There are peeves worth noting, and there is site breakage which crosses boundaries. I think this case crosses a line, or at least gets damnedably close.
In the case of paywalls (or other forms of content-gating, such as GDPR-attributed geoblocking), for example, HN has adopted the position that those which can be reasonably bypassed are acceptable. This has become increasingly harder over the years, though there's been an ongoing arms-race with various alternative-access mechanisms, ranging from Google Cache, cookie clearing, and at least in the past couple of years, Archive.Today which often (though not always) works.
Noting that a site has a hard and insurmountable paywall is a legitimate gripe. Many of my own comments are links which provide access, and I'll often include such comments with my own submissions.
The article here is literally impossible for me to read on either a full-colour tablet or my preferred driver these days, a monochrome E-Ink tablet / ebook reader. The site itself further discourages feedback.
In the longer term, my view is that if there's no push-back against such practices, the Web will ultimately become if not comletely unusable, then generally unreliable. It's well on its way there.
Similar issues affect other realms of information and communication infrastructure and systems. Robocalls, scams, and other forms of telephone abuse. The general death of broadcast television and radio into increasingly irrelevant and bottom-fishing advertising churn. Postal mail with its junk and bulk mail and scams. Newspapers devoid of news.
Ultimately people will simply desert these. And I'm not sure what replaces them, if anything, or whether or not an effective attempt can be made to keep the cycle from repeating. I'm ... getting more than a little tired of it.
I also remember what the Web was promised to deliver, and helped at least in part to make it do that. I'm feeling some aspects of a life wasted in that regard.
The article here is literally impossible for me to read
That's unfortunate but it's not really interesting or advancing the goal of curious conversation in any way. You can simply move on or try to find another way to read it. You don't have to read everything on HN and not everything posted on HN is readily accessible to everyone without some hassle. It's a bummer but it's well-settled as a terminally boring , repetitive discussion point and nothing you've said really addresses that. So the guideline still has this right.
There are peeves worth noting, and there is site breakage which crosses boundaries. I think this case crosses a line, or at least gets damnedably close.
In the case of paywalls (or other forms of content-gating, such as GDPR-attributed geoblocking), for example, HN has adopted the position that those which can be reasonably bypassed are acceptable. This has become increasingly harder over the years, though there's been an ongoing arms-race with various alternative-access mechanisms, ranging from Google Cache, cookie clearing, and at least in the past couple of years, Archive.Today which often (though not always) works.
Noting that a site has a hard and insurmountable paywall is a legitimate gripe. Many of my own comments are links which provide access, and I'll often include such comments with my own submissions.
The article here is literally impossible for me to read on either a full-colour tablet or my preferred driver these days, a monochrome E-Ink tablet / ebook reader. The site itself further discourages feedback.
In the longer term, my view is that if there's no push-back against such practices, the Web will ultimately become if not comletely unusable, then generally unreliable. It's well on its way there.
Similar issues affect other realms of information and communication infrastructure and systems. Robocalls, scams, and other forms of telephone abuse. The general death of broadcast television and radio into increasingly irrelevant and bottom-fishing advertising churn. Postal mail with its junk and bulk mail and scams. Newspapers devoid of news.
Ultimately people will simply desert these. And I'm not sure what replaces them, if anything, or whether or not an effective attempt can be made to keep the cycle from repeating. I'm ... getting more than a little tired of it.
I also remember what the Web was promised to deliver, and helped at least in part to make it do that. I'm feeling some aspects of a life wasted in that regard.