Randy Olson is a Computer Science graduate research assistant at Michigan State University. This post originally appeared on his blog.

Today I’m going to tackle the question that’s on all Redditor’s minds: How do I get a highly-upvoted post on Reddit?

I won’t bother covering the basics of making a successful post on Reddit because there are at least a dozen other articles out there that already cover that. Instead, I’m going to walk you through my analysis of over 850,000 top posts from the past year on Reddit from 4,200 of the most active subreddits.

I bolded the big takeaway messages if you’re not feeling like a long read. Give these tips a try for a week or two and report back how well they worked for you in the comments.

Disclaimer: I am only making statements about probability in this post. Following these guidelines will by no means 100% guarantee that you will get a top post. Rather, following these guidelines will maximize your chance of getting a top post.

When to post

It turns out one of the biggest factors affecting the success of your post is the day and time you submit it. In the top graph (below), the shaded area gives an indication of the number of upvotes I am confident a successful post will receive given that it is posted at a given day and time. Similarly, the bottom graph shows the total number of posts that will receive more than 100 upvotes given the day and time they are posted.

Here’s a handy time zone conversion chart so you can convert the UTC time to your local time: http://www.scc-ares-races.org/utcchart.html

Every day around 12 to 1 p.m. UTC (7 to 8 a.m. EST), there is a highly significant spike in both the number of successful posts and the total number of upvotes those successful posts receive. Undoubtedly, this trend is due to office workers in the U.S. coming into work and catching up on Reddit before they start their workday. The key to success here seems to be to (1) post early in the morning before the deluge of new posts comes in and (2) take advantage of your post’s head start and get upvoted out of the /r/new queue before everyone else. If you’ve posted around 12 to 1 p.m. UTC and your post escapes the /r/new queue, then your post is in prime position to be viewed and upvoted by the U.S. workforce coming in to work in the next few hours.

Interestingly, more posts are successful during the weekdays, but the successful posts on the weekends generally receive far more upvotes. What this means for you is that you stand more of a chance of having a successful post on Monday than you do on Saturday, but if your post is successful, it won’t receive as many upvotes on Monday than it would on Saturday.

Here’s what I find amusing in this graph: the number of successful posts peaks on Mondays and then gradually declines over the week, showing that Redditors likely spend more time on Reddit early on in the week when they’re suffering from a bad case of the Mondays. (And Tuesdays... and maybe even Wednesdays.)

What to post

Great, so now you know when to submit your post, but... what kind of content should you post? First off, let me get this one out of the way: Reddit is married to imgur.com as an image hosting service.

If you’re submitting an image post, upload your image to imgur.com and submit that link. Nearly 60% of the top posts from the past year were some form of image or GIF hosted on imgur.com. With that out of the way, let’s move on to the next-most-popular content format.

If it’s not images that you’re looking at on the top posts page, then it’s most likely a YouTube video. Reddit is dominated by image and video content nowadays. In fact, if you look at just the data presented here, at least 2/3 of the top content on Reddit is an image or video. As such, if you have some sort of message you want to share with Reddit, you’re best off trying to communicate it through an image or video.

Quickmeme.com appears to be Reddit’s favorite meme generating website, whereas blogspot.com seems to be the most popular blogging service. What I find surprising is that Facebook and Twitter links appear to be shared equally, even though many subreddits have implemented rules against sharing direct Facebook links. Meanwhile, the Wikimedia/pedia services are Reddit’s go-to websites for free educational content, showing just how much Redditors rely on wikis for their information. Lastly, Reddit’s top news posts most often come from BBC, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post. When it comes to news sources on Reddit, it looks like the U.K. has the U.S. trumped!

If it’s upvotes you’re after, then I have a different story for you. Whereas imgur.com links are by far the most likely to rise to the top, successful /r/AskReddit self-text posts and meme posts are significantly more likely to receive more upvotes. It’s undeniable that Reddit loves sharing stories and jokes via /r/AskReddit, and the patrons of /r/AdviceAnimals freely hand out upvotes to any meme that makes them so much as chuckle. Keep this in mind if you’re more concerned about upvotes than getting your message out there.

Note: quickmeme.com has recently been banned from reddit entirely for vote manipulation, and imgur.com was quick to make a meme generator service to fill the void.

The final thing I’ll note here is that imgur.com ranks 1st in terms of likeliness to reach the top page, and 4th in terms of upvotes. If you’re following along, that means your best bet of reaching the top page and reaping sweet, abundant karma is to submit an imgur.com link early in the morning on the weekend.

Where to post

Alright, so now you know what and when to submit your post to Reddit. Where should you post it?

Surprisingly, the default image subreddits don’t completely dominate the top posts. As this graph shows, the default image subreddits comprise only about 7-8% of the top-ranked posts from the past year. Let this be a heartening discovery: you don’t have to post in a default image subreddit to have a successful post on Reddit. The rest of the subreddits not listed here all accounted for only ~0.25% of Reddit’s top posts (each), so if you don’t pick one from this list, your chances of having a successful post are more or less the same (i.e., low).

However, again, if it’s karma you’re after, I have a very important addendum: the fraction of top posts that come from a subreddit is highly predictive of the number of upvotes your post will receive if it’s successful. Successful posts in /r/funny, /r/AdviceAnimals, and /r/pics by far receive the most upvotes on average. So keep that in mind: the higher you go on the “Fraction of top posts” chart (i.e., smaller fractions), the fewer upvotes your post will potentially receive. The good news is that smaller subreddits have fewer people posting to them, so even though you receive fewer upvotes, your post is far more likely to show up on the front page of anyone subscribed to that subreddit.

(For you stats nerds out there: I also fit this model with all 4,200 subreddits and the relationship is still significantly predictive, even if I remove the extreme outliers on the right of the graph.)

What title to use

Now for the last of the five W’s: Why? (If you didn’t catch it, the first W was “Who?” The answer to that one is you!) Why should someone bother clicking on your post, read it, and upvote it? That’s the purpose of your post’s title. Below is a word cloud of the most-used words in the top posts on Reddit. The larger the word is, the more often it was used.

I’m going to take 40 or so of the most-used words, break them down into categories, then give you some example titles that the words were used in. Please take these example titles as just that: examples. Use them as inspiration to create your own post titles.

