Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you get some rest and can spend time with people who are dear to you and get to focus on what's important rather than getting lost in stressing about everything having to be perfect.
Also much love to everyone who cannot spend their Christmas with dear people.
To make sure this post meets the relevancy criteria, here is a Wikipedia article about some Christmas (more precisely advent) tradition which I personally really like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_market
May your glühwein be hot and your cats purring :)
https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GKP_2025_26.pdf
>The paper carries a telling Latin motto: "Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est" – "To know where you can find something is, after all, the greatest part of learning."
In the modern era it is acknowledged that people will use online search engines to find the answers but hopefully we all learn something on the way
https://oldcompcz.github.io/jgs/joan_stark/xmas.html#treewit...
And of course, the BBS Documentary: Artscene episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQrBbm5ZMlo&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv...
Merry Christmas and happy new years everyone!
https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc says:
> Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.)
I assume that's how the top level comment posted the tree which is in a <pre><code> structure.
I kinda do want to go back to oldschool bbses, with cool text-mode lightbar interfaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Stark
I thought it was just a straggler.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with obfuscated C code that looks like a christmas tree and prints out wishes by the end of the day/season.
Merry Christmas!
[0]: https://www.ioccc.org/
Ask HN: Who needs holiday help? (Follow up thread) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706167 - Dec 2023 (9 comments)
Ask HN: Who needs help this holidays? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492378 - Dec 2023 (210 comments)
Tell HN: Thank You - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34140096 - Dec 2022 (42 comments)
Tell HN: Everyone should have a holiday dinner this year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34122118 - Dec 2022 (58 comments)
Unfortunately, Alex died a few months after his last round of holiday giving, about 1½ years ago now.
Tell HN: In Memory of Alexander Thomas Drummond - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40508725 - May 2024 (5 comments)
If you read the comments in that last thread, know that @toomuchtodo followed through last year and kept the tradition alive. Amazing and magnificent.
Ask HN: Who needs help this holidays? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42291246 - Dec 2024 (46 comments)
Thank you for posting this.
The label "literal Nazi" has become not particularly useful recently.
At best, it seems to be used to mean that the person in question agrees with one or more of:
"I think Hitler was awesome"
"We need to stop letting poor people into our country"
"Gee London was a lot better when it was whiter"
"I think we should forcibly sterilize everybody with an IQ under 85"
"I keep a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion under my bed"
"I will always use he/him when referring to trans women"
--
At worst the label is applied for much more prosaic reasons.
One can be racist, or a Eugenicist, or a white supremacist, or an anti-Semite, or transphobic without being a Nazi, and those terms are all far more descriptive than "Nazi," so are more informative.
You literally don't understand what the term Nazi implies or what Nazi's stood for? And you could not _literally_ take less time than it took to write this comment to research what he was apart of?
I guess you refuse to.
Because you're purposefully trying to muddy the waters :).
>One can be racist, or a Eugenicist, or a white supremacist, or an anti-Semite, or transphobic without being a Nazi,
He's all of the above. Literally, by his own words. Thanks for spelling it out!
I'm not sure how you could read my comment and come away with that impression. I gave a partial list of the sorts of things Nazi's stood for.
> And you could not _literally_ take less time than it took to write this comment to research what he was apart of?
Honestly, I did not search for it before I wrote the comment. After you posted this, I used a few search engines to search up both "Alex Thomas Drummond" and "atdrummond."
The former turned up a single white-pages listing, the latter various people named "Drummond" most notably a basketball player. There is also a twitter/x account which I can't see posts of without an account but has an Estonian flag in his profile, which matches HN comments I later found so is probably him.
So now I'm going through his HN comments one by one, which does in fact take longer than writing the comment I wrote.
I should note that on the first page (which indeed took less time to read than writing my comment), the only thing I saw that gave off any "Nazi vibes" was this sentence, in the context of dealing with homeless addicts:
> The issue is there’s a cohort who thinks that the solutions that enable safe streets require too much sacrifice of one’s individual liberty - even if said individual abuses their freedom to harm themself and others.
