All: our poor server is smoking today* so I've had to reduce the page size of comments. There are 1500+ comments in this thread but if you want to read more than a few dozen you'll need to page through them by clicking the More link at the bottom. I apologize!
Also, if you're cool with read-only access, just log out (edit: or use an incognito tab) and all will be fast again.
* yes, HN still runs on one core, at least the part that serves logged-in requests, and yes this will all get better someday...it kills me that this isn't done yet but one day you will all see