A word about myself so you can see where I'm coming from... I'm currently part of a startup. We're working feverishly on a product that I feel might get some heavy competition in 6-12 months. I've seen one or two products that sort of come close to the area we're approaching but they haven't really hit the bulls-eye. The pace at which we're working is not for the faint of heart and I work about 12-13 hrs every day. The team has about 4 people so far (+2 part time) and I'm the lead. This is my third startup (1st time as a lead) so I've seen things from many different angles. I've experienced a startup that skyrocketed and one that failed and also one that's doing moderately well. So yes, I've seen what works and what doesn't. We're completely self funded at this point (myself and my co-founder put some cash into the company) but we might go out and raise some money 6 months from now or so. We have never applied for YC... we're probably too late and too big for YC.
Now, after reading that description, you will understand what my interests are and why I like this site so much. I'm primarily concerned with methods, ways, advice of how to work using agile methods and how to develop webapps fast. We use RoR, some Java, some Python, some Flash and a lot of JavaScript. Personally, I'm a huge fan of functional languages (Lisp & Erlang) so you will see a lot of submissions from me on those topics as well. I am also _extremely_ interested in various distribution methods (viral, word of mouth, SEO/SEM) so you will see me submit a lot of links like that.
Now, how exactly do I track news. Well, I use an RSS reader (NetNewsWire, grab it, it's free now) to gather my news and the only news website that I actually open inside a browser is Hacker News. I check RSS feeds about 3-4 times a day (usually during breaks and when I need to clear my head) and I use a YCN bookmarklet to submit (http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html). It literally takes a second to submit using that handy little piece of JS code. I track about 150 feeds. Majority of them are about programming and technology. But I also track a lot of marketing, business and startup-related legal blogs. I dislike heavy volume blogs since they post a lot of fluff and a lot of it is boring to me at this point. So, whenever I find something that's interesting to me, I post it here. Over the past six months, I found a lot of interesting blogs linked here so I doubt you're missing much if you just track HN's "new" section.
Submissions that are not strictly news are usually best links on the topic that I was researching. For example, after I did some research on recommendation systems, I posted a few links that were helpful to myself. I also use HN as a crude delicious.
I also enjoy commenting on HN because people who frequent this site tend to be smarter than people on other sites and they tend to be in the same situation as myself: fighting time and working on something and looking for ways to make their product successful and better. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) on HN is also quite high. I was afraid that it would fall after pg rebranded and expanded the focus of the site but that has not happened yet (lucky for us!)
I like to read a lot and I read very quickly so you'd be surprised how little time I actually spend reading stuff on the web. I try to read a book a week as well.
Quick tip... check out the "new" section and give a mod point to articles you like. Most of the articles get "hot" after they reach the front page but a lot of quality articles never reach it. When you've identified people who have similar interests as yourself, keep track of their submissions. I keep track of submissions of 3 people here and I upmod their stories quite often since they interest me. For example, this is my submission queue: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb
And finally, reward people who post to your threads by moding them up :). Has this made any difference to my rep? Probably not but I like spreading karma.
PS: My HN specific email's in my profile. Feel free to ask personal questions offline.