>However, it's the hundredth, or the thousandth just today. So, cumulatively they present a big obstacle... Okay. I think you have a valid point and this does

>However, it's the hundredth, or the thousandth just today. So, cumulatively they present a big obstacle... Okay. I think you have a valid point and this does get annoying over time but I find in my own usage that it is easy to spend a quick second scanning the page looking for an easy bypass and if, as in this case here, one is provided then I don't hold that against the author. I go ahead and read the content unless I find the content to be not worth the exercise to read. In this case, all one needed to do was to click an X in the pop-up and they could read the interesting story laid out by the author. If you elect to just be annoyed you will need to make a click somewhere anyway to get off of the page so I don't think one extra click constitutes an insurmountable obstacle. It's quite sad that these pop-ups have become ubiquitous. The blame for this has to lie with some of the people here on HN who work in the industry and who had an opportunity to steer website publishers away from stuff like this but instead chose to normalize it.