Confirmed all four on the backend. Story records are intact, unread sets are correct, nothing stale:
- Folo, “TGIFolo desktop v1.6.1 and mobile v0.5.0 are rolling out!” (Apr 15 05:38)
- Blogs on PixelUnion, “Adieu Windows: Why the French Government Is Choosing Linux” (Apr 14 00:00)
- Hacker News: Newest, “Someone bought 30 WordPress plugins…” (Apr 13 17:54)
- Hacker News: Newest, “Tell HN: Docker pull fails in Spain…” (Apr 12 12:28)
Every other unread in your HOT folder today is from Apr 15 between 07:56 and 14:17, so those four are the oldest unreads in the folder, which lines up with what you described.
In the meantime, try switching the folder view from “All stories” to “Unread” and set the sort to “Oldest first.” That pulls the stuck ones straight to the top of the list and you can blow through them with N without having to scroll past the newer stories.