HN tends to punish people using Tor or other methods to obfuscate their tracks. On the four or five other accounts I've abandoned, this is then first that allows me more than 3 minutes on the site without invalidating my token due to inactivity. I suspect because it's been a valid IP every time (or so they think).
You should not expect privacy on computer systems you do not own. HN included.
Wickard v. Filburn established that all activity, including washing your dishes, is economic activity that congress can regulate under the commerce clause.
Modern interpretation of the commerce clause, as spoken about in Thomas' dissent in Reich v. Gonzales, means that the 10th amendment is relatively meaningless nowadays. Combine this with the Unitary Executive (bush/Cheney's keystone), and you have a congress with all the power to ignore government limits, controlled by the executive branch.
I'm US citizen living in Canada. Americans are usually so programmed with Exceptionalism that it takes months for the brightest expats to clear the brainwashing. I was lucky enough to have very patient friends who politely explained why my "America is obviously better" was wrong.
Americans rarely pay attention to all the USA flags in all their television programming, so you must forgive them for the militant nationalism. They really don't know any better until they've lived outside their borders.
I dunno, this morning I was able to get minecraft, sims 3 (via wine) and steam (playing xcom) on an Arch/BridgeLinux liveUSB playing without issues in about 45 minutes. Kernel 3.12.x means the 3d was slower than I'd want (AMD free drivers are waaay faster in the new kernels), but I didn't want to do a full pacman -Syu on the liveUSB. Performance was decent, and had I installed to hard drive, would've been competitive with windows even without the catalyst drivers installed (which is a yaourt install away).
You should not expect privacy on computer systems you do not own. HN included.