From a personal email, jwz said I could quote: "Every time [Hacker News drops by] someone launches a DDoS. This time it's a SYN flood. Pretty much like clockwork." This looks like a response to that.
The strange thing is that it does work for me if I copy-paste the link (as opposed to ctrl-clicking it). There really shouldn't be much that's different between those two requests except for the referrer header.
Appears to be one of those bizarre people who gets offended when people link to them. They were more common back when bandwidth was as precious as diamonds, and I see this article dates from that era. On the modern Web, I've never been sure if they don't quite understand what the internet is for, or what.
Anyone who actually gets angry when they're linked to (that image seems calculated to offend, not merely deflect bandwidth usage) has some kind of fundamental disconnect with how the internet is used on a day-to-day basis. It may be a social/emotional disconnect rather than a technical one, but it's still a disconnect.
I suppose I should acknowledge the possibility that he's just kind of a dick and likes trolling people for lulz. That's not really better, though.
It's his server. He gets to decide how it responds when people send it requests. If there's a disconnect, I think it's the people telling jwz how he needs to configure his server.
Sending drastically different content based on where your URL was clicked from, should indeed count as one definition of "not understanding how the hypertext web works." It's also something you're free to do, and the rest of the web is free to stop linking to you in response.
Edit: it works if I copy-paste the URL.