Once you hit the front page, the time is quite relevant. But before then.. /newest is so poorly visited and read that you're really throwing yourself into the hands of lady luck and hoping there are more than a handful of people who even see your item. (Yep, tons of good stuff doesn't get voted up at all simply because no-one sees it.)

Yes, but, competition is fiercer. The beginning of a business day in the US is also the time when a lot of strong, interesting articles (from newspapers, blogs, etc) are being read by awakening HN'ers and then submitted. They can crowd out your post. But if you succeed, you'll enjoy strong inertia for a long time as people keep coming back when they should be working. Like right now :)

[I think; subjective analysis etc etc]

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991859

>"the optimal time is to post to HN."

When you have good content and your luck is at its maximum.

Luck is something that happens to people who seek it out. I get better results when I post at the times all these analytical tools say is best.

I've been chatting on HN and posting links for a year or two now, but I still haven't figured out what I gain by a higher karma. Sure, it's a tiny treat to see your link get popular or your number get a bit higher. But am I missing something?

It's not about karma. It's about making sure things I think are worth seeing are seen.

That makes sense.

That I didn't think about that way immediately probably says that you have a much closer relationship with the HN readership than I do. :-)

they didn't include HN in their writeup, but the bitly folks had a blog post about this topic pretty recently. They looked at posting times for Twitter, FB, and Tumblr. http://blog.bitly.com/post/22663850994/time-is-on-your-side