Happy Christmas everyone, I’m at 29000 feet on a flight to Hong Kong after a mini version of planes, trains and automobiles and including cancelled planes and taxis to different airports. I’m struck by honestly what a miracle it is that we can travel thousands of miles at hundreds of MPH and have okay internet access and communicate. I don’t think people quite realise how delicate all of the technology is now and how easily it could fail if we don’t all look after each other. I hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and new year!
*
/|\
[ROOT]
n=25000
/ | \
[N] [I] [C]
.33 .51 .94 <-- UCB1 winner
| | / \
[OH] [MEH] [E] [E]
coal socks NICE NICE
| \ \
:/ :) :)
MCTS: Monte Carlo Tree Santa
"in the limit, all children converge
to the nice list" - S. Claus
Lovely idea but please spare a thought for people using a screen reader! Imagine having ASCII art spelt out to you character by character, line by line.
This really is a job for a LLM.
With apologies to screen reader users:
"space tab space space asterisk new line space space tab space new line space space space tab pipe new line ... forward slash o full stop full stop backslash ..."
Love seeing the custom HN theme every year. Sometimes after Christmas, I avoid refreshing an HN tab, so I get to see the theme just a little bit longer :)
This year is a bit special to me. I recently moved countries for a new job, but I moved a bit too soon. Now I am spending the holiday season alone for the first time in my life. Learned a lot of lessons the hard way over the past week.
Yeah, I'm aware of extensions like Stylus and use it on a few sites. But my brain is irrational and doesn't treat it the same as having a snapshot of HN during Christmas.
I was a bit eager to start work after three months of waiting for the HSP 1b visa. Tried to keep myself busy with side projects, and got quite far with embedded Rust. But the lack of a "regular schedule" from a job was making me eager to start "proper work" again.
So far, it has been a mixed bag of trade-offs. Made it in time for various events, got to see a few friends for the first time in a while, etc. However, nothing beats the comfort and security of one's parents home, especially during the holiday season.
Probably obvious to everybody, but seriously do not schedule a move in December. If it is feasible, spend the time to make memories with your family and loved ones.
> nothing beats the comfort and security of one's parents home, especially during the holiday season.
A bit morbid, but reminds me of this passage by John Quincy Adams:
> Everything about the house is the same. I was not fully sensible of the change till I entered his bedchamber [...] That moment was inexpressibly painful, and struck me as if it had been an arrow to my heart. My father and mother have departed. The charm which has always made this house to me an abode of enchantment is dissolved; and yet my attachment to it, and to the whole region around, is stronger than I ever felt it before.
Hope you get to spend the next Christmas with your family!
Being a non-Christian and it being Christmas time, I am sharing one verse from the New Testament that is, in my opinion, useful - or at the very least, insightful - to anyone, regardless of religion.
Luke 16:10: He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.
I'd consider myself more spiritual rather than religious, but do pray to a god of my understanding. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this, I haven't actually read the whole Bible but, as the other reply states, I'm sure there are so many little nuggets like this in there that many ignore.
Thank you for sharing this one! It's from a beautiful parable found only in Luke's gospel, from which only "no slave can serve two masters" seems to have entered the popular lexicon. Your quote, or the closing line "you cannot serve God and wealth", better speak to the spirit of the passage.
For anyone interested in approaching the Bible this season, perhaps as part of a New Year's resolution, there are many wonderful free and paid resources to do so. It's easy to get bogged down in a comparison of translations and tools, or to ambitiously pick a Bible in a Year reading plan and get waylaid in the pentateuch. Instead, I'd recommend starting with the Berean Standard Bible (a modern, public domain translation with good footnotes) and Mark (Matthew is my favorite, but it starts with a genealogy and requires some Old Testament knowledge to fully enjoy.)
Color me confused, but what do containers add to FreeBSD beyond jails? Jails have their own IP addresses and root filesystem, plus they use the host OS's version of libc and OpenSSL/LibreSSL and all the other core utils.
Is it the convenience utilities for building and running container images?
HN is a pretty simple, efficient monolithic web application. Some updates might need a restart. It's OK for some web requests to fail during that time. HN isn't life critical with sixtuple nine uptime requirements.
