[buckler]

If you have certain areas that you're particularly interested in, make a customized feed. For example, I've used Yahoo Pipes to create a feed to filter out Delicious Popular items that contain words (topics) that do not interest me (e.g. Twitter, Illustrator, etc.). I simply load the customized feeds on Google Reader for efficient browsing.

If you come to Hacker News mainly to read through discussions, I've found subscribing to AskYC RSS feed helps (or to visit AskYC archives on searchyc.com), since they seem to contain the most interesting opinions & discussions to me. Other than that, make a commitment to check HN only twice a day (e.g. once in the morning and night) or something, since you won't miss out on top items that will be on the front page all day long.