But that view is not even definitively a politically right view, I'm probably reading it that way primarily because I'm looking for Nazi evidence.
On page 2 we get this thread[1] which turns into a discussion similar to what my comment was, but specifically defends two people that atdrummond claims to be respectively Jewish and philosemitic and accused of being Nazis.
At this time, I do not know who these writers are, so I have to search them. Assuming Cremieux refers to Jordan Lasker[2], who (after this comment was made) was revealed to have a Reddit pseudonym where he self-identified as a Nazi, but at the time would have been primarily known for his arguments that white people are genetically superior to black people with regards to (at least) intelligence while also rubbing shoulders with avowed eugenicists. I'm not going to spend a lot more time searching him, but I should note that, as a convert to Judaism, I could not find any evidence that he would be defined as Jewish by Nazis, who were primarily concerned with race (as they defined it) rather than religion, which certainly muddies the waters here.
Next up is Hanania[3], someone I also had not heard of before, who was definitely an avowed white supremacist and eugenicist, but claims to have changed; journalists close to him deny this, and quotes on the Wikipedia page seem to support that he is at least still fairly racist. In my (admittedly brief) searching I didn't find strong evidence for him being particularly anti- or philo-semitic, though the Wikipedia article did include a quote by him implying that America would be better run by Jewish people than black people (and maybe also hillbillies; he said "voters in Baltimore or Appalachia"). Presumably he considers at least Ashkenazim to be "sufficiently white" in his racial calculus.
While it seems likely that these two people have not specifically called for the extermination of all ethnic Jews, given that there are far more milquetoast people who have been accused of being Nazis, atdrummond defending these two people specifically makes it seem likely that he has some far-right views, but I still haven't gotten to what those are specifically.
As I was scrolling down, I almost missed this quote[4] in a collapsed reply, but saw his username:
> I am frequently called a Nazi (despite being on, and identifying as left wing, my entire life) on X simply for having the temerity to challenge certain orthodoxies.
X has made it very hard for me to view posts of users, so I don't know what he has said on X, but with what we've seen so far, I suspect he is some form of racist hereditarian. Let's keep going:
Next item[5] is the first overtly racist post from him, so looks like I may be on to something. In the context of discussing how the former confederate states seem to be a different country with different health and educational outcomes from the rest of the US:
> The outcomes are primarily due to race, not the contours of the Confederacy. Nearly all of these “red state demographic maps” are isomorphic to the percentage of African Americans within a given state/county/city.
I was skimming so I may have missed something, but the next racially tinged comment is:
> Look at the rates of homicides by firearm for White Americans and they’re within the same order of magnitude as European nations.
> This is a conversation that is verboten in the US because people assume that it means you believe that crime must be intrinsic to race, even though this statistic is actually fully compatible with the liberal orthodoxy regarding the disparate impact of government policy on American Black people.
With a later reply clarifying that he believes this difference to be not solely due to increased poverty in said demographics.
At this point, it seems clear that he believes that black people are more criminal, and he's being coy about whether he thinks it is racially intrinsic, which is arguably a tacit admission of what he thinks. I'm also done reading through his HN comments.
I strongly suspect there are much spicier comments on Twitter, but of the 3 posts that X let me see, the only relevant one was a reply saying "You don't believe correctly" to a post saying "If you believe (correctly) that immigration is a huge positive for society..."
So it seems clear to me at this point that he likely believes black people are inherently more criminal than white people, and he is opposed to immigration. This is what I could find with several times as much time and effort that went into my first post.
> Because you're purposefully trying to muddy the waters :).
I seriously am not, I didn't know what you meant by "literal Nazi" originally; your reply made it clear that you meant "Racist, Eugenicist, White Supermacist, Anti-Semite Transphobe." Please understand that calling someone a "literal Nazi" on the internet does not reliably communicate that today.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839386
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Lasker
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hanania
4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839371
5: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38515173
Then someone eventually figures out they did or said some wrongthink by today's standards and tell us those people should be hated because they messed up.
