Thanks! That's a good question. I feel like I've seen analyses like that before a few times but I'm having trouble finding one right now. I would guess that submitting around 8 EST is probably best in terms of getting the most views because you'll catch most of the US audience during the day. The probability of making it to the front page is another question though and it would definitely require looking at the data there.

I can actually think of some other relevant metrics here that I don't think I've seen quantified before. I'll probably play around with this a bit at some point and if the results are interesting then I'll write them up. If I do though then it will most likely be a few months down the line. I've already written twice as many HN meta articles as I was planning on and need to take a little break :-).

I did a brief analysis a few years ago after shoving the HN Algolia results into Postgres. IIRC, the optimal time (for highest median score) was on a Sunday afternoon or something like that. I figured that meant that you're not competing as much for views on Sunday afternoon and will get higher-on-average points. Then you may still be around on page 1 or 2 for the Monday morning rush and get a lot more traffic.