[ChuckMcM]

I just thought it was a way for the Discourse guys to get people here to look at a 'real' thread in Discourse to get a feel for the system. If it is compelling enough to get someone to register and comment its a double benefit.

That said, the annoying ones for me are links to Google+ things, the URL says "google.com" but the content is various.

[Kerrick]

That's one of the very few things HN should borrow from reddit: use subdomains in the URLs, so we could see (for example) that it's from plus.google.com.