HN does support OpenID login.
"Bad OpenID login."
If I log in to ClickPass first, it sends me to a screen where I can enter my HN username/password -- but when I fill out that form, I'm taken to < http://news.ycombinator.com/openid_merge >, which just says "Unknown."
From this experience, I assume the OpenID support in HN is more of an afterthought than a real implementation.
However, I attempted to log in via google, and I was taken to this site called clickpass.com, which then asked for access to my google contacts. No thank you...
Is HN using some sort of 3rd party to accomplish openid logins with google? If so, why? It's very easy to implement google openid logins.