So, there's definitely been a few discussion recently about the quality of Hacker News articles and their relevancy to the community. Is this post an indication that LOLCats are of high priority for discussion?
There's always a discussion about quality and relevancy. What I find most interesting here is that 'cute animal pictures' are specifically called out as off-topic in the guidelines, and cat pictures hold such a strong connotation of lack of content to me.
And then, 130 points puts it at 5th or 6th rank of the front page, sorted just by points (at the time of this post).
In case the original author shows up here: on first glance, the index page looks like an error page. Perhaps a little formatting or color so I don't assume the server is down and hit back immediately?
Just in case you want something more full featured (think IP, COOKIES, POST, GZIP, STREAMS, etc...) check out http://httpbin.org/ from the same guy that brought sanity to http requests in Python: http://kennethreitz.com/
That doesn't make it not an easter egg, though. Most 'easter eggs' function perfectly for what they are, they're just also amusing and not entirely necessary.
The Flickr discussion made the same point. The conclusion was that pictures of cats are meant to be amusing rather than literal expressions of a single IETF standard.