But the kicker is we never once learned about nor celebrated said wrongthink. We celebrated the best in people... and I think that should continue.
There was so much bad blood between him and the Oxford University that Oxford students had to take a pledge never to reconcile with Henry Symeonis upon ther Bc graduation. This tradition stuck for 550 years.
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/culture/bizarre-stor...
And we are still aware of him today. Neither an important king, nor a great artist, just a guy who triggered a petty revenge from some long-dead academicians who are, ironically, likely completely forgotten, name and all.
Adding my opinion: Especially if he's done so much good and especially if he's calling out Israel.
I would even argue that respect that can endure through numerous shitty takes, just because there's one facet of that person that isn't shitty, is far less genuine than otherwise holding that person up to a standard for your respect.
The guy has had a long running reputation on this site. Which is why he decided to add this to his profile:
>here from hacker news? don’t be a creep
And by creep, he of course means "don't call me out for advocating for genocide."
His last post is even out right decrying ANY type of immigration, and his second post is being critical of Israel. And mind you, not because of any "normal" sociopolitical commentary, but simply because Israel = Jews and "Jews are bad."
Knowing this, I managed to find 2 additional things which help strengthen this connection as not just being some random twitter account with a matching name:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38840473 where it doesn't actually link to the Twitter to see what the content is but he doesn't bother denying he'd have a Twitter account that could be taken that way.
- https://archive.ph/pJqzD where someone acknowledges they interacted with the account knowing it was really him as part of sharing their discovery of the news.
Much thanks, I would never have thought to look for such an unhinged Twitter account for a seemingly above average HN user being praised long after his death.
He played this site well. I'll leave it at that.
If think otherwise, I don't know what to tell you. It comes straight from the horse's mouth.
Use your vitriol towards Nazi's, or yourself. Either is probably deserved at this point.
This is etched into my mind.
IDDQD = id delta quit delta (apparently some kind of inside joke)
IDSPISPOPD = id smashing pumpkins into small piles of putrid debris
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 ..."
[0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AluminumChristma...
Hell - mine one is crashed! Claude didnt work properly :-D
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.
There's always browser extensions/scripts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266496
https://github.com/FreedomBen/hacker-news-christmas-colors-b...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379541
Thanks for continuing such an awesome tradition :-D
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.
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, HN!
Also, I had to turn off firefox's enhanced tracking protection for the font to load. Before that it was unicode tofu.
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.
Thanks
Merry Christmas!
https://share.cleanshot.com/vJZv6k03 (restarting the server)
https://share.cleanshot.com/qFyM347P (online but temporarily readonly)
https://share.cleanshot.com/kW8kY7mp (back online!)
Is it the convenience utilities for building and running container images?
https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/oci-containers-on-freebsd...
However, I still can't pinpoint what the value proposition is compared to using jails. Is there anybody around here able and willing to shed some light? I know I didn't use Cunningham's Law to start the conversation like a clever netizen but maybe, just this once, a good faith response to a good faith question is possible.
ouch
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12183263
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.
99.999999 is so overated.
It only affects traffic for about 10 seconds.
My situation was very tough and the job was tough too, so I wasn’t able to reply to everyone by email right away, circumstances worked out that way.
Now things have improved and I want to say a big thank you to everyone who came to help, the HN community, Dang and the team for the support.
Merry Christmas and I wish humanity to survive in the age of AI!
PS: Your invaluable support made it possible to improve my startup https://acpul.org and I have created an open letter for those who would like to join in developing the best programming environment in the world: https://www.acpul.org/blog/Open-Letter
Hope everyone enjoy the break and start 2026 with energy to keep improving yourself and the world.
A relevant verse about a sometimes stressful day:
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
- Matthew 6:34
Merry Christmat!
