For whatever reason, the home page tends to focus on "News" from Washpost/ NYtimes/etc ... FAANG/ Big Co stuff (releases, interviewing, blah) and a bunch of other stuff that is generally not interesting to me.
To find really good personal blog posts, interesting new companies, or up and coming technology its almost always on "new", "show", or "ask"
Some of the thread most interesting me I see on mew that sadly dont go anywhere. I've wondered though, what times the site is most active.
I guess i rely on the home page for the "big" stuff.. the serendipity comes from the rest I guess.
I went to look in New after reading this page, and found this wonderful long article, about the world's reaction to the virus, which had been posted for 6 hours without getting an upvote! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23934334
So thanks, I used to read in New all the time, but forgot how good it can get! The front page is a lil like the pop music of HN..and I dont listen to pop music, not sure why I trust the front few pages contain the best of HN.
So many interesting items fall off the "Newest" page without ever being seen or voted on, it's worth a quick scan. I often see something there that's worth a second look ... my interests aren't totally aligned with the core HN community, so much of what I would like never hits the Front Page.
Or, you know, just FOMO.
you know if we customize the front page then we basically get something like Reddit...
[0] https://plurrrr.com/, for which I wrote my own SSG [1]