Ask HN: How do you have conversations on HN?

This may be a very dumb question. But: given that HN (the website) has no notifications system for replies, how do you maintain a conversation in the comments?

I may be missing something, but the only way I have come across to see whether anyone has replies to any of my comments is:

1. Click user name (top right) 2. Click "comments" (4th link from the bottom) 3. Refresh periodically and try to notice whether any new comments have arrived that I haven't seen.

In practice for me I only remember to even do step 1 maybe every few weeks or months, so I never really get to participate in actual realtime-ish conversations.

People often talk about how good the discussions are on HN, so I wonder if I'm missing a better way? This seems really hard and clunky.