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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • It kind of depends on the facts and your jurisdiction. With the button, maybe? With a death note book, almost certainly not.

    When proving the elements of attempted murder (or any non-statutory crime), the state has to prove both “mens rea” and “actus rea” (that you intended to do the thing and that you tried to do the thing), but when you’re being charged for something “attempted” you have the defense of “impossibility,” when the actions you are trying to take couldn’t have possibly worked.

    Now, that doesn’t cover cases where you were only wrong in point of fact. For instance, buying fake drugs from a cop. But it does cover instances like using a voodoo doll.

    There’s more detail on all the above in the illustrated guide to law, which is a pretty solid resource for stuff like this. Here are the relevant sections:

    Actus Rea Explanation: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=261

    Attempted Crimes: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=344

    Impossibly Defense: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=416




  • In addition to the other listed reasons, going open source is an extra step.

    The code has to be compiled to run on your system (if it’s written in a non-interpreted language, which a huge portion of software is).

    You can’t just run the source code on your computer. And getting your customer’s computer to compile the source code itself would require a massive amount of overhead.

    So, to distribute your software, you’re always almost always going to distribute an already compiled version, and you’d have to choose to give the customer the uncompiled version as just a separate thing on the side. And there’s no real reason to do that for most companies.



  • Sure, of course it’s better with people who have a phenylalanine allergy, lol. That’s like saying peanut free candy is better for people with a peanut allergy.

    The kidney thing, I’ll note that your source says it “may be” better, but it’s also worth noting that aspartame has had 50yrs of studies against it, and in huge volumes (largely driven by the sugar lobby in the 80s and 90s). It’s the most studied food additive in the history of the FDA and has never been meaningfully linked to any sort of major negative health issues.

    The acceptable level of intake for aspartame is 50mg/kg vs 5mg/kg for sucralose, and the list of potential side effects is shorter, with sucralose including “diarrhea” and “muscle aches” in the list.