Nothing in the URL says anything about what's behind it. Something ending in .html or .jpeg can be going through a dozen of microservices and proxies before returning a single byte to you. Any which of these can have countless number of dynamic components each with their own bottlenecks. And something ending in ?randomgarbage=something can be loaded straight from RAM on the nearest CDN.
We all know this, but the simple thing to assume is this is an html file.
Never underestimate the amount of traffic HN can drive on a Friday afternoon. Why work when you can browse :sunglasses: