122 ways to move a pen

Hey 👋 — today's got a real magpie mix: a pen-plotter algorithm bible, an app that never lets you forget where the galaxy's center is, an accidental phone-tapping confession, and a small argument about whether terminal UIs deserve to exist anymore.

Plotter related algorithms

This is the kind of resource you bookmark once and return to for years: a visual catalog of 122 pen-plotter algorithms, from path optimization and vectorization to generative geometry and organic growth, each with a plain-language explanation and, for most, a live p5.js demo you can poke at right there in the browser. It's less a reading list than a workbench — the sort of thing that turns "I wonder how hatching fill works" into an afternoon well spent (via HN discussion).

First plotter resource in ages that's actually worth bookmarking, not just admiring.

Galactic Compass 2: now with new augmented reality mode

Matt Webb's Galactic Compass — an app whose entire job is a floating arrow pointing at the center of the Milky Way — just got an AR mode, an Apple Watch face, and haptic feedback that buzzes when you're aligned. It's delightfully useless in the way only good tinkerer projects are: no practical function, just a small, persistent reminder that you're standing on a rock spinning around a galactic core.

I accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases

A researcher found an expired nameserver, took over e164.arpa DNS zones for several territories — the plumbing that routes phone calls over VoIP — and, almost as a side effect, ended up logging hundreds of thousands of real calls, including ones placed to military bases. It reads like a heist story where the thief keeps apologizing, and it's a good reminder that "expired" infrastructure is never really gone, just waiting for someone curious enough to poke it (via Lobsters discussion).

Stop making TUIs

Thomas Ptacek's case, relayed by Simon Willison: now that coding agents make real native UIs cheap to build, there's less excuse for defaulting to a throwaway terminal interface for your personal tools. Willison backs it up with his own habit of leaning on vibe-coded native monitoring apps every day — a small but telling sign of how the calculus around "what's worth building" is shifting.

Quick hits

• Small, native web tricks worth remembering — a grab-bag of browser features you forgot the platform already gives you for free.
• Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe — cosmic cartography, now with an even bigger canvas.
• Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article — for when "unleashing the power of" has officially worn out its welcome.
• Show HN: WorldLoop – Procedural CAD for Roblox Studio — parametric modeling finds its way into the blocky metaverse.

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