HN does not use a "Just one moment..." Cloudlfare interstitial

It seems to do just fine without it

HN does not require Javascript or use of a particular client to request and read its HTML. I use an HTML reader (offline) with no suupport for auto-loading resources, images, JS, CSS or DNS "prefetch" nonsense

The Cloudflare "protection" against so-called "abuse" forces www users to enable Javascript and use a client that exposes them to increased risks, including risks to their privacy and quiet enjoyment of the web

It cannot tell the difference between (a) a single reguest from a single IP address by a www user who prefers a client that is not distributed by an online advertising company or an online advertising company's business partner and (b) so-called "abuse" such as an excessive number of requests, sometimes from many IP addresses

For the purposes of "protection", it considers (a) and (b) the same

CF's "solution" is to force the www user to choose a particular client that puts the www user at risk and exposes them to surveillance and advertising, and surreptitious data collection

"Solve" a problem by creating a new, additional problem

One thing it should mean is that anyone using Cloudflare is doing so while risking that its CEO suddenly pulls the rug and closes down the service; not a dependency you want in your stack, and not a great look for a service that's supposed to be usable as a stable high-availability one.

The alternative to the "checking your internet connection" page for many websites is either "508 Resource Limit Is Reached", "Please click all the boxes with traffic lights", or no website at all. They're not there to bully you, they're there to protect websites from abuse.

Sure, at least the ones that survive DDoS attacks will be.