News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by teruakohatu on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:04PM (#30874455)
"The law of general average is a principle of maritime law whereby all stakeholders in a sea venture proportionately share any losses resulting from a voluntary sacrifice of part of the ship or cargo to save the whole in an emergency. For instance, should the crew jettison some cargo overboard to lighten the ship in a storm, the loss would be shared pro rata by both the carrier and the cargo-owners."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by hnburnsy on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:14PM (#30874822)
So does maritime law override any contract between the ship owner and cargo shipper or does it just mandate that it is included in any contract?

Also does the local pilot bear any responsibility?

>Ever Forward ran aground on March 13 outside the Craighill shipping channel in Chesapeake Bay as it departed the Port of Baltimore with a pilot on board.

From another article...

>The Bay pilot aboard had control of the ship at the time it ran aground. Investigators are still looking at whether it was a mechanical issue or operator error that caused it to leave the channel.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by dcx on Friday April 01, 2022 @04:44AM (#30876329)
I have worked nearby to this area - this is a legal principle, but the way this takes force in contracts is either by including a specific clause, or via a pointer to an international shipping standard which pulls in sensible defaults. Something like what happens with force majeure clauses [1]. International shipping contracts are themselves fairly standardised; they're thick and have all kinds of things in them, accreted over literally centuries of practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by toyg on Friday April 01, 2022 @05:23AM (#30876473)
> they're thick and have all kinds of things in them, accreted over literally centuries of practice.

Oh, so the field is ripe for disruption by a startup that will jettison all that, replace it with arbitrary anti-customer terms under a thin layer of technology, and make bank! /s

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by sidewndr46 on Friday April 01, 2022 @07:00AM (#30876946)
Don't forget making everything Wi-Fi enabled. Even if the device has no possible need for it.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by hnburnsy on Friday April 01, 2022 @09:33AM (#30877891)
And only works with an app, not in a web browser.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by toyg on Friday April 01, 2022 @09:34AM (#30877906)
And got to be a subscription, even if I want to ship a single container.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by hnburnsy on Friday April 01, 2022 @09:34AM (#30877895)
Thanks for the insight!
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by vwarner1411 on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:30PM (#30874896)
From what I've been told, the local pilots does not bear any responsibility.

While I don't work on container ships, every time a pilot comes onboard our vessel (87m) we maintain control. The pilot provides guidance and assistance in navigation, but the captain or a bridge officer (depending on watch) is in control of the vessel.

I think liability is removed from the pilots because ultimately the ships captain is responsible for the ship, and the officer on watch is actually in control.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by elliekelly on Friday April 01, 2022 @09:55AM (#30878093)
I’m curious what would happen if (or when) a ship’s captain/bridge officer “disobeys” a pilot’s order? Does that happen? Are ship captains obligated to comply with the pilot’s instructions or is the pilot offering take-it-or-leave-it guidance that most captains take?
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by vimax on Sunday April 03, 2022 @12:32AM (#30894473)
I'm pretty sure the captain outranks the pilot, it would be the pilot disobeying the captains order, which is mutiny.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by chha on Sunday April 03, 2022 @04:57AM (#30895525)
Can it be regarded as mutiny when the pilot isn't part of the crew?

I would have assumed that the captain is the master of the ship, and the pilot is there to provide guidance.

I would have guessed that if the pilot provides guidance that places the ship at risk the master is then responsible if he follows the advice without recognizing the danger.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by greenhorn123 on Friday April 01, 2022 @01:52AM (#30875526)
You can't contract out of the law. That goes for almost all law I don't see why maritime law would be an exception.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by multjoy on Friday April 01, 2022 @03:11AM (#30875910)
The majority of contract case law has developed from shipping disputes. These are business transactions, not consumer ones, so there is plenty of scope to contract/indemnify out of all sorts of protections.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by kingcharles on Friday April 01, 2022 @02:03AM (#30875584)
You can waive your legal rights in a contract.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by pc86 on Friday April 01, 2022 @02:13AM (#30875630)
Some legal rights but not all.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by confident_inept on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:12PM (#30874502)
Thank you. That website and article were a train wreck.

I had no idea that ship was still stuck. I guess now they have to dismantle it in place? What's process here?

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by walrus01 on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:31PM (#30874615)
gcaptain is not a train wreck, it assumes that the reader is in the maritime industry and uses terminology that is widely known to that specific industry segment. much as a network engineering or software development news site and acronyms might be even more confusing to people who hold 100 ton+ masters licenses.

look at all the weird sounding terms that might be used in an infosec/netsec publication...

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by tedivm on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:55PM (#30874736)
It's a visual trainwreck on firefox, with elements being blocked by interstitials in the first load that have their dismissal button shifted into a weird and hard to find place. Once that was cleared up it was pretty readable.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by Digit-Al on Friday April 01, 2022 @08:08AM (#30877335)
I'm a bit confused by that; I'm on Firefox and I see nothing wrong with the site at all. It loaded fine and looks fine. That's with full protection turned on and the Disconnect plugin loaded as well. Any idea what was interfering with it on your setup?
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by tomrod on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:12PM (#30874814)
Is Firefox still a common target for development? I thought their marketshare had fallen below 1%?

I stand corrected, it's hovering just under 4% on average per https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2021...

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by tedivm on Friday April 01, 2022 @12:02AM (#30875055)
That site puts it at 7.5% if you just look at desktops- and, weirdly enough, 9.5% if you look at last month instead of this month (which is more in line with previous months). It has been trending upwards as well over the last few months.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by jotm on Friday April 01, 2022 @02:17AM (#30875651)
Eh, you've got to be an absolutely awful developer if you can't have a website render properly in a browser that follows 99.5% of the same standards as the "relevant" top dawg.

