I come to the site daily, but haven't really noticed anything being really all that slow. Could just be timing.

One thing I like doing is following the Hacker News twitter acct: http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/

It tweets popular stories and keeps me from visiting the site all that often (unless its a comment link).

Its not a fix, but if anyone out there didn't know about it you should follow. It'll keep you from visiting the site every 5 minutes to see if anything new has been posted.