Tried RSS feeds but it sucks. There needs to be an RSS feed that only shows items that make it at least to the front page. Or maybe beyond some configurable vote threshold.
http://nirmalpatel.com/fcgi/hn_feed.fcgi
[Edit: this feed now appears to be redirecting, but either URL works in my feed-reader: http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http://...]