Time of day definitely plays a part, but there’s also luck/randomness to it.

Even the same time and same day of the week there will never be exactly the same set of users online, and that’s even more true with regard to the users who are choosing to look at HN’s /newest page. So pure luck can determine whether a bunch of comic book lovers see it soon after submission and give it enough votes to get on HN’s front page, or just a bunch of people who think it’s a boring story worth ignoring.

(Personally I thought it sounded like it might have interesting comments worth reading, hence my being here, but I wouldn’t have found it interesting enough to upvote if I were one of the people who saw it on the new submissions page.)