4 ms·

Pretty poor article given it’s just one guy listing a few things off the top of his head.

• yesenadam 5y ago
  > Pretty poor article given it’s just one guy listing a few things off the top of his head But it's not, it's 4 guys, and they do seem to be somewhat qualified to answer the question.
• blakesterz 5y ago
  Except it's not! I thought the same thing but then spotted that stupid "Continue Reading" thing there near the end. Why do sites do that? It doesn't seem to serve any purpose that I can see. Is it loading some kind of tracker or ad things that uBlockO is blocking or something>? In any case, there's a few more answers there. I thought it was interesting to see a few opinions.
  • 13of40 5y ago
    I always assumed it was so they could stuff some more ads at the bottom. I'm sure someone here knows the real answer, though.
    • cratermoon 5y ago
      Ads are part of it, certainly. It allows the page to initially load more quickly because the browser doesn't have to grind through all the ad and site effluvia before rendering. Lots of work can be deferred asynchronously while the user is reading the first part of the page. It provides a signal that the visitor actually stayed and read more than the first paragraph. Handy for tracking "engagement". It can reduce total load on the site and its services, by only making requests for all the artifacts if the user clicks the "read more". That can reduce bandwidth and serving costs. tl;dr optimization
• dudleypippin 5y ago
  To be honest, I thought this was an “ask HN”, not an actual article. Thanks for saving me the click. I’d be interested to hear what other people here could come up with. What’s the metric? Financial gain? Damage done? Most Clever? Most visible? Most lives improved? (Just read TFA, and the author seems to be going with “most destructive”. Meh.)