Precisely, because it is 2015, people like me have turned off js and enable it selectively. Why? Because of all the security implications of letting a website run whatever it wants on your computer. It also breaks some of the tracking, which is a nice bonus.

HN doesn't depend on any clientside JS.

The web is so much faster with JavaScript disabled. JS has become the new Flash in terms of web page performance. Is JS really needed for what is primarily text based content?

I don't know guys... spent the last 15 minutes with js turned off, github didn't work (graphs don't load), meteor/atmosphere/any single page app doesn't work, ebay didn't work, i'm not a fb fan but i'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, staticice worked, but half of the merchants on it didn't. alot of the blog sites HN links to were ok, however, comments are the gold nuggets and alot of them depends on pulling in cloud services via js.. It was kind of cool to see google work in a limited fashion...

But that's 15 minutes of my life I won't get back, and alot more if I was to start whitelisting sites (which at this rate, would be every site I visit) and wearing a tin foil on my head, just saying... (<-- light hearted joke for the too religious :)

I have it turned off in my main browser with NoScript, and then selectively turned on for sites I frequently use (like HN) with poor usability without it (like HN). It's actually surprising how many actually require it though. I prefer to use emacs-w3m, and thus not get distracted with images or anything else.

But no, JavaScript is not required to sign in (that's what HTTP Basic and Digest authentication are for), nor to post comments (that's what the HTTP POST method is for); both capabilities are available to a non-JavaScript browser.