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Online Petition Site Crashed By Millions of 'Cancel Brexit' Signers (time.com)
"More than 3 million people have signed a petition to cancel Brexit on the U.K. government's official petitions website -- so many that the website crashed multiple times," reports Time:
The petition had received some 600,000 signatures at a rate of 1,500 every 60 seconds before the site crashed at about 9 a.m. U.K. time on Thursday, the Guardian reported. By mid afternoon, the site was back online but suffering intermittent outages. There were 2 million signatures by Thursday evening and 3 million by midday Friday...
The U.K. government must now allow a debate on the petition's contents in parliament.
The Guardian notes that the CTO of company that built the petition site had bragged in a tweet Wednesday that the 1,000 signatures per minute was "Not too bad, but nowhere near crashing the site --you all need to try harder tomorrow."
By the next morning he had tweeted âoeWell done everyone -- the site crashed because calculating the trending count became too much of a load on the database."
The U.K. government must now allow a debate on the petition's contents in parliament.
The Guardian notes that the CTO of company that built the petition site had bragged in a tweet Wednesday that the 1,000 signatures per minute was "Not too bad, but nowhere near crashing the site --you all need to try harder tomorrow."
By the next morning he had tweeted âoeWell done everyone -- the site crashed because calculating the trending count became too much of a load on the database."
If you RTFS, you would know it was the ever changing trend analysis that brought them down.
They most certainly could have done better, but there's no indication it had anything to do with pushing static assets.
The petition can be signed by UK passport holders - anywhere in the world.
I've a British passport, live in Canada, and have signed it.
Yes, looking out for your own interests is selfish. It's something all humans do, called self-preservation. Why you try to say that's a bad thing just proves that you are being disingenuous.
Selfishness is a bad thing when it's taken to an illogical extreme. Suggesting otherwise is socially retarded.
I assume you're from a country that would BENEFIT from the UK staying in the EU, so you're doing the same thing.
Everyone but perhaps Russia and China will benefit if the UK stays in the EU, including the UK.
The free ride is over, the EU is dead, and the world government they want is going down the toilet.
The UK is not providing a free ride to the EU. They are getting quite a bit.
Fuck off, scum.
Run along, kid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The first vote was tainted by flawed information, lies essentially, presented to the distracted public. It barely won. Yes, a new referendum is a good idea, one based on new, rock-solid (and very economically sobering) information.
Don't be retarded. If your defense is you had a vote, another vote should not be a threat.
Typically, online petitions and opinion polls only have a tiny participation rate. Not everybody has readily available internet access, not everybody follow the media, and most importantly, not everybody bothers to get involved, even if it is in their own interest. This means, seeing 4+M signatures equals a much much bigger actual number of voters. And as is, the petition already represents about a quarter of the people who voted to "remain" in the referendum. That's significant. It suggests that there is a groundswell of support for remaining in the EU.
The petition site isn't run by some shady online opinion poll. It's run by the UK parliament. According to a spokeperson, it actively filters submissions to detect bot activity. At the very least, it requires a unique name, verified (!) e-mail address and UK postal address. Some unconfirmed reports also state that it requires a UK passport number (maybe, that only happens for suspect submissions?). The UK parliament trusts that these numbers are substantially accurate.
That's huge. It means anybody saying "the will of the people" is to continue with Brexit is blatantly lying to themselves and to the rest of the world.
By this logic you already had a vote in 1972. But yes, get the fuck out already.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Thatâ(TM)s not what happens today. FUD is doing a good job of helping those destructive to society get in power and stay in power. In the meantime a well researched stance is screamed at for being elitist, left wing, supporting already defeated candidates and non-patriotic
Donâ(TM)t underestimate the power of the misinformed populist vote. It has hurt the US, the UK and other countries.
"Oh, if only our citizens had been correctly informed, they would never have voted for Brexit!"
That seems to be the defining rationale for all the dissent in the UK today, and it's complete and total bullocks. It's used as justification by people who didn't get their way to make the transition as painful as possible with the faint hope of reversing the decision.
Except it's a good point.
There were two big problems with the pro-Brexit campaign:
1) There were a lot of flat out lies or distortions.
2) The Brexit that was promised isn't actually possible. England simply can't have the kind of relationship with the EU that the Brexit side wanted. Of the different possible relationships to Europe the one most acceptable to voters is likely remain.
Firstly, leaving the EU is objectively a better decision than staying, from an economic, cultural, and game-theory point of view.
You're objectively using the word "objectively" incorrectly.
The arguments against leaving center mostly on the transition, and not the end result. It's always what will happen "in the next 6 months" or "in the following year" and whatnot.
I've seen lots of long term predictions of bad things happening. It's just that the short term ones are a more immediate concern to most people.
No one will admit that the UK could voluntarily implement all the agreements it currently has with the EU - such as unrestricted travel between nations - and there would be little hardship.
Except a bunch of bi-lateral agreements are hard to negotiate and way harder to administer. That was a big reason for the EU in the first place, to simply things by getting rid of all the N to N agreements.
And if you implemented all of the agreements then what was the purpose of Brexit in the first place? You're basically pulling the same stunt as the leave side, pushing for hard-Brexit while selling a soft-Brexit.
But mostly, the argument that "not enough correct information got out" and "people would have chosen differently with better information" is completely false.
... followed by a bunch of complaints about immigration.
The complaints about misinformation were largely about economic misinformation, and the hard/soft trickery. If people were really freaking out about immigration maybe leave will win again, but then at least you'll also have a clear answer about a hard vs soft exit. And about whether to bring back an "unrestricted travel" agreement that you were happy to bring back a few paragraphs ago.
For example, the assumption that a bigger pool of workers and jobs makes for a better economy. When the countries are economically equal it works out - a dental hygenist in the UK can get a good job in Germany, and vice versa. When this assumption doesn't holds true the better country gets pulled down - a dental hygienist in Greece can get a good job in the UK, but the reverse isn't true. The result is massive unemployment in the UK while high-paying jobs are filled with non-UK citizens. A large number of assumptions - which turn out to be false - underlie the economic arguments for being in the EU.
Though you forget that raising a dental hygienist to adult hood and then putting them through additional training is really expensive. Getting that hygienist as a productive adult is a pretty good deal, though one that will eventually have to be paid for in retirement (though you likely still win)
I stole this Sig