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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 6th, 2024

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  • Huh, TIL.

    Regarding your edit, that amount wasn’t the cumulated cost of whatever Limewire were distributing, that would be idiotic indeed; rather the RIAA tried to call for a ruling that somehow those guys were causing $150,000 in damages - per instance. Now the article unfortunately doesn’t state how they possibly tried to justify that number, and I can’t be bothered to research that myself. Another thing that would interest me is how the plaintiff expected them to pay with almost every dollar on Earth.

    So while I don’t think this had anything to do with “lost sales”, I do agree with the possible fines and damage calculations not being fit for any sort of realistic purpose at all.




  • But you just completely ignored everything I said in that comment.

    Mathematically, that is precisely how O notation works, only (as I’ve mentioned) we don’t use it like that to get meaningful results. Plus, when looking at time, we can actually use O notation like normal, since computers can indeed calculate something for infinity.

    Still, you’re wrong saying that isn’t how it works in general, which is really easy to see if you look at the actual definition of O(g(n)).

    Oh, and your computer crashing is a thing that could happen, sure, but that actually isn’t taken into account for runtime analysis, because it only happens with a certain chance. If it would happen after precisely three days every time, then you’d be correct and all algorithms would indeed have an upper bound for time too. However it doesn’t, so we can’t define that upper bound as there will always be calculations breaking it.



  • That’s a point I didn’t actually think about, touché. Let’s go through this then:

    Before Covid (in my country at least), there was this massive push for more homes, because the interest rates were so low. Everyone was building a house, because it was so very cheap (in interest at least, not necessarily in costs). At that point, wise developers might have decided to not take on any big new projects, focusing on finishing their current ones instead of trying to ride out this bubble.

    Then Covid hit and the supply chains broke down. That was sudden and couldn’t be expected, I’ll give you that. But now, four years later, the main reason (in my opinion) for the low occupancy is the newfound interest for WFH, also resulting from Covid. Who needs an expensive condo in a crowded city if you can have a cheap flat in a small town instead?

    So in this case, I’ll (partially) retract my prior opinion and instead state that while a crash could’ve been seen somewhere on the horizon, Covid with all its consequences certainly couldn’t have been foreseen.

    I’m not familiar with the housing prices in Toronto compared to smaller cities in Canada, but perhaps those developers need to bite the bullet and lower their asking prices, because I’d imagine selling for less is still better than holding onto dead weight, praying for demand to go up again.




  • That may be true for smaller cities, but in bigger cities it becomes impossible, because there just isn’t enough space to house all the people near areas of interest. Cars don’t factor in there at all. Give me a subway for the major areas, and perhaps a tram or bus system so you don’t need that many subway stations in the residential areas, and you can have car-free city centers.


  • I don’t really like including pedestrians in there. Like sure, you can fit a bunch of people in a small area, but another point you shouldn’t ignore is the throughput over time, and pedestrians are by their nature rather slow. Obviously if you’re looking at shopping in a street lined by shops left and right, then that street becomes tailor-made for pedestrian traffic (and nothing else except perhaps bicycles). But public transport is much better suited for travelling any further distances, and that should be the main focus when deciding to ditch cars.