X-post

“X-post” is the most-used word in the top posts from last year, and if you’re familiar with Reddit, this should not be a surprise. Cross-posting is huge on Reddit, especially when there are many subreddits with similar interests. Generally, cross-posted links do better because they’re already well-liked in another subreddit before they were cross-posted, and thus were vetted for the poster beforehand. A word of warning: be careful with cross-posting to excess. Reddit can get pissed off pretty quickly if you share a link too much.

Speaking of time...

Some mention of time is commonplace in top Reddit posts. These words seem to be used to make the post relevant to current or past events, and thus make for a more interesting post title.

So I saw this guy the other day...

Mentions of other, non-specific people seem to be extremely common among the top posts. Reddit apparently likes to gossip and share stories about other people.

Puppies and kitties everywhere

Reddit isn’t just all cat lovers any more: cats and dogs are mentioned equally in the top posts from the past year. It’s easy to relate to other people through likable animals like cats and dogs, especially when you’re sharing a cute picture of them.

Gamers unite

Big surprise, Redditors like to talk about games. Video games, specifically.

Talk about what you're posting

As I mentioned before, images and videos are the primary content on Reddit. It turns out it helps if you talk about the image or video you’re posting.

Have a broader perspective

People come on Reddit to escape their daily life and learn something about the world. If you can fill that need for them, they will upvote you for it.

Emotions make people like your post more

If you’re really passionate about what you’re posting, let it shine through! Redditors love it when a post title shows emotion.

A diminutive preoccupation

Reddit loves to talk about little things. I guess it’s because little things are cute.

Talk about Reddit!

Reddit is big on self-referential jokes. If you can get in on those, you’re golden!

Location is key

If it’s relevant, mention a location related to your post. It helps give context to what Redditors are looking at. Amusingly, “work,” “school,” and “home” are the most-used words related to location.

That’s all, folks! Don’t wait for chance to favor you; make chance favor you.

SEE ALSO: This Sweet Interactive Graphic Shows The Top 200 Reddit Posts Of All Time

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In a move bound to horrify the majority of parents-to-be, the couple are taking suggestions for the first and middle name of their baby girl, who is due to be born in April. Users are able to vote for their favourite name once per household per day.

Writing on his site namemydaughte r, Stephen said that whilst the couple were open to all non-obscene suggestions, he and his wife maintained the final say on the name.

"Unfortunately internet I know better than to trust you," he wrote. "We will ultimately be making the final decision, Alas my daughter shall not be named WackyTaco692."

In a conversation with fellow Redditors, he described the flash of inspiration that drove him to seek the answer to his daughter's name in the arms of the internet.

"I was sitting on the end of the bed after coming home from work and the idea hit me. I tend to be very forward person (this gets me in a lot of trouble lol) and I just blurted it out - "Hunny, I am going to ask the internet what we should name our daughter! [sic]

"She was supportive right from the start. I think at first she didn't think I was actually going to do it. But once the domain was registered she knew it was real.

"Hell when I saw that namemydaughter.com was available I just knew that was the sign that I HAD to do it."

At the time of writing the top name was the surprisingly sensible Amelia Mae Mclaughlin, with just under 3,000 votes. Last year Amelia emerged as the most popular name in the UK for girls, though it is unclear where the couple are based.

The second placed name is the slightly more outlandish Cthulhu, presumably after the cosmic entity created by horror writer H P Lovecraft.

Other notable submissions of the 1,000 of so name so far include Watermelon, Not Zelda, Megatron, Moonpod and Worldwideweb.

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Reddit saw an 83% increase in traffic, to 731 million unique visitors in 2013, the company said, but "the front page of the internet" has become a much less crucial source of traffic over the same period, according to data from Shareaholic, which measures social media sharing traffic.

Reddit's share of outgoing traffic to publishers dropped 36% year-over-year, Shareaholic says:

The data measures traffic coming from Reddit (and other sites) to other web sites. Shareaholic's data covers 200,000 sites and 250 million-plus unique visitors per month.

Although that red line doesn't look like it has gone down by much, the proportional decline is big: Reddit went from providing 0.33% of the web's traffic in December 2012 to 0.21%  in December 2013 — a 36% drop.

What is jarring here is that Reddit — a site dedicated to sharing stuff — only got bigger in terms of total traffic in 2013, but appears to have become less important in terms of shared traffic over the same period.

Reddit may be hoarding more of its own traffic, in other words.

A few things changed on Reddit in 2013, Shareaholic's Danny Wong tells us. More of Reddit's top posts are discussions that feature few links, such as its "ask me anything" series in which famous people like Bill Gates or President Obama take questions from the public. And one of Reddit's more infamous 2013 posts was this thread on the Boston Marathon bombing, which contained a bunch of incorrect information.

Plus, news organizations — Business Insider included — now more frequently use Reddit as a source of news rather than a source of traffic. One example was this Bitcoin theft, which was described mostly on Reddit by other Bitcoin users — very few outgoing links were involved.

So other publishers are linking in to stuff that is already on Reddit; previously, Reddit users linked out to things they found elsewhere.

Reddit also got greater social sharing competition in 2013. Sites like Upworthy and Viral Nova became huge alternatives to Reddit in 2013 for people who like weird or heartwarming stories.

And Facebook also tweaked its algorithm to feature more useful news and fewer meme (think funny pictures of cats).

SEE ALSO: Two Programmers Claim Reddit's Voting Algorithm Is Flawed

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James Fleishman, a former vice president at "expert network" Primary Global Research LLC, is explaining on a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" what it's like to go to prison for insider trading.

Prosecutors said Fleishman acted as a middleman by introducing hedge fund traders and company execs he knew would give them illegal tips.  

In September 2011, he was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.  

Fleishman was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. He ended up having to serve just 14 months at a minimum security camp in Colorado. 

Here are a few takeaways from his Reddit AMA: 

On His Daily Routine:  

"I had a routine of running, reading and writing. I got some naps in too!"

On The Worst Part About Prison:

"The worst part was just not being able to be with my family. Missed wearing my own clothes, eating fresh fruits and vegetables, driving a car and surfing the Web."

