[jeffreyrogers]

I don't. There are a handful of sites I follow via RSS and I get any really important new through them. I think what you'll find though is that most news isn't relevant to you (including HN) and that you can both be less anxious and have more time to focus on whatever is important to you if you miss it. Just try delaying news consumption by a week to see what I mean. Most of it will seem irrelevant a week later.

Since I saw you mentioned wanting to be able to talk about whatever other people are bringing up in conversation or just having a basic awareness of what's going on in the world, you might want to try thebrowser.com. It usually links to a handful of high quality articles each day about topics related to what's going on in the world.