You do realize that if this was any other website you (or others making this comment) would be up in arms all over the internet over it, including these very HN comments?
Is this really the same HackerNews community that goes ape shit over the smallest usability no-nos on random Joe's website, but is perfectly fine with NYT practically stonewalling their entire website behind a login screen?
I'm not perfectly fine with it - I just decided it was worth it many years ago and never thought about it since. The value of the NYT is, to me, obvious and enormous. Some new random webapp cannot make that claim.
rms? Love Emacs and the other stuff you've done for decades, thanks! :-)
There is a solution.
Write a Firefox/Chrome/.* plugin which randomly generates a login name and password every time it sees the login screen -- and after the page is opened, logs out again... just to be clean.
Is this really the same HackerNews community that goes ape shit over the smallest usability no-nos on random Joe's website, but is perfectly fine with NYT practically stonewalling their entire website behind a login screen?