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paulgerhardt commented on Koralm Railway   infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/... · Posted by u/fzeindl
bigbinary · 5 days ago
Considering the original title is just the name of the railway, and I do not think “within budget” is editorializing, I think the commenter is being overly pedantic
paulgerhardt · 5 days ago
I was curious about the forecasting success story here too. The German LOK article is better in this regard: https://www.lok-report.de/news/europa/item/62410-oesterreich...
paulgerhardt commented on Unusual circuits in the Intel 386's standard cell logic   righto.com/2025/11/unusua... · Posted by u/Stratoscope
rcxdude · 23 days ago
Though the unreplicable nature of it certainly limited its usefulness. I'd also suspect it would be quite sensitive to temperature.
paulgerhardt · 23 days ago
That unreplicability between chips is actually a very, very desirable property when fingerprinting chips (sometimes known as ChipDNA) to implement unique keys for each chip. You use precisely this property (plus a lot of magic to control for temperature as you point out) to give each chip its own physically unclonable key. This has wonderfully interesting properties.
paulgerhardt commented on Weighting an average to minimize variance   johndcook.com/blog/2025/1... · Posted by u/ibobev
thomasahle · a month ago
There are lots of good books on writing mathematics:

1. How to Write Mathematics — Paul Halmos

2. Mathematical Writing — Donald Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul Roberts

3. Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences — Nicholas J. Higham

4. Writing Mathematics Well — Steven Gill Williamson

paulgerhardt · a month ago
Thanks. Higham explicitly addresses the authors substitution crime in section 2.5. Wonderful resource.

My complaint stems more to the general observation that readability is prized in math and programming but not emphasized in traditional education curriculum to the degree it is in writing.

Bad style is seldomly commented on in our profession.

paulgerhardt commented on Weighting an average to minimize variance   johndcook.com/blog/2025/1... · Posted by u/ibobev
paulgerhardt · a month ago
I wish there was a Strunk and White for mathematics.

While by no means logically incorrect, it feels inelegant to setup a problem using variables A and B in the first paragraph and solve for X and Y in the second (compounded with the implicit X==B, and Y==A).

paulgerhardt commented on New gel restores dental enamel and could revolutionise tooth repair   nottingham.ac.uk/news/new... · Posted by u/CGMthrowaway
Waterluvian · a month ago
I just learned about this 5 mins ago and did some basic research. Here's what I found:

- Sensodyne Repair and Protect contains 'NovaMin' (possibly only in some markets; check the ingredients!)

- NovaMin is the brand name for calcium sodium phosphosilicate

- It reacts with saliva to form a physical layer of hydroxyapatite on your teeth

- This layer blocks the tubules that trigger pain from temperature and such

- It also supports remineralization (how exactly?)

paulgerhardt · a month ago
Because it keeps coming up there is an anti-Novamin crowd that says it’s useless and Biomin is the true re-enamelizer.
paulgerhardt commented on How the cochlea computes (2024)   dissonances.blog/p/the-ea... · Posted by u/izhak
didroe · 2 months ago
The problem is that evolution works on a much longer timescale than the pace of change to the environment that humans cause.
paulgerhardt · 2 months ago
While I understand the spirit of this comment, if you look at the fossil record you’ll see that’s objectively not true.

Roughly half of the shifts in the last 11 evolutionary periods, over the last 500 million years, were caused by changes that occurred in a-few-hours-to-a-few-thousand-years with 75%-90% species lost.

Evolution did not fail to work then.

paulgerhardt commented on 60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds   cbsnews.com/news/peanut-a... · Posted by u/zdw
paulgerhardt · 2 months ago
Aside from the skin lotion thing[1] that got popular recently, what is the state of the art in 2025 for allergy prevention? It feels like there is a lot of common ignorance in this space but literature is full of better practice.

[1] https://www.nationaljewish.org/clinical-trials/seal-study-st...

paulgerhardt commented on Root System Drawings   images.wur.nl/digital/col... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
daemonologist · 2 months ago
How are these produced? I assume they're not actually digging a giant trench and taking a section, but are the drawings based on measurements of a specific individual in some way?

In any case, very cool to have such a collection.

paulgerhardt · 2 months ago
A few ways. This particular project is doing it by hand and very tedious.

The traditional way of transplanting large trees while keeping the root system intact is with a hydrovac. A machine the size of a jet engine that liquifies the soil with water and then vacuums it up. [1]

More recent developments have tried using an AirSpade which doesn’t use water but compressed air to blow apart and then suck the soil without making a slurry which is better as the soil can be redeposited in the same hole rather than discarded[2]

[1] https://youtube.com/shorts/HinwD5-Q2xA

[2] https://youtu.be/B3XomJ6Z1I4

paulgerhardt commented on Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?    · Posted by u/xrd
paulgerhardt · 2 months ago
Do recommend the LG C series (C5 or C4 are new or the C1 series if you want a deal on classifieds - same hardware as the higher end models but needs a firmware bit flip). The OS is very rootable and it makes a great TV that doubles as a monitor. Supports free sync / g-sync. OLED is nice at this scale.

Text is very readable, refresh rate is good. It uses the same panels as the fancier G series in the larger sizes. One can root the firmware to make it go brighter. (Though this is screen works well in medium or dimly lit rooms. It does not shine in very bright rooms).

Plenty of YouTube videos singing the C series praises as a TV / Monitor.[1] LG webOS is also trivial/friendly to root in developer mode and network control of the tv is a nice to have.

Would avoid Samsung. I love the matte on the Frame and the design of the Serif but the OS is frustrating / impractical to root.

[1] https://youtu.be/Qtve0u3GJ9Y

paulgerhardt commented on Washi: The Japanese paper crafted to last 1000 years [video]   bbc.com/reel/video/p0m4mg... · Posted by u/rmason
paulgerhardt · 3 months ago
I’ve recently thrown out all my masking tape (crepe paper) in favor of Washi tape (rice/mulberry paper with a 3M adhesive). I use Blue Dolphin for house painting and Nichiban for airbrushing. Very nice quality of life upgrade.

Masking tape would bleed or lift paint. (Even frog tape). 10x reduction in these problems since switching to washi.

u/paulgerhardt

KarmaCake day7976March 26, 2009
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    (Previously) Founder of Lockitron (YC S09).

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    http://twitter.com/pmg

    Works on secure hardware for key storage.

    Palo Alto, CA
    Shenzhen, CN

    pmg@colorado.edu

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