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Let's black bar HN

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71–80 of 82 posts

Re: Let's black bar HN

#71
post #43

I must admit I find this and other variations of "let's use the death of a person to force other people to do things" very offensive. Black out your own web site. Mourning is a personal thing. If PG decides he wants to black bar HN, he will do it. If not, he won't. What's it to you?

Do you come across a kind, thoughtful suggestion and think "what's the most controversial comment I can write to score some karma" or something? Because honestly, there's no rational universe where your comment remotely makes sense. And yes, it is Hacker News against you now, as you victimize yourself below. I sure as shit think this comment is disgusting, I hate that you left it, and I'd certainly hope that people w…

See you are already blind with rage. Somebody died, and you want to leash out and find somebody to blame.

I feel sad about his death, too. I have nothing against black bars or mourning. Just against telling other people how to feel, which incidentally you do again with your post. You are sad, so you are entitled to hate me. You are welcome.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you come across a kind, thoughtful suggestion and think "what's the most controversial comment I can write to score some karma" or something? Because honestly, there's no rational universe where your comment remotely makes sense. And yes, it is Hacker News against you now, as you victimize yourself below. I sure as shit think this comment is disgusting, I hate that you left it, and I'd certainly hope that people w…

See you are already blind with rage. Somebody died, and you want to leash out and find somebody to blame. I feel sad about his death, too. I have nothing against black bars or mourning. Just against telling other people how to feel, which incidentally you do again with your post. You are sad, so you are entitled to hate me. You are welcome.

[deleted]

Re: Let's black bar HN

#74
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side question - I have set my own (different) color for the bar, will my bar turn black if PG sets it?

Yeah, site-wide recolor (christmas, death) overrides your own.

it's just a small bar above the color that you pick.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#75
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, site-wide recolor (christmas, death) overrides your own.

it's just a small bar above the color that you pick.

Doh! Right you are. Organic brains are so horrible at accurate memory reproduction.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#76
post #4

Any relative lack of notability vs. the others HN has black-barred was because he died so young. Think of all the things he likely would have done over the next 60 years if he slowed down even 50%.

This is a pretty intelligent bunch so I hope there is rationale in discussing it honestly, but do you really think so? What had Aaron done lately? I only raise the question because you say the opposite, and in such situations the absolutely worst thing the community can do is canonize someone, exaggerating their accomplishments and raising their words above actual merit (the front-page is full of his old entries now.…

This is going to be dead for the vast majority of HN, but if you ever wondered how HN tends to decline to a monotone, note that the above post got me, at a minimum, IP banned on HN.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#78
post #4

Any relative lack of notability vs. the others HN has black-barred was because he died so young. Think of all the things he likely would have done over the next 60 years if he slowed down even 50%.

This is a pretty intelligent bunch so I hope there is rationale in discussing it honestly, but do you really think so? What had Aaron done lately? I only raise the question because you say the opposite, and in such situations the absolutely worst thing the community can do is canonize someone, exaggerating their accomplishments and raising their words above actual merit (the front-page is full of his old entries now.…

Yes, I think he probably didn't go that much in the past few months, relative to the previous decade.

Which would be profoundly depressing. If you were already somewhat unstable, it could lead to a bad outcome.

It's probably more rare that someone at the top of his game kills himself suddenly and for no particular reason. I imagine if you talked to Steve Jobs between Apple and NeXT, he was probably a bit down compared to before or after. The thing is, it seems likely someone like Aaron who spent a decade doing interesting and awesome stuff would be likely to do more stuff like that in the future, particularly after a federal case was resolved, or he either got help with depression or figured out how to deal with it (early 20s is statistically the worst time; even with no other treatment, as lot of people are better off later in life).

So yes, I feel comfortable saying he was likely to have done a lot more awesome stuff over the rest of his life.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#79
post #19

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw Aaron will be remembered for ever.

It would be nice if an online site existed where we could dump all a persons writings, images and video for anyone to view at a later date. Really get a feel for what the guy was all about. Like a wiki-style crowd sourced memorial site.

1000memories (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/life-everlasting...) used to do that, but I think they pivoted somewhat into lifetime photo archives.

Re: Let's black bar HN

#80
post #3

I'm sure the black bar isn't there because PG happens to be asleep. Its unfortunate that he'll wake up to such bad news.

I wonder if it's worse to be awake when first news of something like this hits, watching it in "realtime", vs. waking up to hours of discussion about it. I was asleep during 9/11 and woke up about a minute after the second plane hit.
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