Free Talk Friday #572

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Continued from last week's FTF here

It's that time of the week again. Speak anything on your mind! This thread is for talking about anything off-topic, be it your lives, your strava, your plans, your hobbies, studies, stats, pets, bears, hikes, dragons, trousers, travels, transit, cycling, family, colours, or anything you like or dislike, except politics

Feel free to check out our tidbits thread and introduce yourself if you haven't already.

[u/cuteballgames]

Remember when basskro deleted?
(What does "basskro" even mean?)
Unfortunately, Reddit ceded
speed for... something else, I glean.
He was estranged from his 1-second
counts... it was as we had reckoned...
speed runs could no more be had.
And that made basskro really mad,
and for the second time he vanished,
and for years no one has known
the former champ and rolling stone.
Now, because I'm Polyannish,
I think he will reappear —
I think that it will be this year.

[u/Isaythereisa-chance]

Have been Helping my Niece move into an apartment for college this week . She has brought quite a few stuffed animals. Only 2 bears though. 

[u/cuteballgames]

Congratulatiosn on your non automated FTF posting

[u/rideride]

sigh There's nothing wrong with the 5 digit copy+paste, not even with the 4 digit copy+paste, hell, any reply sub 10 seconds is great. I'm sorry, but sometimes I think you're taking this all a bit too seriously. I don't why you have an obsession with counting as fast as humanly possible; this subreddit has never been about that and is more a community effort to count together, the more people the better! Obviously it's a lot better when we're getting through the threads quickly (i.e. speed counting), but there's fast and then there's unnecessarily fast. The best threads I've been in are one's with 3+ people all fighting over numbers for as long as possible (epecially on the run up to the 1000 get). Sure, they're a mess, but they're a glorious mess, and are far more exciting than just having two people. I also consider the most important thing for this community going forward is maintaining and encouraging new regular counters, and I sometimes feel that counting as fast as possible is detrimental to both of these things; new counters that come along have no hope of joining in and may be discouraged from staying, and it's so much harder for even regular counters to join in when you've got 2 people speed counting with 3 second reply times. Some people might disagree, but it's just my 2 cents as a fellow counter.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I think what you and /u/atomicimploder have accomplished in the last week is amazing, and it's great to see the threads speeding up again, but I just consider having more people in the threads at once more important.

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/rideride]

Nice

[u/TehVulpez → u/rideride]

crazy pull, pull

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

I found and fixed the latest bug! I think these stats should be much more accurate

Weekly side thread stats from Friday August 07, 2026 to Friday August 14, 2026. Congratulations to u/cuteballgames, u/TehVulpez, and u/BobRoss938!

Total weekly side thread counts: 5706

Top 15 side thread counters:

Rank	User	Counts	HoST Rank
1	cuteballgames	1581	10
2	TehVulpez	1159	11 (◮1)
3	BobRoss938	672	38 (◮1)
4	miceee	527	56 (◮1)
5	nonsensy	497	15
6	CutOnBumInBandHere9	323	23
7	PhosphorCrystaled	291	96 (◮5)
8	Hans5958_	291	103 (◮7)
9	Antichess	102	9
10	Cox_1920	43	21
11	ShadeOfNothing	43	31
12	funfact15	22	29
13	elyisgreat	20	46
14	Maniac_34	19	51
15	Isaythereisa-chance	17	39 (⧩1)

Top 5 side threads:

Rank	Thread	Counts
1	Binary	706
2	Compositions	623
3	Tug of War	541
4	Factoradic	499
5	Alphanumerics (0-Z)	245

---

This comment was made by a script; check it out here

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

thanks again for the stats! glad to see I'm still moving up a rank lol

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

:D

Just remember that the counts are only locked in when a thread reaches a get -- any counts on unfinished threads won't be included in next week's stats

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

so the host rank resets to finished get hocs every week?

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

That's right. (well these ones do. The ones on the wiki page only ever considered finished gets, and generally look at a smaller subset of all threads than the ones I post in the ftf ) 

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thanks for the stats!!!

[u/Jalmal2 → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thanks for the stats

[u/Antichess]

starting next week, I will be embarking on a two month road trip that spans 12 states and 9 out of the 10 Canadian provinces. since graduating earlier this year unemployment has hit me so this is what i'm doing with family now :-)

fear not, stats still will be ran, i'll probably be sitting at my laptop every night!

[u/cuteballgames → u/Antichess]

congrats on graduation mixed condolences and congrats on unemployment and enjoy the road trip!!!!

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

The backtracking we just had to do in bin made me wonder how well we've previously managed to maintain bin-hex parity. So here's a graph of that:

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Methodology note: to avoid accumulated errors, I've defined the count for any particular comment as the base count for the submission the comment is in, plus the position of the comment in the chain. I completely ignore the actual text of the comment.

This means that if a given submission was too long or short, there will be a jump when the next one starts. 

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

awesome!! nice stat, thank you. wtf happened in 2021?

[u/Antichess → u/cuteballgames]

evil people

[u/Antichess → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

i like the general stability these past few years

[u/cuteballgames]

corollary to the fascinating "HOC of all side thread HOCs at once"

would it be possible to see "reply times by all users at once"? Like if bass has 200k 2s replies, then david has 180k 2s, then phil has 175k 5s, then bass has 170 3s and david has 168k 3s, or however it goes

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

Main:

Rank	Counter	Reply Time	Count
1	Countletics	1	199261
2	Countletics	2	108209
3	davidjl123	2	99719
4	Antichess	2	88959
5	davidjl123	1	84054
6	Antichess	1	65157
7	Antichess	3	57067
8	thephilsblogbar2	7	56335
9	nonsensy	2	56297
10	thephilsblogbar2	6	54563
11	Smartstocks	3	52314
12	GarlicoinAccount	3	50966
13	thephilsblogbar2	8	46087
14	Countletics	3	45741
15	nonsensy	3	45360
16	GarlicoinAccount	4	43668
17	thephilsblogbar2	9	37239
18	Smartstocks	4	36861
19	thephilsblogbar2	5	35995
20	davidjl123	3	34024
21	GarlicoinAccount	2	33865
22	Antichess	4	32993
23	thephilsblogbar2	10	29854
24	Trial-Name	2	29286
25	Smartstocks	2	28948
26	GarlicoinAccount	5	26815
27	Countletics	4	25799
28	thephilsblogbar2	11	24735
29	qwertylool	3	23398
30	qwertylool	4	22192

[u/Antichess → u/cuteballgames]

will do this tonight

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

Main and all sides:

Rank	Counter	Reply Time	Count
1	Countletics	1	201940
2	Countletics	2	112035
3	davidjl123	2	103278
4	Antichess	2	95452
5	davidjl123	1	84758
6	Antichess	1	70311
7	Antichess	3	59652
8	thephilsblogbar2	7	58434
9	nonsensy	2	56721
10	thephilsblogbar2	6	56234
11	GarlicoinAccount	3	55215
12	Smartstocks	3	52967
13	Countletics	3	50928
14	thephilsblogbar2	8	48590
15	GarlicoinAccount	4	48191
16	nonsensy	3	46000
17	thephilsblogbar2	9	39903
18	davidjl123	3	37645
19	Smartstocks	4	37453
20	thephilsblogbar2	5	36825
21	GarlicoinAccount	2	36147
22	Antichess	4	35232
23	TheNitromeFan	4	34279
24	thephilsblogbar2	10	32536
25	Countletics	4	31818
26	TheNitromeFan	5	31222
27	Trial-Name	2	29821
28	GarlicoinAccount	5	29590
29	Smartstocks	2	29197
30	thephilsblogbar2	11	27420

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thanks for the stats!

Holy shit bass

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

Gone, but never forgotten

[u/TehVulpez]

I think counters in the top 30 of the combined side thread HoC should also get to request an image flair if they hadn't already from being in the top 30 of the main HoC

[u/cuteballgames → u/TehVulpez]

I like this idea!

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

As of now, this would make 13 extra people eligibile:

a-username-for-me - main #70 (who previously had a flair)
Zaajdaeon - #46 (who is deleted)
TDs_not_VDs - #106
foxthechicken - #100
AlienApricot - #99
KingCaspianX - #43 (and previously flaired)
piyushsharma301 - #76
Cox_1920 - #47
smarvin6689 - #22
NeonTaterTots - #88
kongburrito - #85
legionmammal978 - unranked???
PaleRepresentative - #62

Additionally, FartyMcNarty is at 34 in the main hoc, and in theory is close to losing flair eligibility, but no one is gaining ranks fast in main these days besides cobibh, who's already ahead of FMN

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

I could get behind this as well

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

The latest praw update broke the directory bot, so it's been failing these past few times. I think I've fixed it now

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

And in other housekeeping news, I just added compositions to the list of known threads, so the directory will show the correct number of total counts next time that thread hits a get

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

thank you cobibh!

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

Next up cosmoroc. Eventually. When I get round to it 

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

does the fact that the get schedule is bespoke and currently shallow pose an impediment?

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/cuteballgames]

Not really. If I get the comment->count function coded right, it'll just extract the current count from the title (and let me do validation and other goodies )

I just need to do it 

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Hey u/Tehvulpez, I'm going to need you to check my work here. There's no code, just an attempt at an explanation.

Suppose we want to make a comment_to_count function for cosmoroc. That is, a function which when given a cosmoroc comment spits out what number that comment is in the chain. Apart from a potential off-by-one error, that's exactly the same as asking how many counts come before a particular comment.

Given the ordering we've picked, that will be exactly the following comments

1. All octal moredig counts with fewer digits than the comment we're looking at
2. All octal moredig counts with the same number of digits as the comment we're looking at, but a smaller digit sum
3. All octal moredig counts with the same number of digits and the same total sum which come before the current comment in the lexicographic order.

