Good to know that I'm not the only one. And not only do I highlight the text, but I just keep clicking, highlighting and un-highlighting. So I'm probably really overloading their servers with the AJAX callbacks.

I do the same. The New York Times and similar sites that have actions on highlight drive me nuts.

AdBlockPlus. It flags .tynt.com as adware, so sfgate just seems like inert text to me.

With respect to NYT, I've found this rule to be quite effective:

|http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/app/*

Kills that nasty action.

Out of curiosity, do you (and this question is open to other compulsive selectors) tend to play with things physically when you read as well? Eg. subconsciously pick up a nearby object and start playing with it.

(I do both, and I suspect they tend to go together)

Yeah I'm the same way. I'm a compulsive highlighter and I often find myself disassembling pens or mechanical pencils, or folding paper, or removing the plastic coating inside a bottlecap, or balancing my glasses on the tip of my finger...The people I spend time with in meetings must wonder if I'm actually paying attention.

Yes I do, and now that you mention it, I'm sure it's two manifestations of the same behavior.

Not while reading, but I'm notoriously bad when I'm on the phone...small objects all over my house and office are in a constant state of displacement because I pick them up and set them down somewhere else while on the phone.

Haha, yes, absolutely. I always like to have something to distract my hands. Rubber erasers are heaven for this.

No, not usually.

Same here. Those tiny inline balloon popups are always in the way!

I highlight to track my position, so it's easier to keep reading after I scroll.

Hmmm, scrolling is not ideal for reading (e.g the Kindle pages, I think). Problem = opportunity, so maybe one solution is a plugin that automatically adds pagination (not actual pages, just mark them with horizontal bars - I think easy enough to do in greasemonkey).

Every time you select something they post back to their server with details about the selection (including the article, location of your selection, referrer, etc)

Would it be useful for browsers to allow AJAX requests that don't trigger "network use is happening" ? Is there a security concern?

That's already the case for AJAX requests in most browsers. The problem is that Tynt doesn't use AJAX for the communication (they can't, because they communicate with a domain other than the one serving the content). I'm guessing they use a hidden iframe instead.