[IndigoIncognito]

I always thought that HN occasionally bugged out

[kome]

It's incredible how for many people this had no meaning, while for me it was immediately clear. Semiotics is a complex art, and perhaps this signal was a bit too subtle for many.

[mike_hock]

It was clear to me, but only because the first time I saw it, the top post was "XYZ has died."

[brandall10]

It could be confusing for some as it's selectively applied. There are only 15 names on the shown list but there are likely 2-3x that many which spent the better part of the day on the front page over the past 7 years.

[smcleod]

I never would have guessed a black menu bar / banner on a website would be triggered by someone dying. Not saying it’s a bad thing in any way - I just wouldn’t have any reason to relate the two things without reason.

[keepamovin]

It was immediately clear to me.

[deprecative]

It's just annoying to me. It looks like the website is broken. I'll be trying to add it to uBlock or something. If it had text then maybe I'd keep it. As it stands it's not actually communicating anything meaningful. Poor UX.

[isodev]

Me too. Or that they're A/B testing or a new layout or something.

[mettamage]

It actually was asked to dang to create the black bar this time [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011421

[fragmede]

Whether dang would have done that without that comment is unknown.