[SoftTalker]

Small, cheap VPSs that are ideal for running a small niche-interest blog or forum will easily fall over if they suddenly get thousands of requests in a short time.

Look at how many sites still get "HN hugged" (formerly known as "slashdotted").

[ronsor]

I remember my first project posted to HN was hosted on a router with 32MB of RAM and a puny MIPS CPU; despite hitting the front page, it did not crash.

At this point, I have to assume that most software is too inefficient to be exposed to the Internet, and that becomes obvious with any real load.

[SoftTalker]

While true, it's also true that it was (presumably) able to run and serve its intended audience until the scrapers came along.