Ask HN: Can the black border atop the HN mourning header link to who died?
24 comments
It's oddly similar to seeing a flag at half-mast in real life. Sometimes you know who it's for, sometimes you don't.
> It's oddly similar to seeing a flag at half-mast in real life. Sometimes you know who it's for, sometimes you don't.
Or, you figure out the central website for reporting half-staff announcements and you check it on a regular basis: https://halfstaff.org/
Or, you figure out the central website for reporting half-staff announcements and you check it on a regular basis: https://halfstaff.org/
Oh nice, it has an RSS feed too!
mbm(3)
In this case it's Dave Mills, inventor of the Network Time Protocol (among other things).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39051246
(I support your suggestion for future black bars.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39051246
(I support your suggestion for future black bars.)
I also support this suggestion. Perhaps to a wikipedia page, or an AP story?
There are many things I don't love about HN. Obituary threads here are none of them. If this place has a heart, I think that's where you can see a lot of it, and Google's already got you covered anyway for Wikipedia and AP.
I would like to see this, and I would like the link text to always be the name of the person so honored, and nothing else. Horizontally centered, for preference, because nothing else nearby is.
These are names that should be known. If someone learn nothing else from a tradition here of doing them honor, then let him at least learn the names themselves. Everything else can follow from that, or I think would be wasted anyway.
These are names that should be known. If someone learn nothing else from a tradition here of doing them honor, then let him at least learn the names themselves. Everything else can follow from that, or I think would be wasted anyway.
I totally agree with this. It doesn't make any sense to honor someone without knowing who that person is or to know people are in mourning without knowing what they are mourning about. Usually, you can tell who it is because the story is trending on here. In this case, the black bar was put up a bit late, and the story isn't on the front page anymore.
-Click on black bar
-Show:
--------------------------------------
In memoriam:
John Hacker. April 1845 - May 2024
--------------------------------------
Simple HN style
-Show:
--------------------------------------
In memoriam:
John Hacker. April 1845 - May 2024
--------------------------------------
Simple HN style
Love that I’d never previously noticed it. It’s a nice subtle gesture by HN, rather than an overly overt one.
A hover alt-text would also be a neat and clean option.
Does not work on mobile
Tooltips (hover text) are actually the title attribute, not the alt attribute, and they definitely do work on mobile. Head over to xkcd and long press on an image. I think it works not only for <img> but also <a> elements.
Good.
Only when combined with an actual link, please.
Or maybe the mods could ensure that the HN article about the person remains on the front page as long as the bar is there.
Am against this.
Over time not only will more people die, but we will, as a community, split over and over . . . over what/who should be celebrated.
Regardless, at some future point, assume HN still exists, there will be a point where the symbol is constantly black. Thus meaningless.
And I would rather not have death be meaningless. HN-approved death or otherwise.
Over time not only will more people die, but we will, as a community, split over and over . . . over what/who should be celebrated.
Regardless, at some future point, assume HN still exists, there will be a point where the symbol is constantly black. Thus meaningless.
And I would rather not have death be meaningless. HN-approved death or otherwise.
How would adding a hyperlink to the black line cause the black line to show up more often?
Wow. Been reading HN a very long time and never noticed.
Then again, I'm never very interested in reading obituary stories.
Then again, I'm never very interested in reading obituary stories.
[deleted]
I think such ""user friendly"" features are alien to HN's attitude. You can find out with very little effort. Ask it even! And then write and publicise a userscript that does the above.
I think a little footer link titled
Black
I think linking to Wikipedia would be a good touch.
I don't think this is needed as it's very obvious who it's dedicated to.
If you don't know about the event, then all you need to do is to literally just go through the first two pages (probably just as you would when you're visiting the site which is why you cam in the first place) and you will see it mentioned.
I personally don't think there's a need for this as this is not Reddit and the average user should be able to figure this out on their own.
RIP Dave Mills!
I personally don't think there's a need for this as this is not Reddit and the average user should be able to figure this out on their own.
RIP Dave Mills!
Why disparage a useful feature by saying people should just settle for an inconvenient solution and search pages of HN titles?
A more intelligent solution would be providing the information which was deemed important enough to make the effort in the first place.