On His Workout Routine:  

"I ran about thirty miles a week. I walked about twenty. I did push-up, pull-ups, dips 3-4 times a week. For me the best place was on the track walking or running laps, listening to my music at the foot of the Rockies in the desolation of the high desert plains."

"Guys are really disciplined for the most part. I was a slacker compared with the routines of others. Good friend I made there lost over a hundred pounds. There is a lot of positive peer pressure. Saying you don't work out is like saying you don't usually shower!"

On His Prison Job:

"I made 12 cents an hour locked up in a kitchen cleaning and filling trays for folks like the Unibomber."

On Special Skills He Learned: 

"I learned how to make a pizza crust in a microwave using a tortilla and olive oil."

On His Favorite Books He Read: 

"Jonathan Tropper Nelson Mandela Mark Twain TC Boyle "Born to Run""Man's Search for Meaning"

"I only read about a book a week. I knew guys who read a book a day! Inmates are very disciplined...or many are in terms of diet, exercise and education."

On Being A Diabetic In Prison: 

"Was not easy. At least the meds were free! But I had very few options in terms of food and could not test my blood sugars throughout the day. I had to line up at 6am for Medical if I wanted to do so!"

On What The Other Inmates Did To Get Locked Up:  

"90% of the guys at the Camp in Colorado were there on drug charges. Many of them for selling pot. My bunkmate like to point out how when he was on his way to the prison to self-surrender he saw a ton of pot shops in Denver."

On Whether Prison Is Really Like 'Orange Is The New Black':

"I have not yet read the book but really enjoyed it on Netflix. They get a lot right--details like the blankets were identical to the ones I slept with!"

Since his release, Fleishman has written a book "Inside Story: The Wall Street Criminal Who Wasn't".  Fleishman claims that he didn't commit those insider trading crimes. 

"I found myself caught in an absurd injustice that saw me first accused then convicted of an Insider Trading crime I did not commit. Unlike many who pled (sic) guilty in exchange for probation, and others who cooperated with the FBI and whose lies under oath were exposed in my own trial, I chose to maintain my integrity and my innocence and paid the price, receiving a prison sentence of two and a half years," he writes on his website.

He says he's currently working at a small software startup his friend runs.

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Since Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm to focus more on news and less on cute cats and other memes, it appears to have stolen a huge share of referred traffic on the internet — from Reddit.

Traffic referrals are the lifeblood of the web. Publishers need incoming traffic from big, popular sites to survive, and for years Reddit has been one of the biggest sources  of outgoing links to juicy content.

But suddenly, Reddit has dropped off, at least in terms of its overall share of internet traffic.

Here's a chart from Parse.ly, the web traffic analytics company (below). It shows that Google dominates the distribution of traffic on the web, and that Facebook is now a healthy second:

Note that Reddit is still huge, but that "huge" is relative on the web — it's distinctly second-rung to "gargantuan."

Yesterday we noted that Reddit's traffic is actually going up — it saw an 83% increase, to 731 million unique visitors in 2013— but its share of traffic declined in the same period, according to data from Shareaholic, which measures social media sharing traffic. The decline was a drop of 36% year-over-year, Shareaholic says:

What the heck is going on? Facebook, that's what.

This chart from Parse.ly shows how Facebook has recently become a referrer of more than 5% of all web clicks:

Parse.ly's data covers over 5 billion pageviews on hundreds of media properties. The company says:

The results are pretty clear. Sites that use Parse.ly analytics are showing significant changes in traffic from Facebook. Over 40% of Parse.ly-enabled sites have experienced a 30%-or-more growth in traffic from Facebook in 2013. Over 60% of our sites have seen a 10%-or-more bump from the social network.

Over the last year, Reddit went from providing 0.33% of the web's traffic in December 2012 to 0.21%  in December 2013 — a 36% drop, according to Shareaholic.

What is jarring here is that Reddit — a site dedicated to sharing stuff — only got bigger in terms of total traffic in 2013, but appears to have become less important in terms of shared traffic over the same period.

Reddit may also be hoarding more of its own traffic.

A few things changed on Reddit in 2013. More of Reddit's top posts are discussions that feature few links, such as its "ask me anything" series in which famous people like Bill Gates or President Obama take questions from the public. And one of Reddit's more infamous 2013 posts was this thread on the Boston Marathon bombing, which contained a bunch of incorrect information.

Plus, news organizations — Business Insider included — now more frequently use Reddit as a source of news rather than a source of traffic. So other publishers are linking in to stuff that is already on Reddit; previously, Reddit users linked out to things they found elsewhere.

Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.

SEE ALSO: Reddit Is Now A Much Less Important Source Of Traffic Than It Used To Be

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Daniel Ellsberg— the leaker of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers — did a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AmA) this week, during which he talked about the NSA surveillance state and explained why Edward Snowden should never come home.

Over the last year, Ellsberg has been an outspoken advocate of fellow whistleblower Snowden, publishing editorials in the Washington Post and The Guardian praising his efforts in June. He has also often spoke out in favor of Wikileaks and Private First Class Chelsea Manning. 

During the AmA, Redditors asked some interesting questions, including whether Snowden should return to the United States and face charges as he did. Ellsberg's answer was a very definitive "no."Check out the full AmA here, and see highlights below.

Some answers have been edited for clarity.

Do you think that Snowden should return to the U.S. and face charges, as you did?

No. Unlike me, in 1971, I don't believe he'd be out on bail or bond while awaiting trial. Like Chelsea Manning, he'd be in an isolation cell, incommunicado (Manning hasn't been spoken to by a journalist for the more than three years since she was arrested in Kuwait), probably for the rest of his life.

The Constitution hasn't changed — the laws he is charged under, and I faced in 1971-73, would at that time very likely have been held to be unconstitutional in that application (to leakers: I was the first to be prosecuted for a leak, under the Espionage Act or any law). But with the new courts, that's much less likely [for the law to be held unconstitutional]. I don't think anything or anyone would be served by his suffering that fate.

What do you think it would take for genuine reform of the NSA?

I think getting the NSA truly accountable and under democratic control is a very challenging, difficult and uncertain problem.

The four NSA experts who resigned in protest to its unconstitutional behavior since 9/11 — Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake, Ed Loomis and Bill Binney — have recently published a list of reforms that they think necessary. To ensure that these are actually carried out — after Congress and the president have (under public pressure) demanded them, they propose a permanent Signals Intelligence Investigatory Body of technical experts embedded at the NSA with continuous auditing and access to all NSA computers and databases, reporting to both Congress and the FISA Court.

