HN traffic isn't all that demanding[1]. Websites falling under the load are a testament to the poor quality of the software stack used to host them.
[1]: <https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/latency-matters-aftermat...>
[1]: <https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/latency-matters-aftermat...>
Since we're here, I did a quick grep through today's access log. It appears that your link got me 573 visitors to that article and 56 people clicking through to the other article linked therein.
My mind is blown that anyone writes software for stacks that max out at few hundred requests per second.
Everything I've seen comparing "high level" languages says programmers work around the same efficiency whatever the language. So why isn't everything done in Go, C#, and Java where 100,000 requests/second is trivial?
Even if you don't have much load, isn't the possibiliy of a cat DDoS'ing you by sleeping on someone's F5 key at least slightly concerning?
I swear half these companies that claim their site is "being DDoS'ed!" it's just somebody just running HTTrack to archive an article they like.