Comment by Grosvenor

Comment by Grosvenor 7 days ago

45 replies

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wildpeaks 6 days ago

Merry Christmas !

May your glühwein be hot and your cats purring :)

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Grosvenor 6 days ago

Since I might have peoples' attention for a moment (Can no longer edit my original post). Might I suggest the King William's college quiz this Christmas?

https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GKP_2025_26.pdf

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  • [removed] 6 days ago
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  • bornabox 6 days ago

    Thanks for posting. This was fun! Towards the end it gets really hard. Merry Christmas!

    Reply View 4 replies
    • OrangeMusic 6 days ago

      Towards the end?! I can't answer ANY of the questions!

      Reply View 2 replies
      • Spare_account 6 days ago

        You're not expected to know the answers without doing research. https://britbrief.co.uk/education/schools/king-williams-coll...

        >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

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      • tralarpa 6 days ago

        I know the answer to 1.5. And I know the story behind 1.6, but not the name of the town... That's it :)

        Reply View 0 replies
dbacar 6 days ago

These ascii art remind me the good old days of internet where we would celebrate holidays and special days sending these little marvels thru our mail client, pine under ibm aix unix terminals.

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kylecazar 6 days ago

That jgs is killing me

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  • opello 6 days ago

    Just because old ASCII and ANSI art is often signed by the author, which is something fun I appreciate, see also:

    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...

    Reply View 8 replies
    • Grosvenor 6 days ago

      Woah. I didn't know about that. I found it from asciiart.eu. This stuff makes me wish HN supported ANSI. We could have so much fun. (Also PRE or preformatted text would be useful).

      Merry Christmas and happy new years everyone!

      Reply View 3 replies
      • robobro 6 days ago

        > Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.)

                .-"```"-.
       /_\ _ _ __\
      | /{` ` `  `}
      {} {_,_,_,_,}
         )/ a  a \(
        _(<o_()_o>)_          __
       { | /_)(_\ | }       _/  \
     /`{ \        / }`\   _| `  |
    /   { '.____.' }   \ {_`-._/
   /     {_,    ,_}     \/ `-._}
  |        `{--}`    \  /    /
  |    /    {  }     | `    /
  ;    |    {  }     |\    /
   \    \   {__}     | '..'
    \_.-'}==//\\====/
    {_.-'\==\\//====\
     |   ,)  ``     |
      \__|          |
       |     __     |
       | _   /\   _ |
       |     ||     |
       \ _ _ || _ _ /
       {` ` `}{` ` `}
       {_,_,_}{_,_,_}
        |    ||    |
        /-. _||_ .-\
   jgs /    /  \    \
      |___ /    \ ___|
      `"""`      `"""`
        Reply View 0 replies
      • opello 6 days ago

        Glad I could share it!

        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.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • Grosvenor 6 days ago

          But we still miss out on the great ANSI colors.

          I kinda do want to go back to oldschool bbses, with cool text-mode lightbar interfaces.

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    • kylecazar 6 days ago

      Ahhh of course it's a signature. Makes total sense now.

      I thought it was just a straggler.

      Reply View 0 replies
dachris 6 days ago

Very nice, the introduction to recursion in university (which was around that time of the year) was drawing a fractal Christmas tree

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OptionOfT 7 days ago

I thought this was Advent of Code! Merry Christmas!

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e-dant 6 days ago

Thought it was obfuscated C code, then I realized it’s a tree or something

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  • onion2k 6 days ago

    Pretty sure it's a regex to match email address strings.

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    • snarf21 6 days ago

      Thank you kind stranger for a wonderful laugh on Christmas!

      Reply View 0 replies
  • devsda 6 days ago

    Challenge issued.

    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!

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    • [removed] 6 days ago
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    • [removed] 6 days ago
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    • [removed] 6 days ago
      [deleted]
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    • epicureanideal 6 days ago

      Let's ask an LLM as a test!

      Reply View 9 replies
    • DrewADesign 6 days ago

      Perl time

      Reply View 2 replies
      • Jnr 6 days ago

        Exactly, looks like Perl code to me. :)

        Reply View 1 reply
        • DrewADesign 5 days ago

          It’s tragic that having a language as flexible and unopinionated as Perl is admittedly terrible for novice programmers because Learning Perl is easily one of the greatest introductory programming books.

          Reply View 0 replies
  • marginalia_nu 6 days ago

    It's a red-green tree. Your task is to invert it in O(n) operations.

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  • cs02rm0 6 days ago

    I thought it was unobfuscated perl code. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.

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