43 quintillion reasons to procrastinate
Hey 👋 — today's issue turned out unexpectedly mathematical: a cube with more configurations than atoms feels reasonable to count, a river that apparently does trigonometry, and a curve family trying to dethrone the humble Bézier. Bring a calculator, or just your curiosity.
Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states
Someone built a scroll-driven browser toy that lets you page through the Rubik's Cube's entire permutation space — all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 of them — rendered in 2D and 3D, with landmark states like Superflip flagged along the way. It's a nice reminder of just how absurd that number is: even at a state a second, you'd need more time than the universe has been around to see them all. Mostly it's just a satisfying thing to scrub through, a bit like flipping a very large, very colorful flipbook. (via HN discussion)
Why are rivers so mathematical?
Staying with numbers behaving strangely well: Quanta digs into a scaling law that governs how river networks branch, and how that same law shows up in blood vessels, tree leaves, and other transport systems nature had to optimize on a budget. The piece covers recent work pushing the law further than expected, which is the kind of finding that makes you look at a map of any river delta a little differently. (via Quanta Magazine)
The mathematical beauty of hyperbezier curves
In a similar vein of curves worth admiring, Raph Levien of Linebender proposes "hyperbeziers" — a new curve family defined by a Cesàro equation for curvature — as a possible successor to the cubic Bézier in vector design tools, promising smoother curvature transitions and better behavior in high-tension corners. The post ships with an interactive Bézier-to-hyperbezier comparison tool, so you can see the wobble disappear in real time rather than take his word for it. (via Lobsters discussion)
Quick hits
- 50k boat names — a delightful dataset of what humans actually name their boats, for better or worse.
- Show HN: Sketchling – a hand-drawn animation language for coding agents — teaching agents to doodle their thinking, sketchbook style.
- Exploiting System Management Mode with a very long interrupt — low-level hacking with a name that's committed to the bit.
- Humanising LLM outputs is dumb — a sharp argument against dressing up machine text in human clothing.
- Harry Potter fans force diverting UK-Ireland power link to avoid Dobby's grave — grid engineering meets fandom devotion, and fandom wins.
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