Will the President or NSA readily embrace or "accept" such a body? No. But Congress could create it and empower it, if they were sufficiently pressed to do so by a properly-alarmed public.

What do you think is the most effective way to force the government to change its ways when it comes to the surveillance state?

Snowden has started the process off, by giving the public, through the press, the alarming information about how much we are being spied on by our government, with the help of the telecom companies. …

We need another congressional investigation like the Church Committee [which investigated the practices of the intelligence agencies after Watergate], and to learn from that one how to do better this time. (E.g., don't hire staff directly from the FBI, CIA, NSA!)

The so-called Oversight Committees that were created have been a total failure at oversight; they've been co-opted into being a PR agency of the intelligence community, and a guardian of its secrets. Their own abuses and obstruction of justice deserves investigation by Congress: fat chance!

A new select committee, which would include types like House representatives John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), or Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) in the Senate [who have emerged as outspoken critics of NSA surveillance], would have a chance, and should at least be given that chance: with a long mandate, subpoena powers and a big budget. Meanwhile, we need more Snowdens! Not fewer, as is said to be the president's misguided focus. 

How do you help people see that “they have nothing to hide” isn't a valid argument for why they shouldn't be concerned about NSA surveillance?

Do they want to live in a democracy, with checks and balances, restraints on Executive power? (They may not feel that they care, though I would say they should; but if they do, it's relevant to the question that follows).

Do they really believe that real democracy is viable, when one branch of government, the Executive, knows or can know every detail of every private communication (or credit card transaction, or movement) of: every journalist; every source to every journalist; every member of Congress and their staffs; every judge, at every level up to the Supreme Court? 

Do they think that every one of these people "has nothing to hide," nothing that could be used to blackmail them or manipulate them, or neutralize their dissent to Executive policies, or influence voting behavior? Is investigative journalism, or aggressive Congressional investigation of the Executive, or court restraints on Executive practices, really possible with that amount of transparency to the Executive of their private and professional lives and associations?

Without any of those checks, the kind of democracy you have is that of the German Democratic Republic in East Germany, with its Stasi (which had a minuscule fraction of the surveillance capability the NSA has now, but enough to turn a fraction of the population of East Germany into secret Stasi informants).

Might these "good, honest citizens" with nothing to hide ever imagine that they might feel a challenge to be a whistleblower, or a source to a journalist or Congressperson, or engage in associations or parties critical of the current administration? As "The Burglary" recounts, it was enough to write a letter to a newspaper critical of the FBI to get on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI list for potential detention or more active surveillance. And once on, it’s hard or impossible to get off. (See "no fly" lists today).

The full AmA is worth the read. Check it out here >

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A Reddit user has accused The Weather Channel of hacking into his Gmail account to send protest messages to DirecTV, which dropped the channel due to a contract dispute.

There's just one problem with the allegation: Weather Channel tells Business Insider that it's totally false.

The Reddit user, czarrie, says:

So I logged into my GMail account for the first time in a few days and find a pile of bizarre-looking replies to e-mails that I never sent, addressed to people with names that can be abbreviated to my email address (which I won't share here). The e-mails I have are all generated replies, whereas the original messages all seem to be directed at DirectTV, concerned about how DirectTV has dropped TWC, and how these letters are "being forward to their Congressmen" or something of the like.

... So, who's getting paid to spoof these e-mails/faxes to DirectTV?

He or she also provided several redacted image of the hacked inbox, showing a bunch of spam:

DirecTV has apparently also sent replies to the spam, including this one from "Ryan," a DTV customer service specialist. he writes, "Now we understand why we are receiving a lot of emails about TWC removal":

A Weather Channel spokesperson says, "Of course this is not true. We have not, are not and would not ever engage in anything like this."

SEE ALSO: Weather Channel CEO Says Programming May Never Return To DirecTV

SEE ALSO: Weather Channel's Highly Successful Mobile App Is Destroying Its Highly Successful Cable Channel

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When celebrities want to promote something, they take to the internet. Since Bill Murray has a new movie called Monuments Men opening on February 7th, he took toReddit and delivered a detailed and thoughtful AMA. 

The result was a series of amazing revelations about his work on the movie Garfield, along with a few interesting facts about his terrorizing of Japanese sushi chefs, his favorite acting gig, and that time he hired an assistant he couldn't talk to. 

Check out the sixteen most amazing, gotta read things we learned about Bill Murray during his detailed question and answer session. 

Bill Murray basically rewrote Garfield on the fly. A few years ago we learned that Bill Murray did the voice of Garfield in the animated Garfield movies because he saw the name Joel Coen on the script, didn’t actually read it, and thought it was written by one of the Coen Brothers. The name was a typo, it was actually Joel Cohen. But what you may not know is that once he was there recording his lines for the film, he started reworking the whole thing on the fly in an attempt to fix it. Bill says, "So this was an odd movie because the live footage had been shot, but the cat was still this gray blob onscreen. So I start working with this script and I'm supposed to start re-recording and thinking "I can do a funnier line than that" so I would start changing the dialogue that was written for the cat. Which kind of works, it sort of generally works, but then you realize the cat's over here in a corner sitting on a counter, and I'm trying to think how I can make it make sense. So the other characters are already speaking these lines, and so I'm going "did he really say THAT?" and you're kind of in this endgame of "how do I chess piece myself out of this one?" 

So I worked like that with this gray blob and these lines that were already written, trying to unpaint myself out of a corner. I think I worked 6 or 7 hours for one reel? No, 8 hours. And that was for 10 minutes. And we managed to change and affect a great deal." 

Bill kept working on it like that for weeks, day after day soaked in sweat as he kept trying to find a way to rewrite the movie on the fly even though the animation had already been created. He was even working on it while filming Life Aquatic. In the end Bill says "we managed to fix it, sort of." 

