At least you could see the popups. I default open things in an incognito window, and it won't even load if you're in incognito, just shows you a big banner shaming you for using incognito mode and asking you to log in.

It'd be kinda cool if HN had reddit-like flairs for stories so you could tag them as "no-incognito" or "soft-paywall" so you knew what not to bother clicking on.