It's his website. By design, the Internet lets you do whatever you think is best, even if what you think is best is totally misguided.

I actually almost agree, that perhaps HN should create some sort of gateway that decreases the bandwidth costs of content creators.

I mean, I can walk around the street yelling "penis" at anyone wearing orange. Doesn't mean I'm not an asshole for doing so.

It's called CloudFlare (only a little tongue-in-cheek).

It will be fun to see someone lecturing JWZ on what he can do and what he cannot do on the web.

He can try to be an asshole, but no one – not even Sir Berners Lee – has the moral right to be an asshole just for the sake of it.

Torvalds behaviour is justified, as he provides, despite the rough tone, constructive criticism.

JWZ doesn’t even do that.

(Also, sending people a plaintext page explaining the issue would cost less of his traffic, and be less problematic)