Bill Murray tried to save the second Garfield in much the same way he attempted to fix the first one, but it didn’t work this time. He says "the next time, they had been shooting for 5 weeks. And I cursed again. I said "I just asked for one little thing, letting me know." and that one was EVEN HARDER. The second one was beyond rescue, there were too many crazy people involved with it. And I thought I fixed the movie, but the insane director who had formerly done some Spongebob, he would leave me and say "I gotta go, I have a meeting" and he was going to the studio where someone was telling him what it should be, countermanding what I was doing." 

While in Japan filming Lost in Translation Bill Murray used to go to a Sushi bar and ask the chef uncomfortable questions for fun. Bill explains, "I would go to sushi bars with a book I had called "Making Out in Japanese." it was a small paperback book, with questions like "can we get into the back seat?""do your parents know about me?""do you have a curfew?" And I would say to the sushi chef "Do you have a curfew? Do your parents know about us? And can we get into the back seat?" The sushi chef eventually retaliated by bringing in a live eel, killing it, and serving the result to Bill Murray 30 seconds later. Murray says, "It was the freshest thing I had ever eaten in my life." 

Bill Murray thinks the Marijuana threat has been over-exaggerated. When asked whether the drug should be legalized he said, "People are realizing that the war on drugs is a failure, that the amount of money spent, you could have bought all the drugs with that much money rather than create this army of people and incarcerated people." Adding, "The fact that states are passing laws allowing it means that its threat has been over-exagerated. Psychologists recommend smoking marijuana rather than drinking if you are in a stressful situation. These are ancient remedies, alcohol and smoking, and they only started passing laws against them 100 years ago." 

Bill Murray once hired a deaf/mute assistant. She had the intelligence to do the job but they couldn’t communicate. This was 30-years ago and Bill says, "I tried to accommodate more than I understood when I first hired her, she was very young in her emotional self and the emotional component of being away from her home was lacking. I tried my best, but I was working all day." Their relationship didn’t end well. Bill explains, "It didn't go particularly well for me, but for a few weeks she really was a light… We were both optimistic, but it was harder than either of us expected to make it work." 

Bill Murray thinks last year’s SNL cast was the best one since Saturday Night Live season 1. Bill explains, "…the last group with Kristen Wiig and those characters, they were a bunch of actors and their stuff was just different. It's all about the writing, the writing is such a challenge and you are trying to write backwards to fit 90 minutes between dress rehearsal and the airing. And sometimes the writers don't get the whole thing figured out, it's not like a play where you can rehearse it several times. So good actors - and those were really good actors, and there are some great actors in this current group as well I might add - they seem to be able to solve writing problems, improvisational actors, can solve them on their feet." 

Bill Murray’s favorite movie to act in was Broken Flowers. When director Jim Jarmush approached him to do it, Bill told him, ""I gotta stay home, but if you make a movie that i could shoot within one hour of my house, I'll do it." So Jarmusch found shooting locations within an hour of Bill’s house. When the movie was done Bill loved it so much he says "I didn't think I could do any better than Broken Flowers, it's a film that is completely realized, and beautiful, and I thought I had done all I could do to it as an actor. And then 6-7 months later someone asked me to work again, so I worked again, but for a few months I thought I couldn't do any better than that." 

"It was a real fiesta" says Bill Murray of filming The Fantastic Mr. Fox. They went out to a friend’s farm where they recorded during the day and at night, "had a LOT of great food, a lot of great wine and great stories. It went on until people started literally falling from their chairs and being taken away." 

Bill Murray credits his brother Brian Murray for making what he is possible. He says Brian was his "first great influence" and adds, "To this day, if I have a question about something ethical or about being an actor or entertainer or a person or something like that, he's a person who helped form me." 

If Bill Murray could go back in time and talk to one historical figure, it would be Gregor Mendel. Bill Murray likes scientists, "in a funny way." Gregor Mendel was a monk who died in 1844 and is credited as the founder of the science of genetics. 

Bill Murray’s favorite place to play golf is in Ireland. Bill explains, " that's where my ancestors come from, and it's the most beautiful country to play golf in, and when you come as a guest to play golf you are treated like a king." 

Bill Murray thinks the script for Groundhog Day was the greatest script of 1993. He also recommends visiting Punxsutawney. Bill says, "it is one of the few things that is BETTER than advertised." 

Bill Murray thinks ads should suck less. When asked if he thought ads should be more like Bill Murray he responded, "I don't know if brands should be more like Bill Murray, but there's no question they should suck less." 

The best sandwich Bill Murray ever ate came from a place called Godfather, not far from Warner Brothers. Bill says, "when you were having a bad day, I remember a particularly rough movie, you'd get sandwiches from this place. And they were very filling and very tasty, and then you'd forget about the morning." 

Bill Murray is shocked to be so awesome. When asked what it’s like being so awesome, he responded, "Well, nothing prepared me for being this awesome. It's kind of a shock. It's kind of a shock to wake up every morning and be bathed in this purple light." 

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Some may have wondered why Bill Murray agreed to voice the title character in 2004's animated film-version of "Garfield" during a career peek — just a year after his "Lost In Translation" Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination.

While "Garfield:" The Movie" went on to rake in $200 million worldwide, it was critically panned. The sequel, 2006’s “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties,” went straight to DVD.

But thanks to a recent Reddit chat with Murray, we now know why he agreed to star in the cartoon franchise — he was confused.

You see, there are two directors in Hollywood with the same name except for one letter.

There is Joel Coen of the Coen Brothers who wrote and directed "Inside Llewyn Davis,""Burn After Reading,""Fargo," among many other critically acclaimed films. 

And then there is Joel Cohen who wrote "Cheaper By The Dozen,""Daddy Day Camp,""Monster Mash: The Movie," and other light comedies — including "Garfield: The Movie."

Murray confusedly thought the "Garfield" script was by the former and signed on to voice the famous cat in the movie series.

The 63-year-old actor explained what happened in a revealing response during the Reddit chat after a fan asked: "Will there be a 'Garfield' 3?"

I don't think so. I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it.

And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen.

I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind.

So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought "he's great, I'll do it." So then it was months before i got around to actually doing it, and I remember i had to go to a screening room in somewhere, and watch the movie and start working. And because they had had trouble contacting me, they asked my friend Bobby to help corral the whole situation together. So Bobby was there, and you know when you're looping a movie you're rerecording to a picture?

