Just profiled the page via Chrome's "Fast 3G" network preset. I saw 3.5 MB download over 21 seconds before the spinner disappeared. The DOM content was ready at 7.8 seconds – still far too long.
Info like this should be automatically added as a flair right next to each submission on HN. Time to first interactive, download sizes, number of ads, ...
This would actually be a nice side project. Throw each link which was submitted to HN at a headless Chrome/Firefox, do performance/ads/size analysis, save everything to a database and then make it available to the HN user through a browser plugin which adds this info next to each submission. And then you can even display badges of shame for the worst offender or block links and other stuff. Any takers?
