Well, it looks like they succeeded in their goal which was to funnel traffic to their site. It's now a top post on HN, with a top comment directly linking to their site, and I'm sure it will be shared in other places. This is partly why I'm not sure about blocking ads. I'd rather have ads be ads, and not have to read everything like it's a research paper to know if it's secretly an ad. Aside from personal blogs and forums, a lot of the internet is an ad in one way or another, although forums are also becoming more ad-y.