Ask HN: Why does this black line occasionally show up on HN?

As seen here: http://i.imgur.com/Vrj6PMv.png

Looking at Google Cache, it seems like we all have it today. It is a table row with a column containing an image to a 0x5px gif https://news.ycombinator.com/s.gif

Looking at the an archive from two weeks ago does not show the black bar https://web.archive.org/web/20170331001927/https://news.ycombinator.com/

Does anyone know what it is and why it is not always there?

3 comments

[ 0.39 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread

FroshKiller 9y ago ↗

It's a mourning band. They're worn to acknowledge the loss of someone important to the wearer. Hacker News puts the bar up when figures important to the community die.

In this case, it acknowledges the loss of Bob Taylor: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/technology/robert-taylor-...

Svenskunganka 9y ago ↗

Oh I didn't know that, thank you for clarifying!

ColinWright 9y ago ↗

Did you try searching for "black bar" in the search box at the bottom of almost every page?

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=black%20bar&sort=byDate&prefix...