Kids today. The Raspberry Pi has a 700Mhz processor and at least 256M of memory. In 1999 I was running an mp3 search engine that processed 200k daily queries at its peak, on a Pentium II with 128MB.
Serving static pages at the rate HN can generate requires less resources than playing any game on your phone.
I don't think this is a totally fair comparison, because anyone who knows how to code their own site (/service) is already at a major advantage.
Now, if you downloaded an off-the-shelf MP3 search engine package and merely hosted it, it'd be different.
I also don't think that surviving a sudden upsurge in traffic is a particularly impressive feat just because it's Wordpress. If anything, it highlights how inefficient Wordpress is, which might possibly be a result of trying to be easy to set up. And a lot of the people who do use it don't realise how much worse they make it by adding plugins.
Maybe this is a better take-away when comparing the two:
This is a showcase of the progress of such inexpensive, accessible, and miniaturized (embedded) hardware over the course of a little more than a decade - back when we needed much more bulkier and expensive PC's. Yes there are better examples of things that can fit in your pocket and do the things of yester-years N times better, but I still like seeing such raw and transparent examples. Extrapolate this by another decade, it's nice to imagine about what's coming next.
I agree that the site holding up to traffic is nothing special. However, the server operates on less than a 5 watts, costs under $50, runs on a flash disk (still faster/bigger than disks back then), and can fit in your palm - that is what really is impressive.
Serving static pages at the rate HN can generate requires less resources than playing any game on your phone.