Why do I hit a paywall when I click the link from HN but if I search google for the first paragraph of this comment and click the result I dont hit a paywall?
If the referrer is Google, it won't show a paywall, so that Google will index the entire document. If they don't do that, Google will either only index the beginning of the content, or they'll penalize the site for hiding content that was indexed. If the referrer is HackerNews, they can reliably show a paywall without worrying about taking an SEO hit.
They're checking referers. IIRC Google demands that whatever text that gets served to the googlebot gets served to people who arrive from google.
I'm getting strange behaviors. When I access from my current desktop (IE, ugh) the article doesn't even load, but from mobile I can access it via the link just fine.
I'm not sure if it is NoScript or cookies disabled by default but I don't see the paywall even on the direct link from HN.
A large number of people at my company probably share the same external IP, I bet that is why I see it a work. Everything works fine from my home.