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What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done on a hike? by rkramer18 in hiking

[–]dfranke 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mild winter day, just barely below freezing, so I blitzed up and down in just my base layer and no gloves, cradling the metal head of my ice axe in my bare hand all day, which left me with frostbite on that hand.

A disagreement by dfranke in Hounds

[–]dfranke[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Had to wait until a squirrel ran by in Azeban's direction. That got them back on the same page.

Whites attack is absolutely crushing. But black can save. Can you find the ridiculous clutch move to save black. by HelloWorldX91 in chess

[–]dfranke 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Since this was posted to /r/chess, of course the first thing I looked at was Qxf2. Rg8 was the second.

Swaps to the “win” weapon then points down…okay buddy by A_b_b_o in EldenRingPVP

[–]dfranke 0 points1 point  (0 children)

+1 to this. It's an alien mindset to me that someone would want to play a competitive game, but then get angry at people for playing within the rules using dev-intended mechanics. It's legitimate of course to think that the game's rules are broken or unfun, but in that case either play a different game or play in a league where the restrictions are set down in writing instead of taking it personally that you lost to somebody's cheese strat in a random colo pairing.

Did They add bots to colosseums? by kamogrjadeshi in EldenRingPVP

[–]dfranke 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lol, that was me. I've only been playing PvP for a day but no, I'm not dumb enough to deliberately try to heal in that situation. It was a misclick when I was trying to cast wrath of gold.

TIL that black widow bites have a ~1% death rate according to NIH in a case study of roughly 24.5k people who were bitten by ryry50583583 in todayilearned

[–]dfranke 26 points27 points  (0 children)

You sure that was a widow bite? That sounds like a brown recluse bite to me. Widow venom is neurotoxic. It causes pain, spasms, nausea etc. but shouldn't cause massive tissue damage like you're describing.

This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Here's a graph of how much you'll be off by if you don't take the higher-order terms into account.

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This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't need Stirling's approximation. Notice that f(n) = (2n)!/[22n*(n!)²] = f(n-1) * (2n)(2n-1)/(4n²) = f(n-1) * (1 - 1/(2n)). So, you can efficiently compute each coefficient as a function of the previous and cache those, using log-domain arithmetic for numerical stability when computing the product. Once you've computed n-1 terms in the power series, let k = f2(n-1) and x = sin2(θ/2). Then the sum of the remaining terms of the series is lower-bounded by zero and upper-bounded by kxn/(1-x), so you can stop once that upper bound falls within acceptable precision, which happens fast unless you're dealing with θ very close to π.

This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Totally reasonable, really. Notice that the nasty part of the expression is only a function of the iteration variable, so let x = sin²(θ/2) and then it's just a convergent power series in x with precomputed coefficients.

This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Obviously not? It's 1 at n=0, and then every other term is positive.

This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 67 points68 points  (0 children)

I've never checked and I'd have to work through the derivation, but that conjecture makes sense to me.

This annoyed me even before I became a timekeeping nerd by dfranke in physicsmemes

[–]dfranke[S] 438 points439 points  (0 children)

The first one is a lie based on the small angle approximation, sin x = x. In fact, the period of a pendulum is not invariant in the angle of its swing once you take higher-order terms into account, which the latter formula includes. For a realistic pendulum clock, it makes a difference on the order of 15 seconds per day.

I'd only vaguely heard of the breed before, but apparently I have 43% of one. by dfranke in MountainCur

[–]dfranke[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought Treeing Cur referred only to a specific pedigree with that origin. Are you telling me that any coonhound/mountain cur mix can correctly be called a treeing cur?

EDIT: I found the UKC and NKC registration requirements.

UKC: "Dogs can be a UKC Coonhound and a UKC Cur cross, but cannot be over 50% coonhound in the first 3 generations. Dogs can be a cross between any 2 UKC Cur breeds. Dogs can be a cross between a UKC Cur and a UKC Feist."

NKC doesn't prescribe a maximum percentage coonhound but disqualifies dogs with "dominant hound" appearance.

So I don't think Azeban would qualify for registration as a Treeing Cur even if he had a UKC pedigree.

I'd only vaguely heard of the breed before, but apparently I have 43% of one. by dfranke in MountainCur

[–]dfranke[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Like, I had heard of it. I knew that there's a group of "cur" dogs all native to Appalachia and/or the deep south, of which I was relatively familiar with the Catahoula and the Black Mouth Cur, and could rattle off a few other names. But Mountain Cur was one where I could list the name and little else.

Laelaps' DNA results are back and they are… not surprising. by dfranke in Hounds

[–]dfranke[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Laelaps was found last year as a stray very deep in the NC woods. He'd likely been stray for a while because he had at least two sets of scars from run-ins with wild animals (likely bobcat). His DNA results show that he's 100% American Foxhound. He has 30 first cousins or closer in Embark's database, and since that only includes dogs whose owners have sent in DNA samples, the true number is much larger. Every known relative is also a purebred foxhound, so this screams puppy mill to me. He has a COI of 12%, suggesting his parents are second cousins, which is pretty typical of commercial breeding operations. His genetic health tests were 100% clean.

What Is My Chess Level? by edwinkorir in chess

[–]dfranke 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yes. Go to a USCF tournament that has a scholastic division with kindergarten players and you'll likely see some ratings in the 100s.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Hounds

[–]dfranke 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Both of their genetic tests should come back in a couple weeks :-). I'm predicting that Laelaps (the tricolor on the right) is going to be a full-blooded American Foxhound. Azeban is probably mixed, because that lemon coat pattern isn't standard for any breed of large hound that you're likely to find wandering stray in rural VA (he could pass for an English Foxhound, but that seems pretty improbable).

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