As the call is on our car throws a red light: Transmission malfunction: Service now. We take the next exit and happen to find a Big O Tire place which is where we get most of our car work done. The transmission is seized, but it's Christmas Eve and no one is open to get an estimate on a replacement. But that's okay a couple of cousins are able to pick us up to get to the party.
We get home and find big pile of presents on our doorstep but we find they are addressed to names we don't know. So we bring them in for safekeeping. Today I look around the apartment building and finding one with a dollhouse on the balcony give a knock but its the wrong door but they knew the family which was downstairs so the right family got the presents finally.
Now cinnamon rolls are baking for breakfast and starting dinner prep soon.
But somehow I have to figure out if I should replace the transmission on a 13 year old car which needs $4500 in suspension work too or replace the whole vehicle.
And find a way to make more money since the part-time job I have right now to open up time for caregiving won't be enough for all this, and it looks like caregiving won't be necessary for much longer anyway.
For what it's worth, it strikes me as very unlikely that the transmission is going to be less than an additional $4500. But you never know, it could be a simple fault - no sense in trying to make mental decisions before you know the math involved.
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!
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
Spread the love, please - try to give everyone around you a metaphorical "▲" (upvote), in HN-speak, to make this world a better place.
¡Feliz Navidad!
Merry Christmas to all!
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.
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
There's a German term for that 'Uboot Christen' - submarine Christians. They only emerge twice a year.
Easter also not pagan. But pophistory thinks that as well. Scholarship doesn’t line up.
"keep the big bang until later for your children, the bible is really a great set of fairy tales"
Im not religious at all, actually "implicitly fighting against it", though I have to admit: This sentence made sense and Im thinking still until today about it, because actually I think its quite true - for smaller children, the storylines in the bible are much more "real" and understandable than the story of: "hey, there was a big bang, all molecules were created then and you are consisting today of these molecules"
Modern Christians know that religion and science can go together. Science researches _how_ something works. Religion answers _who_ created it. The Big Bang theory is actually accepted by them today.
What part of the Bible are up for interpretation, and what parts are considered to be fact?
Contrary to the historically recent error of sola scriptura, the Bible does not interpret itself. And contrary to the modernists, it is not whatever you want it to mean.
First, what is the general nature of Scripture? It is not meant to be a scientific text. It is meant to communicate, above all, revealed truths about God that are not available to unaided reason (obviously, it also contains things we can know through unaided reason, but the unique value proposition is in what we cannot know by our own wits).
Historically, the tradition of knowledge, indeed the content of Scripture itself, preceded the biblical canon. You needed that tradition to make the determination of what is canonical and what is not. Similarly, you need that tradition to determine the nature of a given book: is a historical in structure, poetic, etc? This unbroken tradition, scholarship, literary analysis, etc. tell us the nature of a given text.
In the case of something like the creation accounts in Genesis (and there are two accounts, which differ), it is clear under such an examination that these are not scientific descriptions. They are written using the language of a pre-scientific culture. They do not tell us in scientific terms how the physical universe was formed. They do tell us that creation is ex nihilo, or out of nothing. (This is not a question of a big bang btw. The big bang is not necessary. It is a question of casuality. God as the Logos - eternal Reason - is the per se - rather than per accidens - cause of the universe’s existence, sustaining it in existence at every moment. God is not some Paley-style watchmaker arranging parts into a watch out of some primordial chaos, and the universe is not the result of some clash of opposing forces.) Genesis also tells us that there was a first human couple and that original sin can be traced to the first freely chosen immoral act. There are no binding or definitive claims about how exactly this all occurred in a historical sense. We don’t know, and as interesting as that question is [0], for the relevant purposes of the text, it doesn’t matter.
The Gospels of the New Testament, however, are very much historical in character. They are eye witness accounts of Christ’s ministry, and the canonical four were deemed to be the only reliable ones. They aren’t figurative, and the early Christians, the many witnesses of Christ’s ministry, and new evidence all align with the received and continuous tradition (indeed, one of the responsibilities of the Catholic Church is to safeguard tradition from “innovation”). Figurative interpretations of the Gospels also tend not to be compelling either, especially in light of tradition.
