Comment by gojomo
15 years ago
I'm in California, usually, but have often observed HN through the California night -- either because of my own odd online hours, or trips to distant time-zones.
It's true there's never total quiescence, but the pace of actions changes by a noticeable factor. (Without going to the data, I'd guess 5X from trough to peak over a day's cycle, and a somewhat smaller weekend-to-weekday difference. Holidays and nice bay area weather also play a factor.)
I've found optimal submission time to generally be midday london time, you catch the european lunch-time traffic and the US wake-up/get-into-work traffic. I don't think traffic from anywhere else is heavy enough to matter.