Ask HN: How to consume HN?

Hi All, I've been a passive reader of HN for several years now. After becoming increasingly lured to engage and interact with the community over this time, I finally registered on the site today to ask my first question:

What ways do members use to stay up to date with new threads, subscribe to topics, and receive notifications, other than manually checking the site several times a day (which I currently do)? Are there feeds, configurations or APIs that I can hook into?