> Around 50% of the updates by your friends are never seen by you

Well yes...I suspect that's the same ratio of HN posts that are never read....because no one liked/upvoted them...and if thhe algorithms are right, that's a good thing. I'm not saying there isn't room for a new way to rank posts (in either FB or HN)...but it's a good thing to not see 100% of all the drek that gets posted to your news feed.

* edit: What would be useful is to see a comparison of how the OP's rendition of the feed compares to the status quo. I've been mostly satisfied with FB (though how do you really know how good it could be?) two of my best friends recently got married. Their friends are also close friends of mine. Theoretically, my newsfeed should be absolutely swamped with notes and photos of their wedding, and a constant circlejerk of likes and comments (I've posted scores of photos and tagged them myself, which creates a mass of FB notifications in itself)...but I've been pleasantly surprised to see that FB has still kept up an interesting variety in my feed.