Seriously? That is underhanded. I would understand an interstitial (even if they are annoying), but this is really misleading. Looks like the poster wanted to post the call for donations.
I think hacker news should have a blacklist, where for certain sites they use an anonymizing redirector, and/or a warning (JWZ's infamous redirection comes to mind).
That would be a nice feature for HN. I'm willing to indulge Butterick's idiosyncrasy (well, in the sense that I'm fine with the copy-paste rigmarole... I haven't actually purchased any of his books yet) because it's a creative genuine effort to do something besides obnoxious ad networks.
I think hacker news should have a blacklist, where for certain sites they use an anonymizing redirector, and/or a warning (JWZ's infamous redirection comes to mind).