To all people saying "We should add some link to the news because I don't know who Andy Grove was".
C'mon, this is the community of people who don't need to have everything delivered on the silver plate - either you know, or you spend a while and find out by yourself. That's something we do every day.
@hn, since it's not the first time this question pops up, for increased "discoverability", what about making the black bar a <a> that links to the associated news? This, or pushing it even forwards, adding text?
It's displayed as a sign of respect following the passing of important tech luminaries.<p>In this case Andy Grove - one of the fathers of Silicon Valley.<p>May he rest in peace.
Is it possible that in the future, the element alt text could contain some short explanation or information? For example, "Andy Grove, Semiconductor Industry pioneer passes away at 79."
I had the same question yesterday (saw it previously and thought it was a styling issue or maintenance mode etc). It would be nice to have a tooltip on hover to tell people what it's about. Good way to pay tribute.
It's a bit surprising that so many people just don't search when they see something they don't understand.<p>EDIT: just putting [black bar] into the search box tells you why the black bar is there. Sorting by date tells you who died.
It's especially meaningless for those of us who use Hacker Vision.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/c81G9a6.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/c81G9a6.png</a>
Probably related to the same change that brought the black bar, but the Chrome extension I use to add collapsible comment threads is now broken.<p>Can we <i></i>please<i></i> get native collapsible threads here?<p>edit: Also I just attempted to use an emoji for the first time here, and it was stripped. ????<p>edit2: I thought it was a simple design update, had no idea it was a tribute. RIP Andy Grove.
Well, it would be simple to read the page looking at entries containing 'passed away', 'died', 'killed', etc<p>(It's usually one of the first as well)