Tbh like 99% of web apps aren’t critical - most of them are for buying something or providing infrastructure to make it easier to buy something anyway.
It’s fine if your online shop is down for a few minutes (of course the business won’t see it like that but it’s true)
A sales site being down might lose you a sale. But the simplicity might save you so muh more than that loses you. And often the complexion of high availability infrastructure results in more downtime than it prevents.
For stuff like HN, I like the peek behind the scenes it provides. It's all just software written by some humans and way too often people take themselves and their shitty software way too serious.
I feel like this obsession with zero downtime has gotten a bit silly. Sure, for some things it's damn near required (though I imagine that's fewer things than most people think), but it 100% does not matter even a little bit if HN is unavailable for 10 seconds or so.
Merry Christmas, everyone! Continually grateful for this community: stumbling into it as a teenager changed my life and I never get tired of spinning out about new tech big and small with the folks here. Stay safe, everybody
Merry Christmas, friends. And a special cheers to everyone that makes this community possible. It’s one of the last bastions of all that is good about this internet.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Hope everyone has a healthy, rewarding and prosperous year. Special thanks to @dang and team for keeping this community a great place everyone wants to come back to. I love coming back here every day.
"An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”"
Merry Christmas friends! I have a C64 Ultimate under the tree this year so looking to have a bit of retro fun that would make the HN community proud (after assembling all the kids stuff, of course).
I am alone. I haven't seen my family in many, many years for reasons that I don't want to get into. I am a founder. I check Hacker News every day and have learned an immense amount from all the commenters, articles, and discussions over the years. I thank you all for that. I am truly grateful.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas full of joy, and I hope you can all appreciate, share, and express love for those around you, be it family, friends, or strangers on the internet. We are all very lucky to be part of the HN site and community. I have been here for about 15 years (at least that is what it feels like) with my other accounts that I don't want to dox.
Glory to God. For believers in Jesus, may the light of Christ guide you as it does me in difficult times. Wishing you all His peace and joy.
My first Christmas with mom gone was really tough. Stuck alone during COVID in 2021 in a really bad place. I couldn't sleep. And I happened to turn on the radio in the middle of the night and there was an Amy Grant interview. I almost turned it off, oh no, christian stuff I thought. But she talked about her first Christmas without her mom. Then they played her song about it. If I had been 5 minutes more trying to sleep, or given up on sleep 5 minutes earlier, I would have missed that.
Anyways, in case anyone needs to stumble upon something similar, I couldn't find something so perfect but...
hearing it now it's not as amazing as it was that night I needed to not be alone in grief, but here it is:
But that's a little too tidy to be a proper Christmas tree — so here’s a more “tree-like” version with ornaments, while still preserving the Merkle structure:
H(0) = hash(D0 || D0) (duplicated leaf for balance, common in Merkle trees)
H(0-1) = hash(H(0) || H(1))
H(ROOT) = hash(H(0-1) || H(2-3))
If you want, I can:
generate a bigger tree (8, 16, 32 leaves),
make the hashes look like real hash strings,
or format it like a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette while keeping the Merkle parent/child layout.
--
Prompt: format it like a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette while keeping the Merkle parent/child layout.
Answer: You got it — here’s a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette that still preserves the Merkle parent/child layout (parents directly above their two children, leaves at the base).
That jgs is killing me
I thought this was Advent of Code! Merry Christmas!
Happy Christmas everyone, I’m at 29000 feet on a flight to Hong Kong after a mini version of planes, trains and automobiles and including cancelled planes and taxis to different airports. I’m struck by honestly what a miracle it is that we can travel thousands of miles at hundreds of MPH and have okay internet access and communicate. I don’t think people quite realise how delicate all of the technology is now and how easily it could fail if we don’t all look after each other. I hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and new year!
Oh man, I love flying over the Pacific Ocean (during the day). There's just so much nothing but water. It's kind of astounding.
All the best, take care!
Merry Christmas HN!
Shall we showcase our trees?
Ah, don't worry. If you just append to one side always and do an anti-balancing one, you get a string of lights.
Hey we have the same tree!
Pinus newickii
May you have a perfectly balanced Christmas
It's the thought that counts
I love your player character tree topper.
¥
Lovely idea but please spare a thought for people using a screen reader! Imagine having ASCII art spelt out to you character by character, line by line.
This really is a job for a LLM.
With apologies to screen reader users: "space tab space space asterisk new line space space tab space new line space space space tab pipe new line ... forward slash o full stop full stop backslash ..."
Class ChristmasTree extends Tree{}
Not always! Sometimes `extends Plastic{}`
Or `extends Aluminum{}`!
[0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AluminumChristma...
So Tree is an interface then, not a class?
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Love seeing the custom HN theme every year. Sometimes after Christmas, I avoid refreshing an HN tab, so I get to see the theme just a little bit longer :)
This year is a bit special to me. I recently moved countries for a new job, but I moved a bit too soon. Now I am spending the holiday season alone for the first time in my life. Learned a lot of lessons the hard way over the past week.
> Sometimes after Christmas, I avoid refreshing an HN tab, so I get to see the theme just a little bit longer :)
There's always browser extensions/scripts.
Indeed, I needed it longer than one day so wrote myself an extension. HN didn't seem to care but I still love it :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266496
https://github.com/FreedomBen/hacker-news-christmas-colors-b...
Wow, perhaps my "too early" assessment was wrong?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379541
Yeah, I'm aware of extensions like Stylus and use it on a few sites. But my brain is irrational and doesn't treat it the same as having a snapshot of HN during Christmas.
Welcome to Japan!
Where did you move from (and to)?
United States to Japan.
I was a bit eager to start work after three months of waiting for the HSP 1b visa. Tried to keep myself busy with side projects, and got quite far with embedded Rust. But the lack of a "regular schedule" from a job was making me eager to start "proper work" again.
So far, it has been a mixed bag of trade-offs. Made it in time for various events, got to see a few friends for the first time in a while, etc. However, nothing beats the comfort and security of one's parents home, especially during the holiday season.
Probably obvious to everybody, but seriously do not schedule a move in December. If it is feasible, spend the time to make memories with your family and loved ones.
> nothing beats the comfort and security of one's parents home, especially during the holiday season.
A bit morbid, but reminds me of this passage by John Quincy Adams:
> Everything about the house is the same. I was not fully sensible of the change till I entered his bedchamber [...] That moment was inexpressibly painful, and struck me as if it had been an arrow to my heart. My father and mother have departed. The charm which has always made this house to me an abode of enchantment is dissolved; and yet my attachment to it, and to the whole region around, is stronger than I ever felt it before.
Hope you get to spend the next Christmas with your family!
Merry Christmas to everyone.
Being a non-Christian and it being Christmas time, I am sharing one verse from the New Testament that is, in my opinion, useful - or at the very least, insightful - to anyone, regardless of religion.
Luke 16:10: He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.
I'd consider myself more spiritual rather than religious, but do pray to a god of my understanding. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this, I haven't actually read the whole Bible but, as the other reply states, I'm sure there are so many little nuggets like this in there that many ignore.
Thank you for sharing this one! It's from a beautiful parable found only in Luke's gospel, from which only "no slave can serve two masters" seems to have entered the popular lexicon. Your quote, or the closing line "you cannot serve God and wealth", better speak to the spirit of the passage.
For anyone interested in approaching the Bible this season, perhaps as part of a New Year's resolution, there are many wonderful free and paid resources to do so. It's easy to get bogged down in a comparison of translations and tools, or to ambitiously pick a Bible in a Year reading plan and get waylaid in the pentateuch. Instead, I'd recommend starting with the Berean Standard Bible (a modern, public domain translation with good footnotes) and Mark (Matthew is my favorite, but it starts with a genealogy and requires some Old Testament knowledge to fully enjoy.)
Here's a link: https://biblehub.com/bsb/mark/1.htm
The Bible is full of fun stuff like that verse. Much of which modern day Christians perfectly ignore.
Thank you for sharing. Merry Christmas to you.
