>Why would Wired care about people that use ad blockers and never visit their site again? They're really no value to Wired so why expend resources on them?

Blocking users that use ad blockers and will never visit their site may potentially block a significant chunk of their intended audience. That audience may then share interesting articles with others who are not running ad blockers. I would assume that the cost of serving a single article to a portion of users who will not view ads may be insignificant in comparison.