Suppose a clever person has made the following two functions: f(n), which calculates how many octal counts there are of length n, and g(n, sum, prefix) which calculates how many octal moredig comments there are of length n with a given total sum and which start with the given prefix.

Then the number of counts in the first bins above can be found as:

1. Sum(k=3, k=n-1) f(k)
2. Sum(total=0, total=sum -1) g(n, total, "")

That leaves only the third bin. If we denote the digits (read from left to right) of the comment as di, so the original comment reads d1,d2,d3,d4...dn, then the counts which precede our comment are those for which there is a position i such that ci < di and for all positions k smaller than i, ck <= dk. For every digit position, the count of these comments is therefore as follows:

1. Sum(c0=0, c0=d0-1) g(n, total, "c0")
2. Sum(c1=0, c1=d1-1) g(n, total, "d0c1")
3. Sum(c2=0, c2=d2-1) g(n, total, "d0d1c2")
4. \ldots

And the total is just all those lines added together

Does this seem about right to you? If that's true, then we just need the f and g functions. But f I already have from when I added moredig to the directory, and g should be obtainable with just a few tweaks to the existing code (I just need to track the partial totals of each state as well as how many repeated digits there are)

u/cuteballgames

[u/cuteballgames]

oredig moredig and naurdig (which is if you think about it how an australian would pronoybce "nodig"

[u/Jalmal2]

Like the Austro-Hungarian victory dance

[u/cuteballgames]

numbers are living in my head. for instant i remember that 4 is cowbin's current number, 14 is composition's current number, and the current rationals number sare 3, 7, and 19. i have known all of this for weeks, but it will not always be so

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

[Stats deleted since they were incorrect - I had a silly bug]

[u/TehVulpez → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

thanks for the stats! yay I moved up in the HoST! that's a lot of counts in binary, is that also including the double count chain?

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

That is a lot of counts! And I think the double count chain must have something to do with it -- the directory was tracking the wrong branch, so the stats script would have been somehow aware of both -- once from the completed thread in the final stats, and once on the wrong branch. Hm

[u/CutOnBumInBandHere9 → u/TehVulpez]

It's annoying that the side threads stats script is this janky. I'll try to rework it when I have time

[u/cuteballgames → u/CutOnBumInBandHere9]

Thanks for the stats!

[u/cuteballgames]

it's just awesome how adding 7 in snegasenary looks like subtracting 9 in decimal

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

wait. also adding 7 in regular negasenary

[u/TehVulpez]

counting only numbers whose digits sum to a multiple of three. has anyone made this. why has no one made this thread yet

[u/cuteballgames → u/TehVulpez]

https://www.reddit.com/r/counting/comments/1pxkacm/by_3s_27000/p45wd88/?context=3 it's here

[u/TehVulpez → u/cuteballgames]

wtf is that

[u/Antichess]

Weekly stats from August 07, 2026 to August 14, 2026. Congratulations to /u/thephilsblogbar2, /u/CutOnBumInBandHere9, and /u/cuteballgames!

Total weekly counts: 1901 (5,618,161-5,620,062)

More stats are posted on the Weekly Stats page!

Rank	User	Counts	HoC Rank
1	thephilsblogbar2	670	1
2	CutOnBumInBandHere9	572	18
3	cuteballgames	291	11
4	PhosphorCrystaled	74	386 (◮37)
5	TehVulpez	65	22
6	BobRoss938	62	132 (◮1)
7	Antichess	32	3
8	Playing_2	30	103
9	mistyskye14	29	26
10	ShadeOfNothing	15	68
11	Isaythereisa-chance	12	114
12	miceee	9	149
12	Jalmal2	9	50
14	LikeItsYourJob	5	186
14	Maniac_34	5	55
16	Hans5958_	4	332
16	noduorg	4	36
18	ThreeDomeHome	3	77
19	davidjl123	2	4
19	acidwave	2	939 (◮7)
21	treje	1	37
21	rideride	1	14
21	TheNitromeFan	1	7
21	pampamilyangweeb	1	550 (◮1)
21	Deep-Jello-768	1	7454 (◮2025)
21	NotBran37	1	6346 (◮1107)
21	Multiconcepted	1	443 (◮1)

[u/cuteballgames → u/Antichess]

Thanks for the stats!!!

[u/wet-gravity → u/Antichess]

it looks like stats were run for 5619k twice, the sum of counts in the table is higher than the total weekly counts and there are 2 charts posted under 5619k.

[u/Antichess → u/wet-gravity]

thank you for catching that. i'll adjust accordingly

[u/PhosphorCrystaled]

https://www.reddit.com/r/counting/s/44v6GcLo35

[u/mistyskye14]

[If only this applied to TOW](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/eKOrdZa320)

[u/cuteballgames → u/mistyskye14]

straight up

[u/cuteballgames → u/cuteballgames]

hit i mean straight down sorry

[u/mistyskye14 → u/cuteballgames]

[straight up](https://youtu.be/El1kgCqD7Xk?is=MhtsP4K_r-J0pop5)

[u/cuteballgames → u/mistyskye14]

banger