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 (anyone) answers any question, 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... *and then it'd never show up again...*

**However, with the "hot" questions you get best of both 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*, just make the "new" questions your personal home page on AU and then you have what *you* like, but I like the default best...

#;-)