I think this is a new deliberate action by AT to boost ad sale revenues. Its gone terribly awry. I have 8 popups on my screen now. I'd rather surf a porn site. Anand, if you guys need money or something ask for donations, but this sucks completely. I'll take a vacation from anandtech until you get this worked out. Nothing personal but this is as bad as a pr0n site.
Maybe you should switch to member-opt-in spam mail in trade of banners. Everyone knows banners don't work anyways.. i'd rather get a spam a day than see this cr*p.