Earlier quoted context omitted.
As much as ads are annoying, this has nothing to do with the article. One man's bloat is another man's content. No need for this nag to be top comment on HN for an article about why data isn't moving at the speed of light.
It's not ads! Jquery.com, bootstrapcdn.com, cloudfare.com, cloudfront.net, google-analytics.com, fontawesome.com, Wordpress, Twitter, Facebook, Pocket, rating-widget.com, and typography.com are all used to put the content on this website, and none of them are ads.
The code in tracking scripts varies between "short and elegant" to "massive and slow code". There is also a piece of json where the tracker thinks it is necessary to call 10 other trackers: See for example http://ib.adnxs.com/async_usersync?cbfn=AN_async_load : AN_async_load([ {"url":"http://cm.g.doubleclick.net/pixel?google_nid=appnexus&google..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"https://ib.adnxs.com/getuid?https%3A%2F%2Fcm.g.doubleclick.n..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://c.bing.com/c.gif?anx_uid=xxxx&Red3=MSAN_pd", "tagtype":"iframe"}, {"url":"http://odr.mookie1.com/t/v2/sync?tagid=V2_4265&src.visitorId..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://match.adsrvr.org/track/cmf/generic?ttd_pid=appnexus&t..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://pixel.rubiconproject.com/tap.php?v=4894&nid=1986&put=..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://sync.mathtag.com/sync/img?mt_exid=13&mt_exuid=xxxx&re..., "tagtype":"img"} , {"url":"http://p.rfihub.com/cm?in=1&pub=345&userid=xxxx", "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://t.mookie1.com/rsp?dnv=[TIMESTAMP]&rurl=//ib.adnxs.com..., "tagtype":"img"}, {"url":"http://t.wayfair.com/a/vendor_sync/user?vendor_id=1&uid=xxxx..., "tagtype":"img"} ]);
The slowness that we experience is from delays caused by calling scripts that call scripts that call scripts, processing large pieces of javascript and network latencies. edit: and server latencies.