Obviously, biblical hermeneutics is a big topic that goes beyond an HN post. I’ve included links to a couple of texts that should introduce the material with greater depth and expertise than I can [1][2].
[0] http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-o...
[1] https://a.co/d/4xdAc9Y
[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhorta...
Perhaps it's possible that the beliefs and propositions of individual members of a greater body don't always align with the official stance of the greater body.
It is, and where they depart from or twist binding doctrine, it would be a matter of heresy.
But FWIW, the Catholic Church didn’t and doesn’t have a stance on the question of heliocentrism. Why would it? It is not a question with any religious importance. Who cares which orb rotates around which? Copernicus wasn’t doing anything forbidden (nor had he vindicated heliocentrism) and had high ranking friends and acquaintances in the clergy (including cardinals like Cardinal Schõnberg and Pope Clement VII) who took an interest in his work. De Revolutionibus was itself dedicated to Pope Paul III. If anything, Copernicus was wary of other academics who held to the Ptolemaic view at the time. Plus ça change…
No doubt, you have in mind the oft-repeated Galileo affair which has become one of those stubborn black legends that seems to stay afloat despite the lack of facts supporting it because of its instrumental value for sticking it to the Church. The Galileo affair was not about heliocentrism. It was about a clash of egos and personalities (Galileo’s being of them, as he liked to pick pointless fights, including some nasty personal attacks on his friend and benefactor Urban VIII) that spanned decades. It isn’t as piquant as the story as typically told would have you believe.
> The Galileo affair was not about heliocentrism. It was about a clash of egos and personalities
That's pretty much the way I heard it, outside of the Catholic Church, some 50 years ago. Make enough enemies, sooner or later they band together and strike if they can.
It's like you're not reading my mind and yet somehow imagine you can.If you enjoy quoting J. Budziszewski you may or may not get a kick out of Graham Priest and Dialetheism.
Can you tell the fundamentalists that? Thanks
We don't know that. Some Christians believe that because they believe the Bible is univocal, which it isn't, and because they want to use other unrelated scripture like "a day for God is like a thousand years" to support a framework for Genesis which they believe is validated by current science.
But I see no reason to believe that when the ancient Hebrews wrote about creation taking seven days, that they didn't mean seven actual days.
>It was written like that, because it would be easier for people to understand.
A supposition not backed up by evidence, and one that assumes the author of Genesis had a modern understanding of astrophysics, which they did not.
> Science wasn't a thing back then. If it were written in 2025, it would obviously be very different and probably much more detailed.
OK. So as I suspected you believe that the Genesis creation story (or at least one, as there are two conflicting creation narratives) represents literal truth, but that the account itself couches this literal truth in metaphor.
I suppose that's better than the Biblical literalists who insist that Old Testament genealogies prove the world is only 10,000 years old and that therefore things like carbon dating are fake, but I do wish Christians would just accept that Genesis (along with the rest of the Bible) is entirely mythology and that they don't have to "make it fit" with modern science. It just didn't happen.
>Science researches _how_ something works. Religion answers _who_ created it. Religion also makes just as many claims about how as who and why.
Religion doesn't answer anything of the sort, it claims to answer it, a priori, without evidence.
And of course there are countless religions with countless such "answers." You believe only one answer is valid, again, without evidence.
This is not an opportunity for you to proselytize to me.
Just look at something like John 1:1: «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.» Most adults aren't in a position to comprehend that, never mind a child. It is one of the most profound sentences ever uttered (those with sufficient philosophical and theological background might find this recent book on this topic of interest [0]). Or consider Exodus 3:14: «God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”». If that doesn't knock you off your feet, then you have not understood it. This is an incredibly sophisticated metaphysical statement, the meaning of which was unknown to the ancient pagans. (A good, short introduction from a philosophical angle can be found here [1].)
