Or you could just use the features you want to use and try to fail gracefully when you can't. (Old IE could be a special case, as it is solid chunk of FUBAR.)
Sure, you could do that if you had unlimited developer time and people using old browsers are an important market. but that isn't always reality, you've got to choose where to focus your efforts.
No, you don't need unlimited developer time to do feature detection. It's just good practice, after it's ingrained it doesn't take any more time than not doing it.
Don't mix "development cost" with "overall support cost".
Overall support will include specific feature testing, regression testing, and user testing. Additionally, support tickets may be opened and introduce support costs in ticket management, escalation, and assessment.
Don't provide any extra support? "Your browser is not supported/you are on your own" is much better than denying access.
Eventually people will start spoofing just to get in, and then you have a much worse problem in your hands. You know the Opera story. There is no excuse to block user agents unless it's commercial software with support contracts on the line.
I understand that the HN audience finds it incredibly simple to do. My point being, go ask your family members who don't frequent HN (or sites like it) what a user-agent is.
