Curious behavior arises from HN's Feed inside Google Reader with "Sort by Magic" turned on... it seems to keep the good stuff towards the top, but anything really spammy and sensational occasionally gets the top place (so watch out for anything hitting #1 in there suddenly), but then you tend to miss some of the more obscure goodies, which arguably I miss from time to time anyway. Still, it is a curious different ranking, probably mostly driven by Google Reader "likes" and sharing.