But more importantly, both you and the author of that article have committed a very basic category mistake. The Bible is not in the same business as the physical sciences. It doesn't answer the same questions. The Bible is not a scientific treatise, and the physical science are not a path to salvation from sin.
The Bible is also not a text of mere parables and life lessons. Indeed, this is one of those distinguishing features of Christianity that many fail to appreciate. In other religious traditions, it doesn't really matter where the truth claims come from or who said them. You could accept the claims without knowing or caring about the author. But you cannot do that with the figure of Christ. You cannot say "Oh, I accept the lessons of the New Testament, I think Jesus was a wise teacher. I just don't accept his divinity or the resurrection or the miracles or all that other stuff my bourgeois sensibilities can't stomach." Those claims that are uniquely Christian are about Christ and rooted in the authority of Christ. It is Christ who saves - a person - not knowledge, not some method, not a technology, but a person. Christ calls himself the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all creation, eternal, the Almighty, and the source and completion of history and salvation.
That's not just some "fun" or "cute" passage. The point is that - if Christianity is true - it is through Christ that Man's relationship to God is restored and elevated. It is through Christ that man is ennobled. Man is invited to participate in his divinity, and unlike other traditions that maintain Man can attain divinity through his own efforts alone, the Christian says "no", it is not in Man's power to do that, to pull himself up by his own bootstraps; only God can do that, and the way is by answering "yes" to his offer, by cooperating with him so he can accomplish that divinity in us. To do that, God humbled himself through the Incarnation to share in our humanity: «the Word became flesh and dwelt among us». He entered the pathology and disorder of the world to liberate it from it, to be the path out of it.
That is what Christianity teaches. That is what Christmas is about. Either that is true, or Jesus was a liar or a madman. What he wasn't was merely another "wise teacher". Either Christmas celebrates this momentous historical event of the Incarnation, or it is ridiculous.
[0] https://a.co/d/1QtQWCP
[1] https://a.co/d/bSqgkXq
"Don't be snarky."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yes, it was very cold, which is not deal when you're spending 12 hours a day outside (hovering around freezing the entire trip, a small amount of snow a few days). Yes, it gets dark early and the days are short -- but that's true back at home in California too. We do share a hemisphere, after all. And yes, after awhile, the markets all do tend to look the same. But I find it nice to travel, and I love traveling in the off-season.
Yes, you can travel at the same time everyone else wants to travel, with long days, long lines, and large prices. But everywhere you go has traditions year round, and the weather and lifestyle changes with the seasons. Every place and every time of year has things worth seeing and experiencing.
Or you could travel to the opposite hemisphere when the days are short back home, that's fun too :)
this is what I did for my friends
https://www.adoptimize.de/weihnachten/editor.php
in german and english available https://www.adoptimize.de/weihnachten/2025_pers_v2/?id=demo_...
In case you didn’t know, you can check if Santa has reached out your location ;)
https://www.flightradar24.com/R3DN053/3d9fb50a
Being super-lonely this year, I hope all of you are much better off than me - this year contained some catastrophic external events in my life, which led to permanent change on some "layers" of my live (not only material, but also in psy etc.)
I hope the next year will bring the luck to re-align some things and bring them backs on the track, otherwise next year I will write the same post and add that Im in huge (final) trouble...
Enjoy the time with your family if they are near to you!
This not so little corner of the internet keeps delivering year after year, thank you all for the quality of the submissions and discussions!
https://github.com/bradly/christmas-lights.js
You can see it in action at https://bradlyfeeley.com and https://birdymusic.com
The ESV is the translation I have used since it came out for personal reading and study, though.
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.”
https://biblehub.com/luke/2-14.htm
That was fun! I read that verse earlier today and I didn't know about the version with genitive case.
Thank you HN and HN community for sharing the most interesting places of internet, ideas, discussions and points of views. Learned a lot and hope to learn more.
Sharing the funniest Christmas themed video I know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjMNtEKHURU
If you’d fancy a little holiday-themed adventure game - https://gricha.dev/happyholidays/terminal
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
Fun tidbit: The Charlie Brown Christmas animators had Linus drop his security blanket when he said, "fear not".