This is a news site. Why would you expect the people arriving to already know the news they came to learn?
A more intelligent solution would be providing the information which was deemed important enough to make the effort in the first place.
This is a news site. Why would you expect the people arriving to already know the news they came to learn?
>Why disparage a useful feature by saying people should just settle for an inconvenient solution and search pages of HN titles?
The reason being that I'm against oversimplification and I believe it dumbs the community down. The beauty of HN for me is how primitive and free from clutter it is so that I can focus on the content.
>This is a news site. Why would you expect the people arriving to already know the news they came to learn?
I'm not, you can simply find the answer by going through the first few pages, I just don't believe an effort needs to be made to make it easier than that.
The reason being that I'm against oversimplification and I believe it dumbs the community down. The beauty of HN for me is how primitive and free from clutter it is so that I can focus on the content.
>This is a news site. Why would you expect the people arriving to already know the news they came to learn?
I'm not, you can simply find the answer by going through the first few pages, I just don't believe an effort needs to be made to make it easier than that.
This is the same train of thought as saying we shouldn’t use debuggers because programmers will get lazy and stop thinking through the code, or that we shouldn’t have any programming layers higher than assembly because they’re less efficient and everyone should just write everything in assembly.
Keeping something more difficult just for the sake of “smarter people” will never be a compelling argument to me. Consider those same smart people could be doing something meaningfully challenging in the new time they’ve saved by having a brute force problem automated.
This is obviously not as time consuming, but the criticism is not based on an effective ideology.
Keeping something more difficult just for the sake of “smarter people” will never be a compelling argument to me. Consider those same smart people could be doing something meaningfully challenging in the new time they’ve saved by having a brute force problem automated.
This is obviously not as time consuming, but the criticism is not based on an effective ideology.
i did exactly as you suggested and could not find a death announcement in the first couple of pages after seeing the black bar. I was unable to discover who died.
I love the simplicity of hn. Giving us a way to know who the black bar is for is not some scope creep that will slow down the site nor visually clutter it.
I love the simplicity of hn. Giving us a way to know who the black bar is for is not some scope creep that will slow down the site nor visually clutter it.
You need to go to page 3 before you find any mention of him
That's currently false - no mention is on the 1st 2 pages. So another suggestion: keep the death news on the front page for as long as the black bar is up.
Otherwise the bar becomes a kind of unfriendly cryptic ingroup signal – "sheesh, don't you already know?".
Otherwise the bar becomes a kind of unfriendly cryptic ingroup signal – "sheesh, don't you already know?".
It's a mourning [arm]band. Usually these doesn't bear the name/href/QR of the deceased.
Semi-related (and hopefully if a link is added to the border, this could be implemented as well): some of us hate light mode so much that we set our browsers to force dark mode everywhere. However, in my experience, this makes the black bar nearly invisible. I'm not sure how this would be best handled, but is there any way that the black bar could be made more visible for dark mode users?
Probably if they use this media query: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
a different, related idea could be a hidden page (like https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights ) that lists all the people that have been honored with a black bar.
the black bar could link to that page, or it could remain hidden
the black bar could link to that page, or it could remain hidden
@dang could help here
There is no @dang. I don't know why people keep doing this. This isn't Twitter.
That's like saying it's wrong to flank some plain text with underscores or asterisks if the UI is not parsing that into rich text; actually the parsing isn't necessary for successful conveyance of emphasis (and the convention predates such parsing). By analogy, parsing of the @username syntax into a ping isn't necessary for successful conveyance that the word is a username (although I'm not sure the convention predates parsing in this case).
Just as seeing underscores/asterisks is understood as "the author is emphasizing despite lack of formatting," seeing a leading at sign is understood as "the author is saying 'this word is a username' despite lack of ping."
Just as seeing underscores/asterisks is understood as "the author is emphasizing despite lack of formatting," seeing a leading at sign is understood as "the author is saying 'this word is a username' despite lack of ping."
That was always understood. I just didn't want confusion with the word dang.
Perhaps if someone emailed him to let him know this post existed, using the footer contact link to do so, then yes! But @dang doesn’t attract his (or anyone’s) attention on HN.
