("What are the most noteworthy things that have been said on HN about ...?" "I remember reading an excellent comment that had something to do with ..., but all I can remember is that it used the word ..." "Do I have any comments in the highlights?")
ordering by time highlighted would be nice in any case, but actually, for an RSS feed it is less important. at least some rss clients can tell me which entries are new or updated regardless of the date.
I was at MIT just before this switch, and treasure having gotten to take these deep dive courses, even if .002 and .003 kicked my ass.
6.004 (followed up by 6.033) is probably the course that really drove my career into systems dev.