So this was an odd movie because the live footage had been shot, but the cat was still this gray blob onscreen. So I start working with this script and I'm supposed to start re-recording and thinking "I can do a funnier line than that" so I would start changing the dialogue that was written for the cat. Which kind of works, it sort of generally works, but then you realize the cat's over here in a corner sitting on a counter, and I'm trying to think how I can make it make sense. So the other characters are already speaking these lines, and so I'm going "did he really say THAT?" and you're kind of in this endgame of "how do I chess piece myself out of this one?"

So I worked like that with this gray blob and these lines that were already written, trying to unpaint myself out of a corner. I think I worked 6 or 7 hours for one reel? No, 8 hours. And that was for 10 minutes. And we managed to change and affect a great deal.

The next day I came into work and the producer gave me a set of golf clubs, and I thought "that was kind of extreme, especially since I can't go play." And the second reel was even HARDER because the complications of the first ten minutes were triangulated. It was really hard to write my way out of that one. And there were all these people on the other side of the recording studio, and at the end of the reel I was SOAKED In perspiration. I had drunk as much coffee as any columbian ever drank, and I said "you better just show me the rest of the movie." And they showed me the rest of the movie, and there was just this long, 2 minute silence.

And I probably cursed a little, and I said "I can fix this, but I can't fix this today. Or this week. Who wrote this stuff?"

And it appeared that one of the people behind the screen was the misspelled Joel Cohen. And I said "how could you have THAT scene take place before this scene? This can't possibly happen? Who edited this thing?"

And another person behind the glass was the editor of the film. He quit the film that week to go work on another job, so that began a long process of working on the film. I worked the rest of the week on it, and I said "Bobby it is still nowhere near done. But I can't fix it all, we have to try to do this again."

It was sort of like Fantastic Mr Fox without the joy or the fun. We did it twice in California, and once in Italy when I was working on the life Aquatic, we were working on an INSANE place in Italy, with a woman who was a voice from above interrupting everything, I cursed again, and she left to take another job, and that was just the first once.

And we managed to fix it, sort of. It was a big financial success. And I said "just promise me, you'll never do that again." That you'll never shoot the footage without telling me.

And they proceeded to do it again. And the next time, they had been shooting for 5 weeks. And I cursed again. I said "I just asked for one little thing, letting me know." and that one was EVEN HARDER. The second one was beyond rescue, there were too many crazy people involved with it. And I thought I fixed the movie, but the insane director who had formerly done some Spongebob, he would leave me and say "I gotta go, I have a meeting" and he was going to the studio where someone was telling him what it should be, countermanding what I was doing.

They made a movie after that second miscarriage, that went directly to video. So they sort of shot themselves in the foot, the kidneys, the liver and the pancreas on the second one. If you had a finer mind working on them? The girl, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, she was sweet. In the second movie they dressed her like a homeless person. You knew it wasn't gonna go well.

SEE ALSO: Here's The Measly Amount Bill Murray Made For 'Rushmore' Because He's Awesome

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Gmail went down for about 20 minutes this afternoon and professionals everywhere were forced to actually be productive (just kidding, they took to Twitter and tweeted jokes about the service's failure). 

— Justin (@JGreenDC) January 24, 2014

In an unfortunate twist, Google's Site Reliability Engineering Team announced that they scheduled a Reddit AMA literally minutes before its mail client went down.

Did someone say more jokes?

But it was a great opportunity to ask a good question: What's the protocol for engineers when Gmail does go down?

Here was the answer:

The full text reads:

Q: Sooo....what's it like there when a Google service goes down? How much freaking out is done?

A: Very little freaking out actually, we have a well-oiled process for this that all services use - we use thoroughly documented incident management procedures, so people understand their role explicitly and can act very quickly. We also exercise this processes regularly as part of our DiRT testing.

Running regular service-specific drills is also a big part of making sure that once something goes wrong, we’re straight on it.

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Whenever snow is in the forecast, kids all over the country are crossing their fingers and hoping for a day off.

But how much snow does it really take to get that cancellation?

A new map from Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy (atrubetskoy) gives us a visual.

We first saw this map on The Atlantic, which reports,

Using data "taken from hundreds of various points from user responses...interpolated using NOAA's average annual snowfall days map," Trubetskoy made a map showing how much snow it typically takes to close schools in the U.S. and Canada.

Notice that for much of the southern U.S., all it takes is "any snow" to shut schools down. For the Upper Midwest and Canada, two feet of snow are required for a closure.

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Most people don't know that Reddit has a small but thriving advertising business.

This is, after all, a site that gets more than 100 million unique visitors in a single month. It's a mass medium, which is why advertisers like it, but it also contains so many niche channels that brands can target their audiences almost microscopically on the site — and no one else knows they are there.

Last year, Reddit hired a new sales and strategy chief, Mike Cole, to beef up its sponsor roster. We brought you his first (hilarious) sales pitch deck back in May, and now he's got a new one.

It's awesome. (Download your own copy here.)

Welcome! Doge has you covered.

Is your company endorsed by Bill Murray? No. Of course not.

Reddit has, surprisingly, been ignored by the ad world until very recently.

Actor and comedian Will Ferrell went on Reddit on Tuesday to answer questions from users for the first time, and he offered one of the funnier AmA's (Ask-me-Anything) in recent memory.

Ferrell, a former Saturday Night Live cast member and star of such films as Anchorman and Old School, was trying to raise awareness for a non-profit called Cancer For College.

"I could have done my FIRST-EVER AMA for lots and lots and lots of things. Movies! My book! My sunscreen! My range of crocodile purses!," he wrote. "But, this [is] World Cancer Day, I wanted to support Cancer for College, which helps provide college scholarships to cancer survivors."

We're sharing our favorite moments below, but you can check out the full AmA here.

On whether Mark Wahlberg (his co-star in "The Other Guys") smells nice:

"Yes, it goes without saying. His scent is a pleasing combination of vanilla and leather."

On what was the craziest Hollywood party he's ever been to:

"Craziest Hollywood party was probably at the house of Dave Coulier right at the height of the Full House madness. This would've been '92. I was 2 years out of college."

On what movie role he wished he could have landed:

"Yes. It was down to me or Tobey Maguire for Spider-Man and they harshly told me I was too fat for the suit. That having been said, every time I watch Spider-Man I still think I was the better actor for the role."

