I have made a habit of mining HN's Algolia search engine. You can uncover some real gems if you just put in the effort to narrow down your search to the particular topic you're interested in. Also: to avoid bias I wrote a script that opens random stories from the HN main page in my browser tabs, and am often surprised and refreshed by what I read (As most stories that gain popularity on the main page have vague titles)
https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/
and
https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/
Later on I built a workflow system for handling a job application workflow based on the same principles. The first article was a big hit on HN (e.g. a good use of the "No True Scotsman" trope) but the second has never really appealed to people for some reason.