[grantcox]

I find irrelevant gifs embedded in a blog post like this make the entire article unreadable. It's distracting and annoying.

[elktea]

Check out https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/superstop/ so you can pause all gifs on pages like this.

[lorenzhs]

Especially on a portrait screen (great for reading!) where you can't really scroll away from them.

[labrador]

Here, have a bookmarklet I wrote to hide them so I could read articles like this:

javascript:(function (){var x = document.getElementsByTagName("img");for (i = 0; i < x.length; i++){x[i].setAttribute("src","");}}());

[zelos]

Agreed. I find I have to scroll them out of view to be able to read the text.

[conceit]

It's supposed to be distracting, but moodlifting, seeing the post exposes essentially negative oppoinions. Of course they are devoid of content.

[tjbiddle]

I agree. A lot of times I'm just perusing HN for a few minutes as a break; I'm not looking for heavy reading. Setting up the content like this gives me a quick little chuckle in-between paragraphs and I move to the next. Rather than oh god this is too long - next link.

[imtringued]

I've spent an hour reading a 20,000 word article. Don't go down the same path I did!

[addicted]

Was about to post the exact same thing.

I really want to read the article but it's a struggle with the gifs

[andyfleming]

3 images is not unreasonable for an article, but I do agree they felt a bit irrelevant.