On how many times people have approached him on the street and said Ron Burgundy or other character quotes:

"Zero times. It has never happened. Sadly I'm still waiting for it to happen."

On what his favorite place to eat is in San Diego:

"My favorite place to eat, but more importantly drink, in San Diego is the Blind Lady Ale House in gorgeous Normal Heights.

My number 2 place to eat in San Diego is the Cinnabon at the airport."

On his favorite SNL skit, and favorite cast member:

"I will say that off the top of my head, the two favorite sketches that I was a part of had to have been the Harry Caray space show with Jeff Goldblum and, of course the cowbell sketch with Christopher Walken.

My favorite cast member to work with was Julia Louis-Dreyfus."

And on that note, here's that classic Will Ferrell sketch of him playing Harry Caray on Saturday Night Live.

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Reddit user Ricky Mikeabono created an amazing map of the best coffee house near every New York subway stop in Manhattan. 

"I just like good coffee and hanging out in coffee shops, and the map started because I wanted to find some more," Mikeabono told Business Insider in an email. (Keep reading below.)

Mikeabono said he started researching the city's best coffee shops using articles, blogs, Yelp, Google, and Zagat reviews, trying to avoid duplicates. He also enlisted the help of his friends, and on the weekends tried to find out what type of equipment and beans were used at each shop to help determine quality.

Mikeabono also created an Android app for the map that lets users scroll and zoom. "I would like to make it interactive, where more information come up for each coffee shop, but that's a project which will take sometime," he told us.

He's also open to suggestions, and says he will keep updating the map accordingly.

DON'T MISS: We Tried The Red-Hot Coffee Place That Just Raised $25 Million From Tech Investors

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SEE ALSO: The Funniest Highlights From Will Ferrell's Reddit AmA

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While on the promotional trail for his upcoming film "The Monuments Men," Matt Damon took some time to stop by Reddit for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with fans.

The film, which opens Friday, has a huge ensemble cast of stars from George Clooney to Bill Murray, so while a lot of the questions had to do with Damon, there was also a bunch dealing with his co-stars, his friends in Hollywood, and their antics.

While some celebrities answer questions with brief responses, Damon spoke very candidly to fans about roles.

We've compiled some of the best highlights below. You can check out the full AMA here.

What the best prank his "Monuments Men" and "Ocean's 11" co-star, George Clooney ever pulled on him:

"I got these giant fruit baskets in the mail from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. They had just made jokes at everyone's expense at the Golden Globes that were really funny. George made up stationary with my name on it, and sent a really wounded letter to Tina and Amy saying my feelings were really hurt, how could they do this, etc. So they sent two fruit baskets. One had a letter with an apology. Another said 'If this is part of some Clooney prank, please know that we’re grown-ass comedians, and you have to do a little better to fool us.'"

What he thought of his portrayal in "South Park" creator's "Team America: World Police":

"I thought it was brilliant! I mean, I never understood it, and then I heard an interview with them and they said the puppet came in looking kind of mentally deficient and they didn’t have time to change it, so they just made me someone who could really only say his own name. All the comedy they’re doing is really next-level stuff."

When a fan asked Damon to recall the most challenging time in his life, he gave a very poignant response in which he references Philip Seymour Hoffman who passed away last week.

"Yeah, there are a number of kind of rugged times, particularly in a career like this. Nothing gets given to you, and you have to struggle for everything, and I think those struggles really do define who you are, and it’s really important. I’ve seen parents try to remove those struggles from their kids’ lives, to the detriment of the kid, and it’s something I think about a lot. I can’t make it too easy for my kids because that doesn’t really equip them to handle the world when I’m not around. Anytime you deal with death, anytime in my life on a personal level that I’ve lost someone, that’s always a moment to grieve and feel incredibly thankful that I’m still here and I’m still able to have my family around me. I’m just thinking of that because it’s kind of a s----- week because of Phil. It’s kind of on the brain."

If he's worried that Jimmy Kimmel (who's had a fun rivalry with Damon for years) will show up and ruin his AMA:

"I’m actually Backstage at the Kimmel show. I’m hoping to be on tonight, I’m told I’m going to get on tonight for the first time in 10 years."

The story behind this exchange between Damon and Reason TV, in which Damon defended teachers after his mother has been a life-long educator:

"I spoke to them at a rally for public school teachers a few years ago. My mom’s a professor and she’s become increasingly concerned, as a have a lot of teachers, about the way policy is being designed in this country. It’s being designed by a bunch of people who aren’t teachers. They talk about accountability, but they’re measuring with these standardized tests, which I believe in my heart they will start fading out. It just demonstrably does not work. No Child Left Behind does not work. I’ve always believed that they have to invite teachers into the discussion to help design policy. We would never let business men design warheads, why would you cut out educators when you’re designing education policy? So, one of those libertarian websites was there and they had a plan to attack a question about tenure. Diane Ravitch was there, she’s a huge figure in education and she jumped in and just set them straight about what having tenure meant. It just basically means you have the right to be represented, and have your side of something heard if someone was trying to get rid of you. But in terms of education policy, I think that far too much emphasis has been put on these tests. You’re going to get teachers teaching to the test and you’re not actually giving them the leeway to do their jobs."

His advice on breaking into the movie industry. 

"In terms of advice - it’s tough. The business is growing more accessible because technology is more available to people than when we started you had to shoot on film and it was very hard to get a movie made, and now kids are starting to have access to cameras at a much earlier age. In terms of breaking into the business there’s no set way to do it, you have to somehow make a movie and get it out there. In Ben and my case we wrote a movie because we were struggling to get a job. We wrote jobs for ourselves. We wrote Robin William’s character, we called it the Harvey Keitel part, because with Reservoir Dogs Harvey read his part and liked it, and that how they got funding. So we knew that was that character for us. There were so were so many ways to play that character, we were casting a wide net and just hoping to we caught a big fish, and our agent Patrick, who’s still our agent, forced him to read it and he loved it. He kicked it up to the lit department, and then we had lit agents. So we got lucky, but it’s just looking for creative ways to break in. If you just sit on your hands it’s never gonna happen, its just too competitive. Jobs are available, you have to go make your own."

