A good place to look is at the HN lists page. Not exactly a curated list but you can usually find some of the more popular and 'hot' discussions here rather than the frontpage. Wadding through the top contributors usually lets you find some quality threads.

http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

leaders Users with most karma.

best Highest voted recent links.

active Most active current discussions.

bestcomments Highest voted recent comments.

noobstories Submissions from new accounts.

noobcomments Comments from new accounts.