Which timezone are these days and times based on?

I'm guessing UTC? The original dataset they link to[1] is in UTC.

[1] http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/03/six-months-of-hackernews-fr...

Yes, UTC it is. I should have mentioned it in the post (editing now)

In case anyone else wants to disable that awful wibiya toolbar, point cdn.wibiya.com at 127.0.0.1.

It's much easier to install noscript and simply not allow its script to run.

Sure, but editing the hosts file works for every browser.

I was asking around for feedback on that bar (just put it a few days ago). Thanks.

While not specific to ASK HN submissions, in my experience it's almost useless to submit in the evening (EST). I have submitted several interesting stories that were ignored due to the time of their submission.

Two examples:

IBM and the Jeopardy Challenge: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1566395

The Day Einstein Died: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492997

Related, the best day/time to submit an article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175223

It's from a while ago, so things may have changed.

I've referenced that article in my post - and used the same dataset as they have. The (other) article is about all posts. I've focused exclusively on Ask HN - where the post's objective is not to educate/entertain/inform but to solicit feedback. The hypothesis is that an Ask HN post demats a higher level of involvement from the reader and hence may exhibit different trends.

How many 'Ask HN' submissions were there by day? It only saw percentage by day.

The comments submissions are displayed by 'average' while the 'Ask HN' submissions are by 'percentage'.

Simply multiply the % numbers by 853 (total sample size)

Sounds like you just indirectly Asked HN.

I was hoping to the see the average points for Ask HN posts based on date and time.

Sorry, skipped the points (don't even know why I did that); will try and update later.