He gets confused with Mark Wahlberg all the time: 

“I do get confused with Mark Wahlberg a lot, and we just have a deal that whenever we get mistaken for each other we have to be very polite. Can’t give the other a bad name.  

This happened to me yesterday, I was walking down the street with my kids, and this guy screamed “MARK WAHLBERG!” I just kept walking, because I’m not Mark, and he kept screaming “MARK WAHLBERG! I SEE YOU! DON’T WALK AWAY! MARK WAHLBERG! WE KNOW IT’S YOU!” and then he runs up to me and he says, “I love your work!” And then this woman comes up, and says “I love your family, tell your brother I said Hi!” So I said “Yes, I’ll tell Donnie Wahlberg you said Hi.”  

If people are insistent, theres no convincing them I’m not Mark, so I just become him and try to be nice to them. My kids were with me and there’s no easy way to explain that situation to them.” 

On coming up with the monologue about the NSA in "Good Will Hunting”: 

“Well, the first thing to that monologue is it’s safe to say that is the hardest that Ben and I have ever laughed while writing something. We were in our old house in Hollywood, in the basement of this house writing this thing and we were literally in tears because this monologue kept building on itself. We wrote it it one night and kept performing it back and forth, and pissing ourselves laughing.  

You know, I was unaware, as I think everyone was, that they had that capacity. Snowden is literally changing policy. These are conversations we have to have about our security, and civil liberties, and we have to decide what we are willing to accept, and he’s provided a huge service kickstarting that debate.” 

You can watch the monologue below:

Damon joked about not landing a role as Robin alongside long-time friend Ben Affleck in the upcoming “Batman / Superman” movie. 

“You are correct. After I didn't get the part, it was really awkward between Ben and I for a while. But I've still got the costume I wore in the audition and am planning on wearing it when Ben and I meet the winners of our fundraiser.”

SEE ALSO: The Funniest Highlights From Will Ferrell's Reddit AmA

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Lots and lots of vitriol spewing over at the Bitcoin subreddit lately — Apple's decision to shun Bitcoin apps has Redditors heaping negative criticism upon the company.

Here's a look at just some of the stuff being passed around the Bitcoin discussion page on Reddit. One guy even shot his iPhone in protest.

Take this Photoshopped ad, for example. It's a play on Apple's old ad challenging IBM.

This guy shot his iPhone 5S with a rifle in exchange for a much more Bitcoin-friendly Google Nexus 5.

Those not wanting to destroy their devices can swap their iPhones for Bitcoin using a service called MintSpare.

Redditors are also celebrating celebrity support — Joe Rogan's on board with them.

And famed investor Mark Cuban, while he doesn't seem too interested in the currency, is bothered by the ramifications of a less-than-open mobile web.

There's even a contest to re-edit Apple's famous "here's to the misfits" commercial with a Bitcoin bent, hopefully as a way to change the company's attitude on Bitcoin. Here's the unedited original commercial.

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Flappy Bird is the latest viral hit in the mobile gaming world. But  on Sunday, the developer took down the game because it became way too popular, too quickly. 

In the game, you have to help the bird safely fly through a bunch of obstacles by furiously tapping your screen. 

As it turns out, the game essentially started on Reddit.

On November 17, 2013, Reddit user Bronxsta mentioned Flappy Bird in a list of "masochistic" iOS games on the iPhone gaming section of the site, according to Know Your Meme.

About a month ago, a Reddit user who goes by the name of "Transizzleator" posted the following, under a thread entitled "Please help Flappy Bird take off!":

Hey!

I have a great friend who's uncle developed an amazing game called Flappy Bird for all iOS devices and some help would be greatly appreciated.

It's free to play and if you could just take the time to download it (and recommend it to a friend if you like it) the help would be greatly appreciated.

No in-app purchases and more importantly it's fun! I don't benefit from this at all and am just trying to get a passed-up artist realized.

Thanks for all help in advance!

Late last month, YouTube user PewDiePie uploaded a video of him playing Flappy Bird. That video was viewed 5.4 million times. 

Since then, Flappy Bird has quite literally taken off. But just two days ago, Nguyen tweeted that he would take down the game from both the iOS and Android app stores. He removed the game on February 9, and some people are not taking it well.

Business Insider has reached out to Nguyen and will update this story if we hear back. 

For what it's worth, dotGears, Nguyen's development studio, has never promoted Flappy Bird on its site. 

SEE ALSO: One Of The Geniuses Behind Candy Crush Explains Why Some Levels Are So Tough To Beat

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Bill Gates is hosting an AMA on Reddit right now.

Redditors have asked questions about everything from his new role at Microsoft to what his most expensive guilty pleasure purchase was (for the record: his private plane). One user asked him what his thoughts were about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Here's how Gates replied:

The foundation is involved in digital money but unlike Bitcoin it would not be anonymous digital money. In Kenya M-pesa is being used for almost half of all transactions. Digital money has low transaction costs which is great for the poor because they need to do financial transactions with small amounts of money. Over the next 5 years I think digital money will catch on in India and parts of Africa and help the poorest a lot.

SEE ALSO: Popular budgeting app Mint adds Bitcoin support with Coinbase

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Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates did an "ask me anything" session on Reddit on today.

One thing is certain, Gates has a good sense of humor about his foundation's more far-out projects.

For instance, someone asked him about creating a next-generation condom. No joke. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to create the condom of the future that will be so awesome that guys want to wear it. They figure such a thing will help reduce HIV infections. In November, The Foundation sifted through 812 submissions and offered grants to 11 newfangled condom designers.

When asked about it on Monday, Gates answered with a pretty funny witticism. Emphasis ours:

alex4346: Any luck with the condom design competition?

Bill Gates: This is a sensitive topic. The idea was that men don't like the current design so perhaps something they would be more open to would allow for less HIV transmission. We still haven't gotten the results. One grantee is using carbon nanotubes to reduce the thickness.

The joke, "This is a sensitive topic" wasn't lost on the Reddit crowd and a pile-on of humor ensued. One user posted a GIF of Nicolas Cage looking strangely turned on. Others riffed on the name of the new condom, and so on.

But Gates probably didn't mind that his joke set them all off. He also told Redditors that one of the biggest things that's changed about him in the last 20 years is that he's "more mellow" and, he hoped, also had "a bit more wisdom."

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