I start by scanning through the front page and clicking "HIDE" on:
Betterridge Headlines
Articles with a (YEAR)
Articles with a [PDF]
"Do X in Language"
Blockchain-related
Mac-related
"Ask HN: List things"
Hiring notices
- Specific domains:
All newspapers
All longform sites
All clickbait sites
All health information
Medium
Github
Wikipedia
Stratechery
This usually clears out all the time-sinks, ads, "Github spam" and clickbait. And sometimes you find a Tesla article or 2 that's been pushed back to the 2nd or 3rd page.