I think part of it is the title also. "787 plane draws a 7-8-7" doesn't tell enough to interest me, while "Dreamliner spells out "787" & Boeing logo over US during test flight" elicits an immediate "Oh, cool!"

Timing definitely has something to do with it, but also consider the headline.

Yours was "787 spells 7-8-7", which is not as simple to understand as "Dreamliner spells out...". Instantly, this headline catches enough of my attention to click on the link.

For headline copy, sometimes it will help to search Digg/Reddit and see which keywords people have already clicked on the most. This applies to email subjects, website CTA, etc.

(doh, wrote a long reply with thoughts a few hours ago from Hacker News Beta mobile app and it didn't post...fail)

sorry man, it was just the link I got. I'm all for first poster credit and respect, just sometimes same content can be generated from multiple links etc and stuff gets messed up. Annoying but you know how it goes.

On the time of posting thing...I know someone created a site to determine the optimal posting time for HN.... I have never used it tho! It's just naturally there'll be hotspots in the day based on simply where the majority of HN readers are from and the waves of social network activity.

Anyways, a good link indeed. A fun Friday afternoon share -- Great that the FlightAware guys are watching this and contributing too.

ah, the 'tool' for optimal HN Pickup. Still interesting when you look at it. http://hnpickup.appspot.com/

Also, re: titles -- yeah, descriptive titles always -- I try to do that, since I appreciate it when others do

My Flickr daily stats reset at 4pm pst, not sure if that matches the "interestingness" day, but it seems likely.

Which is midnight, GMT.