It's because Clarc is finally out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758298 (Dec 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32597291 (Aug 2022)

That's the performance work I often mentioned in those pinned comments. I need no longer lament that it's not done!

Not sure what I should do with those old comments (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) ...maybe nothing.

Btw, we rolled this out over 3 weeks ago and I think you're the first person to ask about it on HN. There was one earlier question by email. I think that qualifies as a splash-free dive: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

AFAIK the paging was something that moderators cast by hand, when some intensive trafic is flooding.

I really really appreciate that somewhere on the Internets there is a page able to contain 1k+ comments. Of course it is possible because of super light webpages, because the server can do it anyway, but if the page with all JS animations or round corners becomes too heavy for client device the webmaster is going to hide most of the comments behing spoilers/pagination. It is way more handy to hide not interesting threads instead of constantly unhide hoping there is anything interesting.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

The pagination was there mostly for performance reasons and I think with sufficient performance improvements it ended up getting turned off (if you scroll through these comments you can see various times when it's been turned off or on and various suggestions it will eventually get turned off permanently.)