Ask HN: Black bar added to top of page? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Black bar added to top of page?

31 pointsjgwil214 comments

It appears a new <tr> with a black image as background has been added to the top of HN, above the main table. Is that intentional?

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I presume because of:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066832

How long does the black bar usually remain. I thought it was 24 hours, but it feels like it was less than 12 this time. People were asking for it midday when I checked HN and I didn't notice it until the evening. It is already gone in the early morning here.

This is often used to memorialise important figures. I wish there were some set-up where one could click on it to find out whom it's memorialising. Usually there's an accompanying front-page story, but I don't see it today.

Ah, didn't realize that, thanks! Yeah that would be a nice feature.

"Frances Allen has died" is currently #10 on the front page.

Most likely because Bill English died:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24032820

He was at Xerox PARC, where he helped midwife PARC’s invention of the personal computer and other innovations.

Happens when someone dies.

I would be nice to get some kind of hint about who passed away if you hover the mouse pointer over the black bar.

yeah, turning the black bar to a link to the person's wiki would be really, really nice

That's a good idea. Just flagged your post (!) in order to get an Admin's attention. Hopefully it's do-able. :)

If you have any feature ideas it’s better to just email hn@ycombinator.com

The black bar either just coincidentally timed out or went away after I clicked Fran's topic. That's a nice subtle hint

Shouldn't it be there every day then since surely at least one person dies every day?

HN needs to put a little tooltip description on the black bar.

Every time it happens there's an "Ask HN" about it.

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