I'm currently using an artificially-shaped 256k Internet connection (it resets in a couple days), and over the past few weeks browsing the web, I've very consistently found HN to be one of the fastest loading sites I've come across. I understand that HN is built on top of Arc (http://arclanguage.org), a Lisp variant, and that the code (https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc) uses flat files to store post and vote data. This is generally speaking quite an unusual/unexpected architecture for a site presumed to serve a consistently moderate load, but HN manages to do so remarkably well, presumably because the site itself is so incredibly lightweight. I don't think the minimal HTML is the only factor though, although it probably counts for the majority. I'm interested to understand as much as possible/practicable/relevant about the server(s') configuration, uplink bandwidth, other tunables, etc, so I can get an idea of what makes HN so exceptionally responsive and "a cut above 99% of everything else". Does CloudFlare really make that much of a difference? :P I know there's some "secret sauce" in there somewhere, because virtually-verbatim clones of HN such as http://firespotting.com/ seem almost as fast... but just not as instantaneous as HN. (PS: On the occasions I get hit by it, my ISP's shaping config seems quite involved/nuanced, and I actually want to profile it because it's so catalyzing and would be very useful to apply to my own projects for "worst-case" testing. For the interested, the details I have thus far can be found here: http://serverfault.com/questions/709529/how-can-i-profile-my-isps-bandwidth-shaping-settings)