Skip to content

Comment on Using reinforcement learning and $4.80 of GPU time to find the best HN postparent

Comments

I haven't run the data, but anecdotally I can tell you that those things probably don't affect hitting the front page. They do affect the total score, but that is not what is being optimized here.

It's counterintuitive, but if you post at a really popular time, you're competing with a lot of other submissions. If you post at a really slow time, you'll get fewer votes, but it will take fewer to reach the front page and you'll have less competition.

In the end, it kinda evens out. The number of votes it takes to get to the front page and the number of competing submissions are both correlated to your fields above.

I think that this assumes a uniform distribution of "interestingness" in the competing posts across all of those dimensions and I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't the case

It may not be even, but I don't think interestingness is correlated with time of day. But I could be wrong!

Interestingness is subjective, and I would imagine different timezone people have different preferences. Interesting thing to ponder for a bit

Popular time for voting vs posting are not the same

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.