so, a bunch of third party apps made for Reddit are getting killed this month because Reddit decides to jack up the prices. What's going to happen to Kagi if/when it becomes somewhat of a competitor to Google/Bing and they want it dead?
I couldn't understand the "how AChE works" portion, but found this article and its diagrams helpful. https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/weap.html near as I can understand it, our entire body including heart and lungs work by cells sending messages to and from the nervous system. When the nervous system is no longer able to rely messages, our vital organs stop working. So if our nervous system is like a chain of inbox/outbox message relay system, the letters are ACh. When one cell's axon sends an ACh to the next cell, the next cell's inbox becomes full and nothing else can be received until it's cleared. AChE is the enzyme that clears a full inbox. Nerve agents bind to the site on an AChE that grabs ACh. Without the ability for these AChE protein to "clears the inbox", our nervous system cells can't communicate anymore, stopping these messages entirely.
I'm not sure exactly what ACh actually does other than "activate", but since they are used by central and peripheral nervous system, I'm guessing it's bad news bear. Little more detail here
IIRC, financial fraud that makes the country (e.g., from its citizens/organizations) lose a lot of money is a capital offense in China. And also everything you own will be confiscated to pay back to the country.
(If you ignore the "China is Evil" bit for a minute) It kind of makes sense: you steal money from a country, maybe go to jail for a bit, leave the country, reunited with all your stolen money. Not so good.
Playing devil's advocate here -- I'm totally opposed to the death penalty. However ...
From the government's point of view, why should crimes of violence like murder or aggravated sexual assault warrant a harsh punishment, but economic crimes that affect vastly greater numbers of people receive more lenient treatment?
Given that we can approximate a lifetime's productive labour to, say, $1M, a fraud involving multiple millions in stolen money amounts to alienating multiple life's worth of work. Steal $500M and you've done the equivalent of wiping out five hundred lifetimes' work.
If your perspective is that the judicial system exists to punish crimes against the state, then a $500M fraud is considerably worse than the actions of a serial killer.
(That's not the judicial theory we run on here in Scotland, but it's rather closer to the way things work in one-party states.)
The problem of who decides what's good/bad for 'the state' immediately rears its ugly head. If the government can literally kill political enemies, the people are more likely to rebel. Like imagine if Russia actually executed that tycoon who funds the opposition (who they keep jailing for 'fraud'). At least the death penalty for murder is somewhat objective. Regardless, I think that type of judicial theory is a few methods short in the object factory to start with.
Your point makes perfect sense if one is of opinion that human life can be pegged to monetary value at some exchange rate. And this is indeed the founding assumption at which many totalitarian regimes operate.
It is the assumption of every country and society, not just totalitarian ones. Every time we set food, safety, environmental, or medical rules we assume there is an exchange rate between life and money and make our regulations accordingly.
Your point makes perfect sense if one is of opinion that human life can be pegged to monetary value at some exchange rate.
If you hold any other opinion, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people will go to great length to deny it, but if you think about it unprejudiced, you'll have to accept it. There are just too many instances where spending amount X of money can save a life and people make the conscious decision not to do so because X is more than they can or want to afford. Usually they'll rationalize or otherwise hide this reason (or even the fact that they even made a decision), but it's there.
And this is indeed the founding assumption at which many totalitarian regimes operate.
How does this have anything to do with totalitarian regimes?
> If you hold any other opinion, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people will go to great length to deny it, but if you think about it unprejudiced, you'll have to accept it.
Now this is a promising beginning. Put that Randian tone aside if you want to be taken seriously.
> There are just too many instances where spending amount X of money can save a life and people make the conscious decision not to do so because X is more than they can or want to afford.
We're not talking about saving someone's life in varying circumstances. We are talking about cut-off figure that makes e.g. financial crime punishable by death. Those societies that practice it, tend to be totalitarian, with the conversion rate to e.g. RMBs or Soviet Roubles written down in criminal law.
Don't forget that taking enough money from enough people will kill some of them. So you can decide purely on deaths caused without caring about money amounts, but your numbers will be less accurate.
If quantum suicide is real, you and I will hear of her death but she will only find herself in realities where the Communist Party indefinitely delays her death sentence.
There is no telling just yet! The Chinese property has been heavily inflated for a few years already, propped up with extensive government intervention and perverse incentives for local administrations to drive up land prices. There is no telling yet if this decline is
a) real (government-issued numbers are one thing, reality is another);
b) driven by the policies (or just the bubble bursting);
c) permanent. It may be a spike caused by the timing of a measure, or a financing roll-over, or whatever.
>One is they learn how to create new ideas from existing ones
This is how our brains are wired to work: the more places we can cross-reference the material from, the more likely we can "derive" it again quickly even if we can't memorize it.
"shut up/memorize it/some things just are" kills the intention to learn faster than a speeding bullet to the brain.
so, a bunch of third party apps made for Reddit are getting killed this month because Reddit decides to jack up the prices. What's going to happen to Kagi if/when it becomes somewhat of a competitor to Google/Bing and they want it dead?