Hacker News Reader

What on earth is going on with all the spam in this thread? Is this how you claim a username?

Yes. This thing literally makes you spam HN in order to sign up. And for that reason this submission should be flagged.

Yes, and then delete or edit the comment.

That or X...

Turns out that the HN flagging mechanism hides the message from their auth check, so the spam doesn't actually work anyway. Oh well.