You're not the only one
Since the forum software was updated, it's irritated me that on the newest topic, there was still a "next topic" option, rather than it not being there. This means when you're pushed for time, you end up loading unneccessary pages. Now I've found that on the newest topic, I get the "groundhog day" problem - not even a message that there are no newer topics. This isn't just on Hot Topics either.
On the subject of Hot Topics, I don't think having them at the top of the list is such a "hot" idea. Since, as far as I can tell, the "next topic" option goes by date/time, if you start looking at topics at the bottom of the list, ie the oldest, and the Hot Topic at the top of the list happens to be older than that, then you miss the Hot Topic altogether as you go through topics, which sort of defeats the purpose of having Hot Topics in the first place