(I'm an atheist, but as an official GenXer™, I could almost recite this speech from memory.)
I will continuing trying to give back in a small way, what the HN community has given me. Happy holidays.
Turns out my best 2 tv shows of last couple of years are on Apple TV: Severance and Pluribus
Silicon Valley - for me the funniest (and painful to watch, sometimes) to show. Schitt’s Creek - heart warming, wonderfully written, very funny bite size episodes perfect for cosy Christmas times.
Something to read if you’re bored, https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/holidays/christmas-...
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
Thanks to @dang!
<3 happy holidays, folks.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
(this is an old pg tradition btw)
Best of luck with this. Back (and neck) pain really, truly sucks. Very under-treated in the U.S. as well. IME, completely stifles the ability to enter a “flow” state of cognitive function.
Thanks HN for all the thoughtful comments and interesting articles.
That reminds me I have to update my HN theme to have the Christmas theme
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.
"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
I hope everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, and joyous time.
https://xkcd.com/835/
https://www.adoptimize.de/weihnachten/editor.php
including not the original Rolf Harris version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQVEZLcBfS8
Here’s a quad tree:
11
11
—
0110
0110
1111
0110
—
00000000
00011000
00011000
00111100
01111110
11111111
00011000
00011000
Christus natus est
O Χριστός γεννιέται
Христос раждается
המשיח נולד
ابن الله يولد اليوم
Vrolijk Kerstmis
Favorite Christmas movie?
And probably a hundred others.
It is strange and sad to be alone this morning.
If you are in the same situation, know that you are not alone: I'm thinking of you.
Merry Christmas.
>single html file, no frameworks, images or webgl
Happy Holidays https://xe.dev/xmas 2 points by jFriedensreich 15 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374804
Wir Frässähn bis die Schwarte kracht!
Happy Yalda (Yuletide)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda_Night
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!
https://youtu.be/1njzgXSzA-A?si=KIQy9e39lofX0aYP
#FestivusSavesTrees
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all!
“At the very moment that Augustus is making decrees as the ruler of the known world, and Herod is seething in his palace, God enters stage right. Not on the clouds, asserting his power and dominance, not with all the strength and might he rightly has. But in humility. Doing so with a profound statement that he is turning all our preconceived notions completely upside down.
One of the most beautiful, yet often overlooked, components to this story is Mary’s reaction to the news of her Son. In church tradition we call her carol The Magnificat:
“My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has begun to rejoice in God my Savior, because he has looked upon the humble state of his servant.
For from now on all generations will call me blessed, because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name; from generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him.
He has demonstrated power with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance of their hearts.
He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position; he has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46-55)
Amidst all the interpretations of Christmas that we hear at this time of year from clergy, advertisers, politicians, and journalists, we might benefit from listening to the mother who sits at the centre of it all. According to Mary, Christmas is about God scattering the proud, bringing down unjust rulers, lifting up the humble. It’s about God turning things upside down— which ironically is the right way up to begin with.
And God accomplishes all of this not “from on high,” like the decree of Augustus, or the brutality of Herod; instead, God achieves his purposes from below in the lowliness of a manger. With shepherds, livestock, and foreign magi as the first witnesses.
Christmas is about God turning things upside down—which ironically is the right way up to begin with.
Every detail about the Christmas story (and the subsequent life of Jesus as well), states that God will reverse the mess and do so by first getting his own hands dirty. God conquers by humbling himself, he will heal by being wounded, he will save us by sacrificing himself. The manger is a throne, and works as a beacon of how God intends to turn everything upside down.
Grace triumphs over dominance, mercy over force, and Mary’s song will be the world’s song.
Joy will pierce through the sorrow and sadness, fully and forever.”
- Wes Huff
I'm not saying this as a bad thing; I'm not and have never been religious but I still love Christmas.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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.Either way, merry Saturnalia to you! (Off-by-one day :D)