Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons • Hacker News Board

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#291

Post by cgriswald » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

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…

Those consequences do not follow, because I am not asking for judges to interpret the law literally. If that's what you've read, we have a miscommunication here. There's an entire spectrum of interpretation from literal to "I personally know the guy who authored this law and I asked him what he meant."

The poster I originally responded to thinks we ought to be further right along this spectrum. I think we're either in a good place or if anything we ought to move a little further left. I don't think either extreme is desirable, and the left extreme is where we get those consequences you want to ascribe to me.

The justice system is already quite intolerant of such hacks. In the Ford case, they didn't even interpret the law differently. Instead, they determined—with evidence— that Ford was actually importing cargo vans and not passenger vans.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#292

Post by autoexec » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #225

autoexec wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mutants and humans can produce fertile offspring, but hybrids aren't impossible across species just uncommon. Bison and cattle, or grizzlies and polar bears are examples. Where we divide groups into "species" is pretty murky. I'm sure somewhere there has to be a biologist who loves comics enough to sort all this stuff out for us. Then again, I've seen Neanderthals called both a subspecies and a separate species of hu…

Given that every child is different from either parent (not only by half the chromosomes but transcription errors and epigenic triggers) what defines a mutatant vs “stock”?

For Marvel, mutants are those with an X-Gene, but in biology we tend to call something a mutant when an error in DNA causes something we wouldn't normally see (well outside of typical variation). We've all got screwed up DNA in us, but mutants are the ones who end up with really noticeable differences. That could apply to a lot of humans walking around today (albinos for example), but I guess it's considered impolite to call them mutants.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#293

Post by BeFlatXIII » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

mellavora wrote: post #241

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

unless jury nullification is banned. Noting that there is a trend in this direction.

Could nullification be effectively banned without first getting rid of juries or the prohibition of double jeopardy?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#294

Post by fooey » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #293

mellavora wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless jury nullification is banned. Noting that there is a trend in this direction.

Could nullification be effectively banned without first getting rid of juries or the prohibition of double jeopardy?

They make it so supporting jury nullification disqualifies you from jury duty

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#295

Post by antifa » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 12:43 AM UTC

forinti wrote: post #278

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #111

Pistols manufactured in Mexico are imported as a kit of parts, then assembled as "Made in America!"

I witnessed thumb drives being "assembled" in Portugal (the case clicked on the drive, basically) from parts imported from China. At least it creates a few local jobs.

At this point, this is how I assume all "Made in America" merchandise is until proven otherwise.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#296

Post by 8note » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

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.

I don't think the writing is the authority for what the law is for.

Judges are there to make the boundaries clear for the greyzone on what's not written down

The world is too complex to get perfect laws written. You're always going to miss weird edge cases in both directions

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#297

Post by 8note » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

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…

That is a source of bugs and a known failure of crypto that try to consider the code as authoritative. If interpreters could figure out the intended behaviour, there'd be fewer or no bugs.

Lawmakers shouldn't be focused on bugs in written law, they should be working on new law

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#298

Post by 8note » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #226

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.

Absolutely not. Throwing people in prison who were explicitly obeying the law as written is a terrible road to go down.

The law as written is indescript.

Ate they following things specifically as the law said they're supposed to, or hacking some edge case that isn't explicitly called out?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#299

Post by 8note » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #134

mc32 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pretty transparent that they did that to circumvent regulation. Imagine Coca-Cola getting clearance for importing coca leaves for flavoring but then instead sells it to a third party who processes it for something else.

Am I the only one that sees no problem with that? Why the hell should coca-cola be responsible for what someone else does with coca leaves?

You are responsible for who you sell things to.

At worst, you can imagine selling a full nuclear bomb to Al kaeda, then being surprised pikachu when they use it to blow up IAD

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#300

Post by biztos » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #246

biztos wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean? a) You bring two sets of high quality hams from Spain, one cured and the other raw b) You cross the border in and out with the raw hams, and tell the customs clerk "I'll come back the processed product" c) You cross the border again with the cured hams "that was quick, eh?" d) You dispose of the raw hams selling them at a high discount on a roadside stand I guess you can do it even more efficiently…

a) Yes, but raw is not so high quality.

b) Yes

c) Yes but if the hams are fungible, which the other commenter explained they are not, then doing this at volume would make the timing irrelevant.

d) Yes, or just pre-sell them to someplace that doesn't care about quality. Just has to be inside the EU since these are the hams that (you say) have not yet been to Norway!

Crossing the border a thousand times, carrying a ham each way each time, would probably be less efficient, unless you get tax breaks for your hourly employees, in which case you could also have a thousand employees on standby and do it relay-style.

While it's true that this would never work, and if you tried it'd be extremely fishy, I do in fact know a place you can buy pork sausage that tastes of fish.

Sometimes the absurd is possible!