It's not a spa, these are #websitewithloginproblems.
That is surprising, that would imply that view-source isn't using the same cookies as the regular browsing experience.
Which seems like a bug.
This seems strange. If you view page source on this comments page while logged in to Hacker News, does the source show you as not logged in? When I do that, my source contains the link to my profile (user?id=Forlien) at the top so I know it's giving me the logged-in version.
Actually no, it shows me as logged in (I can see the logout link).
Whereas with the site I'm working on locally, I get the login page. curl with appropriate options copied from firefox gets me the full page.
I don't know why I get different results with the two sites.