Fun seeing HN restart to switch to the Christmas theme, in three steps:
https://share.cleanshot.com/vJZv6k03 (restarting the server)
https://share.cleanshot.com/qFyM347P (online but temporarily readonly)
https://share.cleanshot.com/kW8kY7mp (back online!)
You must have grabbed that first one awfully quickly!
So what's the christmas theme? Unless I'm blind, it looks the same as always, except the header color seems to have changed... slightly?
Perhaps you've looked at the site so much that you're blind to the numbers at the start of each item.
No numbers in Chrome on iPhone, fyi.
Oh, indeed
Japan changed its flag for Christmas…
The numbers next to the submissions are red/green
What container is this running in?
FreeBSD
The power to serve
Color me confused, but what do containers add to FreeBSD beyond jails? Jails have their own IP addresses and root filesystem, plus they use the host OS's version of libc and OpenSSL/LibreSSL and all the other core utils.
Is it the convenience utilities for building and running container images?
I was joking. There is no container. (We don't use jails either.)
Restart?!
ouch
HN is a pretty simple, efficient monolithic web application. Some updates might need a restart. It's OK for some web requests to fail during that time. HN isn't life critical with sixtuple nine uptime requirements.
Tbh like 99% of web apps aren’t critical - most of them are for buying something or providing infrastructure to make it easier to buy something anyway. It’s fine if your online shop is down for a few minutes (of course the business won’t see it like that but it’s true)
A sales site being down might lose you a sale. But the simplicity might save you so muh more than that loses you. And often the complexion of high availability infrastructure results in more downtime than it prevents.
For stuff like HN, I like the peek behind the scenes it provides. It's all just software written by some humans and way too often people take themselves and their shitty software way too serious.
It could probably be done with a simple if statement, but I'm guessing that dang enjoys the tradition of doing it manually every year.
Steam, +130 million users, biggest gamming store, multi billion dolar company, is offline every week for a few minutes.
99.999999 is so overated.
I feel like this obsession with zero downtime has gotten a bit silly. Sure, for some things it's damn near required (though I imagine that's fewer things than most people think), but it 100% does not matter even a little bit if HN is unavailable for 10 seconds or so.
I'd rather restart once (ok, twice) a year than keep that code around in production all the time.
It only affects traffic for about 10 seconds.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠀⠀⡰⡇⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠰⢾⠇⠨⡦⠀⠂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⠀⢈⣹⠜⠻⢾⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⢠⣿⡵⠾⣻⣶⠿⠦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠀⢀⣠⣮⣦⡶⠻⠛⢶⣄⡀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣽⠏⠁⣠⣂⣦⣈⣝⣦⣄⠀⠈⠁⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⣠⣾⣵⣾⣾⠟⡙⠟⠿⣍⡉⠀⠀⠆⠀⠀ ⠀⠰⠀⠀⠄⣠⣶⣾⣭⡶⠟⠻⣶⡰⣜⣳⣦⣄⠀⡀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣴⣿⣋⡴⣪⠎⣄⡙⠻⠿⣯⣉⠉⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠂⠀⢀⣉⡭⢿⡛⣛⣵⠎⠀⠙⢾⣶⣦⣭⣷⣦⠐⠀ ⠀⠀⢈⣙⣿⡿⠿⠟⣋⢅⡄⡄⡐⣄⢤⣉⠷⢦⣄⣀⠠ ⠐⠾⠿⢽⣷⡶⠶⡿⣓⣭⣾⣿⢷⣬⣓⢿⠿⠿⣯⣉⣁ ⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠉⠛⠛⠉⢀⣿⢿⡀⠙⠋⠓⠿⠿⠏⠉⠉ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⠤⠶⠾⢿⡯⠷⠶⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Merry Christmas, HN!
not sure what i'm looking at here...
It shows up as a Christmas tree for me on my phone in portrait mode. In landscape mode the braille is messed up.
I’m assuming they fixed the formatting since you posted, but it’s a Christmas tree in text art using braille characters.
Side note: I assume you can’t call it ASCII art if it uses non-ASCII characters, but Unicode art doesn’t have the same ring.
A Christmas tree through the snow?
Fucked up Braille?
May everyone here discover more and better ways to spread the joy of giving and doing good.
The ol' off-by-one error.
