I've been hooked into the Hacker News firehose feed now for about a week and I love it.  

I haven't seen any spam or abuse. It's a community that seems to value news and ideas. A lot of is opinionated, and some of the opinions are disagreeable to me, but the whole thing is very good. And I learn a lot from people I disagree with, anyway -- so it's all good. 

I push a handful of the links I like from HN to Twitter, so you all are getting the benefit of my reading this new source. 

Highly recommended!