I seem to remember the early days of twitter @username also didn't notify the user or even highlight, same as hashtags. Here is an example: https://twirpz.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/2008_07_26-twitte...
Same with Outlook, now when you @-someone it highlights them and even adds their address "To".
Just because HN doesn't currently support this syntax, doesn't mean we must not use it. As with the other examples, if enough people do it, I wouldn't be surprised if support is added later.
Thankfully, my username is pretty unique (like yours), and I can easily search for references to me, but if my name was a common word it would be really frustrating trying to weed out references to me, compared to where people are actually referencing me.
Same with Outlook, now when you @-someone it highlights them and even adds their address "To".
Just because HN doesn't currently support this syntax, doesn't mean we must not use it. As with the other examples, if enough people do it, I wouldn't be surprised if support is added later.
Thankfully, my username is pretty unique (like yours), and I can easily search for references to me, but if my name was a common word it would be really frustrating trying to weed out references to me, compared to where people are actually referencing me.
I don’t expect support to ever be added by HN actual. Some third-party may code it into search, but HN isn’t designed to be used as a “send a notification” platform in any regard. Expanding to support @username pings would be a serious undertaking and contradict the site’s minimalism and simplicity.
People have been reinventing this syntax here for a long time. It has remained useless here for a long time. There is no groundswell of rebellion opportunity. You’ll just have to send an email.
People have been reinventing this syntax here for a long time. It has remained useless here for a long time. There is no groundswell of rebellion opportunity. You’ll just have to send an email.
I bet you see this response, which demonstrates that it is a sort of engagement platform.
Same as in you profile you can view your own comments (and others) , scanning the message for an @ symbol and checking for a valid username I wouldn't consider to be a major undertaking.
As I said in my comment, searching for @username vs username is much easier already.
But yes, a third party could do it. Perhaps @dangrossman (yes, I did that) may be interested.
Same as in you profile you can view your own comments (and others) , scanning the message for an @ symbol and checking for a valid username I wouldn't consider to be a major undertaking.
As I said in my comment, searching for @username vs username is much easier already.
But yes, a third party could do it. Perhaps @dangrossman (yes, I did that) may be interested.
+1 for this feature
I thought it was for Microsoft executive emails getting hacked by Russia.
making a 5px black bar clickable or hover-able might be hard or not super discoverable. but maybe link the Y image to the HN link that's usually at the top of the page, accompanying the black bar. in this case, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39051246
I actually tried to click it before seeing this thread to find out who died...
I don't think that would be an issue as people would get used to it, but it shouldn't be needed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39065835).
Technically it's very easy to add the black bar as it's already added manually and all that would be needed is to add a "data-id=" which would contain the news ID and a regular "id" to the black bar's "<td>" and once clicked it would send you to "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=[DATA-ID]" (perhaps also add "cursor: pointer" to the CSS as well to change the cursor when its hovered).
Again, this is trivial and can be done with minimal work, but it should not be needed at all.
Technically it's very easy to add the black bar as it's already added manually and all that would be needed is to add a "data-id=" which would contain the news ID and a regular "id" to the black bar's "<td>" and once clicked it would send you to "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=[DATA-ID]" (perhaps also add "cursor: pointer" to the CSS as well to change the cursor when its hovered).
Again, this is trivial and can be done with minimal work, but it should not be needed at all.
The black bar has intentionally been kept obscure over the decades. (HN is almost two decades old now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1)
Unfortunately, the answer to your question is very likely "No." There are a few subtle reasons why this is the case, and I'm going to attempt to explain them. I've seen this situation many times, and the outcome is almost always "HN doesn't change." This isn't due to laziness; adding the feature is two lines of Arc. The reason is social.
Social software is hard. In fact, it's one of the hardest types of software ever to be built. Things that might seem like small conveniences or improvements often have counterintuitive effects. These effects are not readily understood by people who aren't running the site, because only the people running the site can see them in detail.
For example, suppose we were to implement the black bar link. Firstly, this means that the black bar now becomes a "superslot", pinned at the very top of HN. It turns what was otherwise a subtle gesture into a feature. It will inevitably raise questions about whether the black bar is really warranted for so-and-so, or whether it's fair that they get the superslot. But criticisms like that can be ignored.
