>The Huangs were taking advantage of a precedent set nearly two decades earlier, in 1995, when the I.R.S. blessed a transaction [...]
Regardless of your position on the current tax code, I think most would agree it's a dick move for the government to prosecute someone for something that they previously said was legal.
>I haven't been paying attention to the bullshit that is nth-richest person but how the fuck is someone worth that much and is only in 10th place? Wasn't it not too long ago that $127B would have been 1st?
This can entirely be explained by the performance of the broader stock market. In 2005 the the 10th person richest person had $18.3B. If you multiplied that by the total returns of S&P 500[2], you'd get $129.5B, which is actually more than how much Mr. Huang was worth.
I think the broad, practical answer to that is 'almost certainly'. I'm pretty sure if warships hadn't shown up and asked to come over and have a chat, the ship wouldn't still be sitting there. I'm sure there's also technical legal answer which may indicate they weren't "stopped" at all based on the precise wording actually communicated and relevant maritime law.
I suspect the only reason the navy hasn't boarded that ship yet is because the captain is stonewalling and the government would prefer to avoid breaking maritime law (especially with everyone paying attention). However, if the government determines there's sufficient value in searching the ship, they may just have their maritime lawyers come up with the best excuse or "exigent circumstances" pretense they can and board.
Interestingly, a long time ago I got to experience being on a freighter in the South China Sea and having some sizable Singapore navy warships pull up and ask to have a chat and take a look around. Warships pulling up at sea certainly has a way of commanding your undivided attention. It's like being pulled over by a cop, except the cop is heavily armed commandos in an Apache attack helicopter.
The ship I was on was flying a Liberian flag but Indonesian owned. Given that we were in international waters and these guys weren't even customs, police or port authority (who are the dudes who usually pull over freighters), the captain could have technically denied their request but he didn't even consider it. He later told me, basically, if you are not 'the droids they're looking for' then you let them the fuck on board. As a commercial hauler there's simply no upside to making trouble for the Navy, they have a lot of ways to ruin your day and you might someday need their help if you've got an emergency (or pirates chasing you, which is not impossible in those waters). The only freighter captains who insist on exercising their rights under maritime law when facing a naval warship typically have a political motivation or maybe are actually pirates, spies or smugglers (of weapons or people - warships don't give a fuck about that undeclared container of stereos). Naval warships (at least in that area) also don't usually care much about expired paperwork, lapsed passports or even outstanding warrants. They aren't law enforcement and a ship like that costs over a million dollars a day to keep at sea. They are there under national command authority for reasons that are way above a freighter captain's pay grade. The captain and crew are usually just contractors hired to drive the ship. Our captain had been at sea 15 years and that was first time he'd ever had an actual naval warship pay any attention to him.
>The question here is whether there exists a meaningful category of weapons called "assault weapons" (yes: the semi-automatic and select-fire long guns with detachable magazines, which were designed as weapons of war) and whether they are more dangerous than other legal firearms (yes).
No. Both you and the people you're arguing against think that the category of "assault weapons" exist, but you're using your own definition whereas others are using the legal definition. Why are you clinging so hard to the phrase "assault weapons" specifically? People who are using the legal definition have a pretty strong claim to that definition, because it's literally enshrined in law. Why not say "guns with detachable magazines" or whatever and save everyone from pointless word lawyering?
>And then I come back with 3 paragraphs about the legislative history of the assault weapons ban, which began by singling out a bunch of weapons by name but with a catchall of semi-automatic weapons with detachable clips, and got lobbied down to its cosmetic definition by the NRA.
There's an older thread where I pasted a link to it, but I'm not going to dig it up right now (you can; I promise you it's there). I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that people will take my word on stuff like this. I'm really not trying to convince people that I'm right about this, only that the question is unsettled.
>The answer is of course pki with trust rooted in the device. If it isnt your grandson's iphone attesting itself [...]
Hardware level attestation isn't even required, and would only marginally increase security. Phones are already heavily locked down. If you're in a position to extract from app data, you're probably in a position to compromise the chat app itself, rendering any attestation pointless.
From the article:
>The Huangs were taking advantage of a precedent set nearly two decades earlier, in 1995, when the I.R.S. blessed a transaction [...]
Regardless of your position on the current tax code, I think most would agree it's a dick move for the government to prosecute someone for something that they previously said was legal.
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