I'm pretty sure that "getting the same four Hacker News users, who feel personally wronged every time a website becomes more readable, to sign up" is nowhere near the top of their list of priorities.

Grrr, I hate readability! Just the idea of proper line lengths makes me angry.

But I think everybody has to create an account, not just us salty grandpas. Like I said, if it was a product goal, it's a sneaky way to do it. Not saying that is the case.

Sneaky indeed. So sneaky, in fact, that it would be completely ineffective.

I dunno, I bet they get an uptick in signups, especially right after launching this design.

As mentioned in the above HN link, you don't need to log in. If you're annoyed by the logged-out approach of appending a query parameter to the URL, other people in sibling threads shared Greasemonkey scripts (or whatever they're called these days) for doing so automatically.