The bigger problem is one that Dan has pointed out many times: it's good to have readers dig a little for information. Only people who are motivated will end up showing up in the thread. And those are exactly the kinds of people who you want showing up in that thread, because the point is to honor whomever died, not to catapult the entire community (and then some) at the thread. After all, every single person who ever visits HN will immediately click the black bar if it was clickable. Are you sure this is the kind of effect that would be a Good Thing?
Then there is the truth that doing nothing leads to the optimal outcome. Suppose the black bar was changed, and it was a mistake. This mistake costs time, because now the moderator has to deal with the consequences. It's not just a matter of reverting the change; when stuff like that gets reverted, people get curious why. So it'd be natural to have to write an explanation, which ends up sparking discussion about very tricky subjects. Again, community software is hard, and explaining subtle reasons for doing X is a delicate process. All of this translates to the potential of wasting some unknown quantity of time; time you won't get back, and time that you won't be doing your duties of running HN.
Then there's the most subtle point: it would break tradition. pg was the originator of the black bar, along with the christmas colors. It might seem cheesy to people who haven't been here since 2006, but there's something magical about seeing HN behave exactly as it was originally written, even when that behavior is sometimes arguably less optimal than it otherwise could be. Because, again, every change has social effects, and these are very hard to predict.
Lastly, the person who died might not want all of the attention. Are you sure you really want to be spotlighted by the entire (tech) world when you pass? It wasn't till I had some uncomfortable moments in the spotlight that I realized that fame is sometimes something that people choose to avoid.
For all of those reasons and then some, the black bar is likely going to stay as it is. If only as a hat tip to the person who originally created the tradition.
Unfortunately, the answer to your question is very likely "No." There are a few subtle reasons why this is the case, and I'm going to attempt to explain them. I've seen this situation many times, and the outcome is almost always "HN doesn't change." This isn't due to laziness; adding the feature is two lines of Arc. The reason is social.
Social software is hard. In fact, it's one of the hardest types of software ever to be built. Things that might seem like small conveniences or improvements often have counterintuitive effects. These effects are not readily understood by people who aren't running the site, because only the people running the site can see them in detail.
For example, suppose we were to implement the black bar link. Firstly, this means that the black bar now becomes a "superslot", pinned at the very top of HN. It turns what was otherwise a subtle gesture into a feature. It will inevitably raise questions about whether the black bar is really warranted for so-and-so, or whether it's fair that they get the superslot. But criticisms like that can be ignored.
The bigger problem is one that Dan has pointed out many times: it's good to have readers dig a little for information. Only people who are motivated will end up showing up in the thread. And those are exactly the kinds of people who you want showing up in that thread, because the point is to honor whomever died, not to catapult the entire community (and then some) at the thread. After all, every single person who ever visits HN will immediately click the black bar if it was clickable. Are you sure this is the kind of effect that would be a Good Thing?
Then there is the truth that doing nothing leads to the optimal outcome. Suppose the black bar was changed, and it was a mistake. This mistake costs time, because now the moderator has to deal with the consequences. It's not just a matter of reverting the change; when stuff like that gets reverted, people get curious why. So it'd be natural to have to write an explanation, which ends up sparking discussion about very tricky subjects. Again, community software is hard, and explaining subtle reasons for doing X is a delicate process. All of this translates to the potential of wasting some unknown quantity of time; time you won't get back, and time that you won't be doing your duties of running HN.
Then there's the most subtle point: it would break tradition. pg was the originator of the black bar, along with the christmas colors. It might seem cheesy to people who haven't been here since 2006, but there's something magical about seeing HN behave exactly as it was originally written, even when that behavior is sometimes arguably less optimal than it otherwise could be. Because, again, every change has social effects, and these are very hard to predict.
Lastly, the person who died might not want all of the attention. Are you sure you really want to be spotlighted by the entire (tech) world when you pass? It wasn't till I had some uncomfortable moments in the spotlight that I realized that fame is sometimes something that people choose to avoid.
For all of those reasons and then some, the black bar is likely going to stay as it is. If only as a hat tip to the person who originally created the tradition.
