I've been consuming HN through the newsyc50 Twitter account which only shows me news items that have > 50 points. I started out with newsyc20 (> 20) and have been weaning myself off.
I've found that stopping reading the conversations has been the easiest part, but that HN's filter of interesting stories is hard to beat.
(imo) the conversations/comments make HN more than the stories. When I read the comments before the stories, I get a different perspective(than reading stories before comments).
I personally prefer his RSS feeds (http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsyc50 in my case), which lets me follow HN inside Google Reader, keeping track of what I've read / liked. It's useful, because I don't miss interesting stories, and I don't feel like I have to constantly monitor the home page in search of interesting posts.
Of course, it's also good to go vote up new stories sometimes. Especially if you want to be part of the emerging HN discussion (I often comment once everybody is gone :/ ).