I remember Reading HN now had a million accounts (btw can anyone confirm?)

if that's true then top story at the beginning of the US day could generate a lot of requests, and if the university has a plain cms that is updated once a week by the departmental secretary then it's pretty unlikely they have seen much traffic, ever.

To be honest I would be interested if pg could publish what kind of click through rate the various links generate - could even be a counter next to the story.