Oh yeah, that's something I've started to spend a lot more time on now. Sometimes the threads are hard to read/follow, but once in a while there are such gems in the comments, it's definitely worth it.
I also wonder how it's possible that big of a discussion is happening in the middle of the day. I usually take a break from coding for 5 or 10 minutes, pop over to HN, refresh and see if anything sparks my interest. Then I notice some article has gone from 1XX to 3XX comments and am just like 'huh...'