[cxr]

> It's been 9–10 days here and I'm not sure anyone will read this (I'm surprised HN still lets me reply)

HN gives you 14 days.

(I wish it had a feature to "mark" a comment in lieu of writing a reply then and there. When 12 or 13 days have passed, it'd send you an email reminding you that this is your last chance to add what you have to say to the record. In this way, it would favor people going away and coming back to leave more thoughtful comments instead of impelling them to reply instantaneously i.e. to avoid the risk of not being heard.)

I suppose the hack would be to set your delay in your profile to 60 × 24 × 12.5 = 18000 (minutes), post your reply, then reset it to its initial value. You'd progressively edit your comment as the opportunity comes up, and then it will be autoposted in whatever form its in when the delay elapses. You can only edit posts for up to an hour (or something), though, and I'm not sure whether that timer starts from the time you hit submit or when it appears in the comments (i.e. after the delay has elapsed).