This works much less well, for many people.

For NY Times, the fact that I have non-persistent cookies as a Firefox extension helps greatly. For other sites (WSJ especially) I've got to jump through several more hoops.

Given that the goal on HN is discussion of the article, and that the workarounds aren't evident or foolproof, this is a consistent pain point.

And simply using the "web" button does not consistently work. You should be aware of this.

Did you actually try this yourself? It presents a login page for me when I do this.