As an alternative, just trust the HN home page algorithm.

Stories seem to move up to a relevant max rank position, stay there and then move back down. Big stories stay in the top 5 for 20+ hours.

Here's what I do: If I only have time to look at 5 stories per day, I visit once per day at any point in time and look at the first 5 stories. If I have time to look at 20, look at the first 20.

Set yourself a timeout, start reading at the top, stop when the time is up, repeat after 12 or 24 hours. Works very well for me, I get the best stories, and feel pretty well informed.