Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

cpcwiki.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 307 posts

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#251

Post by eru »

dataflow wrote: post #158
cgriswald wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my expectation. Law, like code, can and has been patched and rewritten.

Companies with literally thousands of people with billions of dollars to invest have a hard time making their products bug-free no matter how many times they patch and rewrite, and we're talking about dealing with computers here. Exactly how many years of rewrites are you willing to spend on each piece of legislation to make it bug-free? Is it even remotely realistic? or will your solution grind legislation to a halt…

Perhaps having fewer laws on the books would be a good idea? Especially if the laws were simpler?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#252

Post by adrianN »

peregren wrote: post #242
adrianN wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should just put a price on carbon directly instead of optimizing lots of other rules to also take emissions into account. Fuel is just too cheap.

Too cheap for who? There are carbon taxes being implemented and on the whole i think they are good. But combined with the current spike in energy prices, they are hammering some people.

Too cheap for the climate, i.e. too cheap for anybody under 40. A tax-and-rebate system can help poor people without hampering the effect of a high carbon price.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#253

Post by kgwgk »

eru wrote: post #250
desdiv wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to have a source for that? My understanding is that Napoleon's Continental System caused a shortage of cocoa in continental Europe, so chocolatiers had to substitute in hazelnuts. This became Gianduja[0], which later were modified to become Nutella. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianduja_(chocolate)

Isn't that basically exactly the same story as what the comment you replied to said?

Except for the taxes part :-)

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#254

Post by Someone »

biztos wrote: post #235
magicalhippo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If hams are fungible from a customs point of view (why would they not be?) you could try pre-curing the hams and have them ready just across the border. Ham in, ham out, ham in again, no extra trip to Spain required. Then you sell the uncured hams you needed for the stamps to a pet-food factory or for German “salami” or whatever.

They possibly need to be cured in Spain so that they can be called Spanish (e.g. Serrano or Ibérico).

And I guess they aren’t fungible because they get tested for health reasons and protein content.

In the EU, tracking is needed. If people get ill from eating ham, it’s important to exactly know where the meat came from (factory, farm, sometimes even the specific pig. Conversely, if animals get ill, it’s important to know where their milk went. https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/traces_en)

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#255

Post by robertlagrant »

adrianN wrote: post #239
ianlevesque wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also an egregious waste of carbon emissions in the era of climate change though.

We should just put a price on carbon directly instead of optimizing lots of other rules to also take emissions into account. Fuel is just too cheap.

Or just get rid of silly nonsense like this rule so people are not incentivised to drive 6000km by the government.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#256

Post by robertlagrant »

dataflow wrote: post #191
cgriswald wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My statement that judges should interpret law and not lawmakers is not equivalent to this idea that law must be flawless and bug-free. Those are ideas you've brought to the table that I've already disclaimed. I said laws should be quality laws. What qualifies as quality in law isn't "100% bug-free, literal, unambiguous, single-definition words that don't require any interpretation at all." To the extent that a law is…

I realize you're disclaiming them, but I'm trying to say you what you're asking for has consequences that you can't just "disclaim" like that. Practically every law will have unintended loopholes that legislators couldn't think of or practically enumerate when writing the law. If you keep "punting it back to lawmakers" instead of letting judges handle the exceptions, you obviously further obstruct the legislature's a…

Maybe spending more time on getting current laws right would be better than moving on to new laws.

More laws = more ways people/organisations are burdened with things they need to know (and will be punished for whether or not they know). Having canonical interpretations of laws that aren't written in the laws just makes that even more fraught with peril.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#257

Post by mavhc »

adrianN wrote: post #239
ianlevesque wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also an egregious waste of carbon emissions in the era of climate change though.

We should just put a price on carbon directly instead of optimizing lots of other rules to also take emissions into account. Fuel is just too cheap.

Everything should have a pollution tax of the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it creates, then use the money to clean it up

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#258

Post by alibarber »

supernova87a wrote: post #202

It's called tariff engineering for a reason. Columbia will add an extra pocket below the waistline on a women's shirt so it gets classified as a utility/work garment and they can price it 10% cheaper. https://www.marketplace.org/2019/05/29/theres-a-reason-your-... Converse will line the rim/bottom of a shoe with felt so it can be classified as a slipper. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-c...…

I have experienced the Canon DSLR software limit to 30 minutes of recording - much to my frustration.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#259

Post by adrianN »

robertlagrant wrote: post #255
adrianN wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should just put a price on carbon directly instead of optimizing lots of other rules to also take emissions into account. Fuel is just too cheap.

Or just get rid of silly nonsense like this rule so people are not incentivised to drive 6000km by the government.

There are about a billion rules. Do you volunteer to assess each one's impact on the climate and balance it against other economic effects of the rule, or do you simply attach the proper price to carbon and let the market figure it out?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#260

Post by kozak »

setr wrote: post #163
quickthrower2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lesson for anyone implementing metrics and incentives

Well, it still did its job of increasing cost of external cured ham… just by not as much of an increase, or as directly, as they intended

We now call this "proof of work".
Post reply on HN