diff --git a/spec/helper.rb b/spec/helper.rb
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/spec/helper.rb
+++ b/spec/helper.rb
@@ -1,9 +1,5 @@
+# encoding: utf-8
 require 'simplecov'
-# HACK - couldn't get tests to run without this, simple cov barfed with the following error:
-# .../simplecov-0.5.4/lib/simplecov/source_file.rb:157:in `block in process_skipped_lines!': invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII #(ArgumentError)
-# I intend to find a better solution before making the pull request 
-Encoding.default_external = Encoding::UTF_8
-Encoding.default_internal = Encoding::UTF_8
 SimpleCov.start
 
 require 'twitter'
removing encoding hack on specs helper