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Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

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Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#171

Post by jmccaf »

geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

PT cruiser is an example of the opposite, which sought truck classification: https://www.brakeandfrontend.com/tech-spec-retro-work-servic...

Chrysler specifically designed the PT Cruiser to fit the NHTSA criteria for a light truck in order to bring the average fuel efficiency of the company’s light truck fleet into compliance with CAFE standards.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#172

Post by shuntress »

cgriswald wrote: post #142
babypuncher wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think our justice system should be less tolerant of "hacks" like this. They clearly violate the intent of the law, even if technically following it to the letter.

I prefer judges and lawyers interpret what the law says, not what they believe lawmakers meant to say. It is lawmakers responsibility to craft quality laws. Such hacks expose weaknesses in the laws as written. Edit: ... when successful.

It is a judge's responsibility to literally judge whether a given application of the law is appropriate.

This encompasses every possible input including "what they believe lawmakers meant to say".

Edit: To get out in front of the obvious "Well what about when a judge just decides to do whatever they want??" response, I will say: That is why tradition, precedent, checks & balances, voting rights, and institutional trust all matter.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#173

Post by BeFlatXIII »

fooey wrote: post #14
geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

A seafood company in Canada has a 100 foot section of train track, where they load trucks on and right back off, in an attempt to get around the Jones Act requirement that goods shipped between 2 points in the US must use US flagged vessels https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2021/09/15/feds-accuse-...

The Jones Act is a major factor in Puerto Rico's economic problems because it unnecessarily raises the costs of shipping to and from PR.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#174

Post by BeFlatXIII »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #39
mmcgaha wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need something like the senate filibuster debate rule for taxes. Basically just state that there is this thing I can do to skirt the tax system so I declare a tax evasion without having to actually make people do stupid stuff.

That defeats the purpose of the law. If they’re flagrantly violating the spirit and intent by barely passing the technical requirement, then the law should either A) be removed or B) retooled to address the loophole. We should never encourage ignoring certain laws or it undermines the whole system. It’s why I don’t support states legalizing weed under the federal government’s nose/while they turn a blind eye. Sure, w…

Rule of law lasts only so long as the laws are accepted by juries. If the laws drift too from from public acceptability, the people will weaken rule of law on their own terms.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#175

Post by BeFlatXIII »

sneak wrote: post #121
Forgeties79 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That defeats the purpose of the law. If they’re flagrantly violating the spirit and intent by barely passing the technical requirement, then the law should either A) be removed or B) retooled to address the loophole. We should never encourage ignoring certain laws or it undermines the whole system. It’s why I don’t support states legalizing weed under the federal government’s nose/while they turn a blind eye. Sure, w…

> That defeats the purpose of the law. If they’re flagrantly violating the spirit and intent by barely passing the technical requirement, then the law should either A) be removed or B) retooled to address the loophole. Yes, indeed. It completely defeats the purpose of the law, which is why the suggestion is akin to your A solution (that it should be invalidated/removed). The law doesn't encode "purpose" or "spirit",…

The fact that laws can't (or just don't) address purpose is a major shortcoming. IMO, the preamble to the US Constitution is its most important part. Defining purpose and scope gives later judges clear guidelines on how to handle future ambiguous cases and people who think they're clever for finding technical loopholes.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#176

Post by kubatyszko »

My boss in the early 2000's told me a story where in the 70's, they would bring in computers from West Germany to Poland, and there were restrictions on how "powerful" they could be due to a ton of restrictions. So they would get a lot of spare parts with each computer, bought separately, to make them usable as intended.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#177

Post by JohnBooty »

cgriswald wrote: post #167
JohnBooty wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally: sure! In reality: are you a software engineer? Or do you know one? Surely you (or they) have experienced how difficult it is to write code that manages even a small number of inputs? Even 10 different yes/no inputs give you 1,024 possibilities. Now imagine writing laws to precisely cover an effectively infinite number of possibilities, many of which don't exist at the time the law is written, and expecting t…

An interpreter tries to understand what your code means. It doesn't try to guess at your intentions. (Pedantically, some do, but on a limited scale.) You should write quality code. You should try to anticipate edge cases. Your code will fail sometimes. You'll fix it. Law has the advantage of much more advanced interpreters; but judges should still be interpreting the law, not guessing at the minds of the people who w…

     Your code will fail sometimes. You’ll fix it.
That isn’t isn’t remotely how passing laws in a democracy works. I can push a fix to prod in minutes (or in the worst case, days) and it rarely if ever affects peoples’ lives in the way that laws do.

In contrast, passing new laws and updating existing laws is (by design) an arduous process in a democracy. There are things that can and should be improved about the ways that we accomplish this, but it will never be (and really shouldn’t be) fast and easy.

Sometimes I just want to ignore HN entirely because of embarrassing comments like this. “Code works this way, so everything should work this way!”

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#178

Post by cgriswald »

JohnBooty wrote: post #177
cgriswald wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interpreter tries to understand what your code means. It doesn't try to guess at your intentions. (Pedantically, some do, but on a limited scale.) You should write quality code. You should try to anticipate edge cases. Your code will fail sometimes. You'll fix it. Law has the advantage of much more advanced interpreters; but judges should still be interpreting the law, not guessing at the minds of the people who w…

Your code will fail sometimes. You’ll fix it. That isn’t isn’t remotely how passing laws in a democracy works. I can push a fix to prod in minutes (or in the worst case, days) and it rarely if ever affects peoples’ lives in the way that laws do. In contrast, passing new laws and updating existing laws is (by design) an arduous process in a democracy. There are things that can and should be improved about the ways tha…

You're being unnecessarily rude.

I never said the law worked exactly like code. I used your code metaphor to explain my point in language you might understand.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#179

Post by [deleted] »

geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

[deleted]

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#180

Post by [deleted] »

magicalhippo wrote: post #73
geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

Here in Norway we have the infamous "E6 ham". We have an import tax on dry-cured ham[1], but not unprocessed meat. Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing. Once cured they'd re-import the processed meat, which now has a different tariff due to being "Norwegia…

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