Merry Christmat!
Merry Christmas, everyone! Continually grateful for this community: stumbling into it as a teenager changed my life and I never get tired of spinning out about new tech big and small with the folks here. Stay safe, everybody
If anyone would like to add some Christmas lights to their site I made a little web component to add a little cheer to any site.
https://github.com/bradly/christmas-lights.js
You can see it in action at https://bradlyfeeley.com and https://birdymusic.com
Merry Christmas, friends. And a special cheers to everyone that makes this community possible. It’s one of the last bastions of all that is good about this internet.
Hear hear!!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Some interesting and topical links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORAD_Tracks_Santa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nicholas_Church,_Demre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Christmas_Spider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caganer
Luke 2:14
Merry Christmas, Feliz Natal.
That reminds me I have to update my HN theme to have the Christmas theme
Merry Christmas!
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
- Luke 2:10-11
Merry Christmas everyone. If you are not Christian, then seasons greetings, hope you got the day off anyway!
Merry Christmas hackernews community! What a great forum. Peace on Earth.
Happy Winter Solstice (resurrection of the sun)
Happy Yalda (Yuletide)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda_Night
Hope everyone has a healthy, rewarding and prosperous year. Special thanks to @dang and team for keeping this community a great place everyone wants to come back to. I love coming back here every day.
Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Xmas Everyone!
Merry Christmas HN. I offer this group my thanks for something I can learn from every day.
This is the Trinity College Choir’s advent concert - really puts me in the mood for the season, a remarkable performance and service: https://www.youtube.com/live/MsUd-twzG2U?si=1HMiaD2-Le70-fch
Merry Christmas to the awesome hn community!
Merry Christmas from a long time HN lurker!
Merry Christmas!
"An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”"
-Luke 2
Just noticed that color of the HN top bar is more red which I never noticed in previous years.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
(note the red and green story numbers as well)
(this is an old pg tradition btw)
Merry Christmas to one of the last great internet communities that I actually like to interact with
Merry Christmas friends! I have a C64 Ultimate under the tree this year so looking to have a bit of retro fun that would make the HN community proud (after assembling all the kids stuff, of course).
Merry Christmas everyone! :)
If you’d fancy a little holiday-themed adventure game - https://gricha.dev/happyholidays/terminal
Merry Christmas! This great community has changed my life so many times. Let’s go for more!
Sti-hilläh Na-hacht, hei-li-gäh Na-hacht.
Wir Frässähn bis die Schwarte kracht!
Merry Christmas everyone! My friends and family are on two different continents so it's very quiet this year.
I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, and joyous time.
Merry Christmas! HN Christmas theme is always great to see
This is a good time to start your own tradition, or continue one that you find worthwhile.
I got scared when I refreshed and HN turned red
Easy mistake. HN's AI apocolyose color is a slightly darker hue.
Here's to a happy and healthy 2026!
Thanks HN for all the thoughtful comments and interesting articles.
I am alone. I haven't seen my family in many, many years for reasons that I don't want to get into. I am a founder. I check Hacker News every day and have learned an immense amount from all the commenters, articles, and discussions over the years. I thank you all for that. I am truly grateful.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas full of joy, and I hope you can all appreciate, share, and express love for those around you, be it family, friends, or strangers on the internet. We are all very lucky to be part of the HN site and community. I have been here for about 15 years (at least that is what it feels like) with my other accounts that I don't want to dox.
Glory to God. For believers in Jesus, may the light of Christ guide you as it does me in difficult times. Wishing you all His peace and joy.
Hey, Merry Christmas. Thanks for posting.
Merry Christmas HN! Whether you celebrate it or not, hope you get some time off to spend with friends and/or family!
Thanks all for your contributions to positive chats on this site — have a joy filled holiday
https://codepen.io/LimeWub/full/yQWbNW
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
and a healthy dose of Australian Christmas Stereotypes to all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amL8QRiDH2E
including not the original Rolf Harris version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQVEZLcBfS8
Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year
My first Christmas with mom gone was really tough. Stuck alone during COVID in 2021 in a really bad place. I couldn't sleep. And I happened to turn on the radio in the middle of the night and there was an Amy Grant interview. I almost turned it off, oh no, christian stuff I thought. But she talked about her first Christmas without her mom. Then they played her song about it. If I had been 5 minutes more trying to sleep, or given up on sleep 5 minutes earlier, I would have missed that.
