someone answers a question, and it would get enough upvotes or an acceptance it would disappear from that screen, right?  Even when answered by rep 1 users, or users with highly upvoted questions, but no answers or drunk users, or beginning users that *think* the question is answered bit Eg. the solution doesn't survive a reboot, ... *and then it'd never show up again...*

**However, with the "hot" questions you get best of many worlds**: the questions that are freshly posted *and* the ones that get freshly edited and the ones freshly answered so you can dig in and give an even better answer then the existing one.

However, if you *want, you can* make the "new" questions your personal home page on AU and then you have exactly what you like, but I like the default best...

#;-)