I made a viewer[0] to help me find interesting posts amongst the general-type posts split by day and post type. It had the unexpected side-effect of cancelling the slot-machine-hits of finding posts by showing that most posts are mediocre and a large volume are from past days. Now I only check a few times a day and am most often disappointed in not finding more to read. Usually the comments are better than the posts that trigger them, but I don't know how to find/filter for those.
I second advice from fsflover. "nonprocast" option should help you.
Another idea from me, maybe you can try to focus on daily or weekly of highest-rated posts and ignore other posts. These are the examples (created by Colin Percival):
6 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 15.8 ms ] threadThat has helped a lot, and I'm reducing my time here on hn a lot.
[0] https://hackerer.news (click headings for other story types)
Another idea from me, maybe you can try to focus on daily or weekly of highest-rated posts and ignore other posts. These are the examples (created by Colin Percival):
Daily stories https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/
Weekly Ask HN https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/
Weekly Show HN https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-show/
The highest-rated posts usually have interesting comments from HN users.