I can understand remaining minimal, and not shuttling lookie-loos to an active thread.
But remaining mysterious kinda works against the "memorial" aspect, and making the editorial decision "this passing is worth noting". It creates an "in-the-know"/"not-in-the-know" division that's somewhat against the ethos of being fair & open with those who don't yet know something.
A simple, "RIP, [name] [YYYY]-[YYYY]" would be a kindness to readers, and enhance the respect paid the deceased, while avoiding the thread clickthroughs you're concerned about.
And otherwise, we'll keep having these threads every time the honoree's identity is sufficiently obscure, and any associated stories/remembrances scroll off the front page.
But remaining mysterious kinda works against the "memorial" aspect, and making the editorial decision "this passing is worth noting". It creates an "in-the-know"/"not-in-the-know" division that's somewhat against the ethos of being fair & open with those who don't yet know something.
A simple, "RIP, [name] [YYYY]-[YYYY]" would be a kindness to readers, and enhance the respect paid the deceased, while avoiding the thread clickthroughs you're concerned about.
And otherwise, we'll keep having these threads every time the honoree's identity is sufficiently obscure, and any associated stories/remembrances scroll off the front page.
(I personally agree with you, but I just wanted to point out that https://news.ycombinator.com/front is how to see yesterday's front page at any given time. E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2024-01-19 makes it clear who the black bar was about.)
One (rather cold) way of viewing the situation is that if they spend their time adding this feature, it's at the expense of something else they could be doing. There are technical reasons it's not quite as straightforward as just setting a title attribute.
Here's precisely how the black bar works:
https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/5a3296417d23d1ecc90...
If it were as simple as writing "Dave Mills [YYYY]-[YYYY]", they might actually do that. But Arc doesn't have keyword arguments, and tdcolor has no way of passing along a "title:" keyword in order to set the html attribute.
It's partly why I updated Arc with keyword arguments.
But, there's still that other aspect: figuring out [YYYY]-[YYYY] takes some amount of time, so it increases the activation energy of the black bar considerably. Right now it's a one-character deletion followed by a deploy. Honoring legendary hackers is a good thing, but the black bar already does that.
One (rather cold) way of viewing the situation is that if they spend their time adding this feature, it's at the expense of something else they could be doing. There are technical reasons it's not quite as straightforward as just setting a title attribute.
Here's precisely how the black bar works:
https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/5a3296417d23d1ecc90...
; (tr (tdcolor black (vspace 5)))
If it were as simple as writing "Dave Mills [YYYY]-[YYYY]", they might actually do that. But Arc doesn't have keyword arguments, and tdcolor has no way of passing along a "title:" keyword in order to set the html attribute.
It's partly why I updated Arc with keyword arguments.
But, there's still that other aspect: figuring out [YYYY]-[YYYY] takes some amount of time, so it increases the activation energy of the black bar considerably. Right now it's a one-character deletion followed by a deploy. Honoring legendary hackers is a good thing, but the black bar already does that.
I understand tradeoffs & 'technical reasons'. But, a web framework that makes specifying tiny useful HTML edits noticeably harder in code than similar changes would be in plain-text strikes me as defective. That's especially true for a broadly-useful 'global attribute' – supported on all HTML elements – like TITLE.
Looking at the precedents in code near what you've linked, for how possibly-arbitrary STYLE and CLASS and COLSPAN and CELLPADDING and WIDTH attributes are set, it's hard to see why it shouldn't be as easy as something like:
But if that's hard to support, with a couple low-risk broadly-beneficial lines elsewhere, then rumors of Arc's concise expressive power seem exaggerated.
Looking at the precedents in code near what you've linked, for how possibly-arbitrary STYLE and CLASS and COLSPAN and CELLPADDING and WIDTH attributes are set, it's hard to see why it shouldn't be as easy as something like:
; (tr (td bgcolor black vspace 5 title "RIP Name (YYYY-YYYY)"))
But if that's hard to support, with a couple low-risk broadly-beneficial lines elsewhere, then rumors of Arc's concise expressive power seem exaggerated.
[deleted]
I'd rather the black death bar be removed entirely.
Can you make that a link to the post announcing the death?