I guess all the people who made sites work in fucking Internet Explorer have moved on to better positions or retired :D

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by runarberg on Friday April 01, 2022 @12:17AM (#30875132)
Yes it is. If a web dev creates a web page that is unusable in firefox, they are not doing a sufficient job.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by ianai on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:20PM (#30874848)
Hmm. How does Firefox rank on netsec concerns? I would think better than Chrome and Safari since not backed by one of the oligopolists. Might be a good target for support regardless of share.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by mdoms on Friday April 01, 2022 @01:40AM (#30875490)
I don't know why you're being downvoted because the answer is no, Firefox is no longer relevant.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by runarberg on Friday April 01, 2022 @12:37PM (#30880157)
Last month over 300 million pages were viewed with Firefox (a gross lower bound). This month an even more pages will likely be viewed with Firefox. Firefox remains the only popular independent browser. It has delegates in all web standard committees.

I don’t know what is your baseline for relevancy, but for most of us, this is more then enough to pass it.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by mdoms on Friday April 01, 2022 @04:37AM (#30876287)
You can downvote me until the cows come home, it's still true fellas.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by tomrod on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:12PM (#30874811)
I figured that had to be the case. Thanks!
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by CalChris on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:35PM (#30874640)
No, the gCaptain article itself gave a good definition of General Average, a fundamental maritime principle that goes back millennia to the Code of Hammurabi in 1755 BC, at least.

  General Average is a maritime law principle requiring that the shipowner and cargo interests proportionately share in the costs associated with rescuing a vessel after a major casualty. When GA is declared, cargo owners are required to contribute to a GA fund before their cargo can be released.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by thaumasiotes on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:18PM (#30874845)
> General Average, a fundamental maritime principle that goes back millennia to the Code of Hammurabi in 1755 BC, at least.

Sorry? What does Hammurabi's Code say about this?

Law 238 apparently says that sinking and refloating a ship incurs a penalty equal to half the value of the ship, but that doesn't seem to bear much relationship to general average. It doesn't mention loss of goods and the penalty amount is not related to the loss amount. And all of the penalty falls on the ship operator.

Law 237 is much closer, but as far as I can see, to the extent that averaging is relevant to this case, the law explicitly rejects it:

> If a man hire a sailor and his boat, and provide it with corn, clothing, oil and dates, and other things of the kind needed for fitting it: if the sailor is careless, the boat is wrecked, and its contents ruined, then the sailor shall compensate for the boat which was wrecked and all in it that he ruined.

( http://www.general-intelligence.com/library/hr.pdf )

> If a man hire a boatman and a boat and freight it with grain, wool, oil, dates or any other kind of freight, and that boatman is careless and he sink the boat or wreck its cargo, the boatman shall replace the boat which he sank and whatever portion of the cargo he wrecked.

( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Code_of_Hammurabi_(Harper... )

This makes ship operators personally liable for the full value of lost cargo, if they are "careless". I don't see any provision dealing with the (monetary) losses associated with the necessary (physical) loss of cargo.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by CalChris on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:36PM (#30874924)
I probably should have said had antecedents rather than goes back to. The point of 238 is a shared burden between the owner and the charterer in the case of a salvage.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by thaumasiotes on Friday April 01, 2022 @03:38AM (#30876019)
> The point of 238 is a shared burden between the owner and the charterer in the case of a salvage.

This is not obvious. From what appears to be a very literal translation at https://www.cdli.ucla.edu/search/search_results.php?SearchMo... :

> If a boatman [] has caused [a man’s boat] to sink and has raised it, silver of half of its value he shall give

I have no expertise and no opinion on how "raising" a boat might refer to either, neither, or both of refloating or salvaging the boat.

But it seems fair to read Law 238 in the context of the two laws it follows:

> 236. If a man hire his boat to a boatman and the boatman be careless and he sink or wreck the boat, the boatman shall replace the boat to the owner of the boat.

> 237. If a man hire a boatman and a boat and freight it with grain, wool, oil, dates or any other kind of freight, and that boatman is careless and he sink the boat or wreck its cargo, the boatman shall replace the boat which he sank and whatever portion of the cargo he wrecked.

> 238. If a boatman sink a man's boat and refloat [raise] it, he shall give silver to the extent of one-half its value.

This is a straightforward set of elaborations on a basic theme, as frequently occurs in the code. So the law says:

1. If you sink someone else's boat, you replace the boat.

2. If there was cargo on the boat, you have to replace that too.

3. If you sink the boat, but then you recover it, you don't have to replace the whole boat. [Which makes sense, because the whole boat hasn't been lost. Replacing the whole thing wouldn't be fair.] But a boat that's been sunk can be safely assumed to have taken some damage. So you pay for half of it.

That's not a sharing of the burden between the owner and the operator. It's assessing -- against the operator -- a customary judgement that is notionally equal to the value of the harm that the operator caused. None of the burden is being assigned to the owner, and all of the burden is being assigned to the operator.

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by striking on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:35PM (#30874634)
> General Average is a maritime law principle requiring that the shipowner and cargo interests proportionately share in the costs associated with rescuing a vessel after a major casualty. When GA is declared, cargo owners are required to contribute to a GA fund before their cargo can be released.

... is what the article says. Is there something wrong with this?

Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by barry-cotter on Friday April 01, 2022 @05:49AM (#30876575)
Maybe they’re not a native speaker or don’t read much so their vocabulary is limited?
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by wbl on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:25PM (#30874567)
It's a site for people who carry out an ancient profession that has had millennia to accrue jargon and lore.
Re:General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesf... by KarlKemp on Thursday March 31, 2022 @10:30PM (#30874604)
Yes, like "sockpuppet". Or "RfD".