zlacker

>>joelg+(OP)
We just lost a giant.

Hard to imagine someone more black bar worthy for Hacker News, hope we have one up soon.

>>_pius+i4
I hope not. The black bar has become a meaningless exercise in political posturing.

Edit: allow me to clarify - just having to choose whether or not someone is "black bar worthy" is distasteful. Ian Murdock didn't get a black bar that I can recall, and I don't remember seeing one since then, even though other people relevant to the community have died. Are we to expect someone to change the color of the bar every time a death in the tech community occurs, and how to we judge relevance in that regard?

No, it's an arbitrary gesture that doesn't really honor anything or anyone. It just gives people something to argue about. Why did someone get a black bar and someone else didn't? Why was this person deserving of it, and not that person? It's best to just remove it altogether.

>>krapp+D4
Out of curiosity, does anyone have a list of people who HN has enabled the black bar for?

>>tlrobi+Ea
I went ahead and compiled a list of "black bar" memorials from what I could remember and a little bit of searching.

(It's probably not comprehensive, but it's clearly composed of computing luminaries and members of the YC community)

Dan Haubert (1984 - 2009)

Robert Morris (1932 - 2011)

John McCarthy (1927 - 2011)

Dennis Ritchie (1941 - 2011)

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Doug Engelbart (1925 - 2013)

Aaron Swartz (1986 - 2013)

Gene Amdahl (1922 - 2015)

Marvin Minsky (1927 - 2016)