The average HNer will know to do this but the majority of the internet won't. So they'll likely have the effect they want (reducing the number of unpaid pageviews) and a bunch of side-effects they don't want (drastically reducing their relevance as a source of information on the web)

[Edit: Grammar]

You can also listen to NPR without donating.

In the documentary "Page One", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787777/, the then executive editor of the NY Times said that they were basically adopting the NPR model: people who like it will pay for it.

If you disable javascript on the site you don't even need to ever bother with cookies. This prevents some multimedia parts of the site from working, but you can read all you want.

or just press "escape" as the page loads