Ho-ly. Curius, I searched: tomshardware requesting I download file and got:

Recent reports from August 2026 indicate that users accessing Tom's Hardware on mobile browsers experienced unexpected file download requests (with a link to your comment) while viewing specific content. Similar issues occurred historically, where buggy ad servers or site scripts triggered empty "usnc" file downloads or 0-byte files on devices lacking adblockers.

Current and Historical Context The unexpected prompt you are seeing is a known behavior that has resurfaced recently. On August 30, 2026, mobile users browsing via Safari on iOS reported that loading articles—specifically regarding a recent 12TB Steam leak—triggered an unsolicited prompt asking them to download a file.

This matches historical patterns where technical glitches or external elements on the platform caused automated downloads...

And then it lists a couple of times it happened in the past.

Don't post LLM output to HN. Anyone here who wants to know what Gemini says has the capacity to look it up for themselves.