Did I say otherwise? I did not.

Again, the treaty says the inverse: that the U.K. can refuse to extradite if the the U.S. fails to provide such an assurance. Nothing in the treaty, nor anywhere else in U.S. law, grants anyone the authority to provide such a sweeping exception to U.S. law.

Article 7 of the treaty says the inverse of what you claim: extradition can be refused for failing to provide assurance. It does not require any such assurance to be provided and does not provide a mechanism by which such assurance can be lawfully provided.

As you point out, the judge in a specific case can impose any sentence it wants within what the law allows regardless of what anybody else promises. How exactly do you propose that a judge in a case where the judge has not even been selected yet make a promise to a foreign nation that he won't impose the death penalty in a case where the law allows it? Have you even begun to think it through?

Finally, once the accused is in the U.S. states can file any charges they want under state law regardless of what the federal government does, so long as they're under state law. For example, if they decide that someone was killed in their state because of wikileaks, they can charge Assange with murder. And there's nothing the Federal government can do about it. The President can't even issue a pardon because it's not a Federal crime.

I'm curious, why have the Mac Mini at all? You can plug the laptop into a dock and use the same monitor and keyboard, then take it with you.

The treaty says they don't have to turn Assange over unless we waive the death penalty. But neither it nor any other U.S. law actually grants anyone in the United States the authority to irreversibly waive the death penalty for all crimes with which the extradited individual might be charged.

The practical effect of the treaty clause is that if the crime carries the death penalty in the U.S. but not the U.K., the U.K. is not bound by treaty to extradite.

No U.S. law specifies who is authorized to waive the death penalty associated with this treaty. Including the treaty itself. Even if there were a law separate from the treaty, it would not be binding on the states over state crimes.

However, the Constitution grants the Senate the authority to ratify treaties, so if they specified who could waive the death penalty *in the treaty* then it would be binding on both the federal and state governments.

As the treaty is written now, the only consequence of the death penalty clause is that the U.K. can refuse extradition without breaking the treaty.

If you make the case that you're not an participant in the activity then you can't be a participant. Cox was shielding the identities of the offending customers. That made them an active participant.

In other words, if you get a DMCA notice you can respond, "No, that should have gone to so-and-so with this contact information."

When you say, "Sorry, we're not the right people to contact. And no, we won't tell you who is paying us for that IP address," that doesn't work out in court. It obstructs the process. Bye bye liability shield.

1. Federal law enforcement has no jurisdiction over state matters. If a state A.G. finds something to accuse Assange of that's a state crime, the DoJ can't do anything about it.

2. Any decision by the DoJ is reversible by the President. Except for Trump, Presidents try to give the DoJ autonomy, but that's tradition not law.

3. Any decision made by the President alone is reversible by the President or the next President.

4. International treaties ratified by the Senate are enforceable on everybody, including the states and the next President.

5. The current extradition treaty with the U.K. does not authorize anybody to waive potential criminal penalties as a condition of extradition.

Sum these five factors and you get the result I posted above.

If they catch you in a friendly country, yeah. That's how espionage works. Bear in mind that the United States does not have an extradition treaty with China, so they'd have to catch you in a country which does.

Coerced, cajoled, encouraged. However you want to put it, Assange was an enthusiastic participant in espionage against the United States which was not mitigated by any journalistic targeting of some particular wrong. It was literally, "Information wants to be free and I want to be the hero who frees it!"

We can't actually make that promise. We can promise that the current administration won't seek the death penalty, but that promise would bind neither the next administration nor would it prevent any state from filing charges that carry the death penalty.

To make that promise, we would literally have to rewrite our extradition treaty with the UK and the Congress would have to ratify the new treaty.

The deal with the DMCA is that the service provider is not liable for infringement IF it takes prompt corrective action when notified by the copyright holder. IIRC, Cox was basically glad-handing the folks who filed DMCA take downs and doing nothing at all about the infringing customers. Consequently, they lost the DMCA's liability shield. Naturally this upsets them. But I don't think they have a viable appeal.

The Universal Service Fund was originally used to subsidize the up-front cost of installing a phone line when the cost exceeded the average. For example, in rural areas where long lines of wire are needed for every customer. If that were still the case, I would be 100% in favor of applying it to broadband.

The USF changed under Clinton. It's now used to subsidize general IT in rural schools and programs that pay ISPs to provide freeish service to poor people. It doesn't even do the modern version of its original job. You've heard reports of Comcast proposing to build cable Internet to someone for tens of thousands of dollars. If that were a "pots" phone line, the USF would have subsidized it, but it just doesn't do that any more.

So, as long as the USF is misused and required by law to be misused, the FCC is correct to refuse to add it to broadband lines.

Mmm, I see the problem. I was thinking of the defined contribution style pension where, on retirement, you sell your holdings and buy an annuity with the proceeds, which then pays out a fixed sum for life. Someone managing such a fund is expected by their investors to take a long term view -- and isn't responsible for monthly payments to those who have already retired. If what you have is a single fund for both current and future retirees, then those currently drawing a pension may end up with a louder voice than those who are still working, although in principle they shouldn't.

That seems a little exaggerated. A pension fund has investors who are 30, 40, 50 years old and have many decades before they retire. Those investors want capital appreciation and for there to still be a high quality company to pay out dividends once they retire. Even a retiree aged 70 could live for many more years. The pension funds could certainly take a long term view. The trouble is that nobody really knows what that means. There isn't an easily quotable metric for it as there is for dividends or EBITDA.

I've never understood the value of C++. Basically everything C++ gets used for would be better done in Java or now Rust.

The same does not hold true for C. C is basically a friendly wrapper around assembly language and their remain lots of tasks for which staying close to the hardware is the best choice.

C++ started many moons ago as an enhancement of C, but it has long since evolved to a very different programming language. One that has the baggage of C without the advantages of a language whose authors could apply decades of newer learning to its basic design.