I've noticed a pattern. People who sneer at HN—of whom there are more than a few, it's quite a thing now—always think it's other people who are the assholes.
To reply to zombio: it's probably that NYT and WaPo are such major publications that a site that wants to link to the best content can't very well exclude them. I agree it's annoying. What I do is visit the URLs in an incognito browser window.
When incognito doesn't work, you can usually get the piece by Googling the title. Google almost always returns a link that bypasses the paywall.
Posters post these links because the content is unavailable any other way. HN would be poorer without any stories from the NYT and WaPo, inconvenient as this all is.
Please stop talking about counter cultures like it's some new idea you came up with. You don't even realize why it's so easy to make fun of y'all, goddamn.
To reply to zombio: it's probably that NYT and WaPo are such major publications that a site that wants to link to the best content can't very well exclude them. I agree it's annoying. What I do is visit the URLs in an incognito browser window.