Anyways, in case anyone needs to stumble upon something similar, I couldn't find something so perfect but...
hearing it now it's not as amazing as it was that night I needed to not be alone in grief, but here it is:
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/25/506715971/amy-grant-on-faith-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LOqLV6Om4A
Merry Christmas to you!
God bless you. Wishing you joy.
Merry Christmas to All
Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad!
Meri Yule!
Merry x-mas. We all deserve love and happiness. Be kind to your neighboor.
Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has wonderful time with family.
Merry Christmas HN!
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Merry Christmas, bambini.
"A Spaceman Came Travelling" - Chris de Burgh
Merry Christmas everyone!
Favorite Christmas movie?
圣诞快乐
Merry Christmas :)
Merry Christmas friends!
Merry Christmas !
and on earth peace, good will toward men
I was surprised to see HN change colour.
Merry Christmas!
did I do it right?Merry Christmas y'all keep promptin'
Merry Christmas HN!
Merry Christmas!
Here’s a quad tree:
11
11
—
0110
0110
1111
0110
—
00000000
00011000
00011000
00111100
01111110
11111111
00011000
00011000
Merry Christmas to all!!
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Prompt: create a christmas tree in ascii but that is a merkle tree
Answer: Here’s an ASCII Christmas tree that is also a Merkle tree (Each parent node is the hash of its two children; leaves are the “data blocks”.)
But that's a little too tidy to be a proper Christmas tree — so here’s a more “tree-like” version with ornaments, while still preserving the Merkle structure: Notes (so it’s actually Merkle-y)D0–D3 = data blocks (your “presents” )
H(0) = hash(D0 || D0) (duplicated leaf for balance, common in Merkle trees)
H(0-1) = hash(H(0) || H(1))
H(ROOT) = hash(H(0-1) || H(2-3))
If you want, I can:
generate a bigger tree (8, 16, 32 leaves),
make the hashes look like real hash strings,
or format it like a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette while keeping the Merkle parent/child layout.
-- Prompt: format it like a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette while keeping the Merkle parent/child layout.
Answer: You got it — here’s a perfect triangular Christmas tree silhouette that still preserves the Merkle parent/child layout (parents directly above their two children, leaves at the base).
If you want it even more like a Christmas tree (full silhouette + ornaments)Here’s a slightly more “filled” version while keeping the structure valid:
Edit: Note the emoji ornaments did not come through.A Merry Christmas to everyone !
Merry Christmas
Christus natus est
O Χριστός γεννιέται
Христос раждается
המשיח נולד
ابن الله يولد اليوم
Joyeux Noël
Vrolijk Kerstmis
Happy holidays!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone!!
Merry Christmas! Christ is King.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas HN
Merry Christmas!
Merry Xmas HN!
Technically it’s merry Yule and Saturnalia, christ has nothing to do with it.
Saturnalia isn’t related to it other than coincidence of dates, no?
Either way, merry Saturnalia to you! (Off-by-one day :D)
Merry Christmas!
What a year!
Twas brillig, and Santas toes were freezing in the sleigh.
All icey were the Reindeer hooves, moody and unlikely they were to play.
Then Christmas Eve did come about and, Santa, mounted slay he did.
Present bag taken firm in hand, one for each and every kid.
Down-down-down chimney stacks around each and every town.
Milk and cookies, warmth and hearth.
Every present for every home. Boys and girls light and dark.
Good or bad, used to matter. But Santa had a change of heart.
We all mess up sometimes. And, sometimes, we need a brand new start.
Enjoy the gifts! Santa yelled, as the reindeer took off once again.
Be kind to one another all, and try to make new friends.
Merry Christmas!
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Just in case anyone does not know, that is a Base64URL-encoded string. Used by JWT.
Merry XMAS!!
Feliz natal
Merry Christmas!
Can't believe no one's regifted this present yet:
https://xkcd.com/835/