Automattic is honoring Eric Binnion, who has died, with a tribute that will reach a few billion users. For the next 30 days, an extra header, X-Remembering, will be added to web responses, reading "Eric Binnion" and linking to a memorial site. The code is set through Nginx, and the company says its design team will make the tribute more humane in the coming days. Automattic.com will also display a mourning band for 30 days.
Binnion was the 21st recipient of the Distinguished Janitor Award, Automattic's highest honor. In recent months, the company had been discussing how to redefine and evolve the award, with internal changes expected. One proposed idea was to give recipients a physical memento, an etched tungsten cube.
The tribute also includes a personal message written to Binnion months earlier, when he was undergoing chemo and received a tungsten cube from the writer. The cube represents his strength. Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, and its atomic number is 74, with the symbol W, also known as wolfram.
The writer says they are struggling with grief but will carry on, as Binnion always did.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing