These sentiments are quite familiar to me. That's why I've been building my own HN copy (https://hackerdaily.io). It shows all posts per day, which has a few benefits:

1. It doesn't become an addictive slot machine that updates every minute.

2. The conversations have already happened, which makes it easier to see which threads are interesting and informative and which are not.

It also uses an outline.com like style for the articles, which removes the tracking and spamming and places the focus on the articles itself.

It's still in active development and so far I've only used it myself, so all feedback is welcome!

Ps. It’s an PWA, so you can add it to your homescreen and use it like an app.

I like the idea, but I'm wondering about the legality of copying the contents of news.ycombinator. Do you have any thoughts on this?