Supreme Court: Suspending Parliament was unlawful, judges rule - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49810261 <comment><USER2> > This court has already concluded that the prime minister's advice to Her > Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the order in > council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect and should > be quashed. This means that when the royal commissioners walked into the > House of Lords it was as if they walked in with a blank sheet of paper. The > prorogation was also void and of no effect. Parliament has not been > prorogued. This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 justices.

This is a very clear and damning verdict.

Suspending parliament for five weeks in a critical time would be heavily criticized by the West as a major anti-democratic and authoritarian move in any other country.

It's something that would have been unimaginable to happen in the UK a few years ago, and will probably burden the UKs political system for a long time.

Interesting times indeed.

<comment><USER3> It won't burden the system. This has happened before in recent memory and is totally fitting with the powers of the Executive (the only difference here is the subject).

And it is worth saying: to get that verdict, they had to take the leap of judgement in assuming they knew exactly why the PM did it. The key assumption in that is there is an alternative before the October 31, there isn't...so it doesn't matter if Parliament is sitting or not because there is nothing to scrutinise.

To explain: Johnson was not denying Parliament a voice at all because he wasn't suspending past October 31. He was suspending until a few days before the European Council meeting, where the final deal will be negotiated, and then Parliament would vote on it. 95% of articles on this topic do not make this clear. The timetable does not change whether or not Parliament is sitting. It only changes if you are someone deluded enough to believe that there is an alternative...there isn't (the EU has said this multiple times).

What is burdening the system is:

* UK voted to leave * General election was called which Brexit parties won (somehow given May's ineffectiveness) * MPs voted to leave * MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal * MPs refuse to re-negotiate the deal or do anything that makes a deal possible * The "alternative" from Labour is to go to the EU, negotiate exactly the same deal that has been voted down 4 times then they will whip their MPs against that deal too.

It is utterly bizarre to take aim at the only person who actually has a definite idea about how to solve this situation (regardless of whether you agree with it or not).

<comment><USER4> > And it is worth saying: to get that verdict, they had to take the leap of > judgement in assuming they knew exactly why the PM did it.

They explicitly side-stepped the motive of why Johnson prorogued Parliament. From page 2 of the summary ([https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summar...](https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summary.pdf)):

> For present purposes, the relevant limit on the power to prorogue is this: > that a decision to prorogue (or advise the monarch to prorogue) will be > unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, > without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its > constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for > the supervision of the executive. In judging any justification which might > be put forward, the court must of course be sensitive to the > responsibilities and experience of the Prime Minister and proceed with > appropriate caution. > If the prorogation does have that effect, without > reasonable justification, there is no need for the court to consider whether > the Prime Minister's motive or purpose was unlawful.

Also:

> * MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal

The EU is happy to change the deal if the UK government proposes something reasonable. But it will not back down from its red lines which is the integrity of the single market and solidarity with Ireland, which is a member state.

<comment><USER3> > They explicitly side-stepped the motive of why Johnson prorogued Parliament.

They did not. The part you quoting actually explains that this is the case. The court has to identify whether the justification is reasonable (if you followed the case in Scotland, the logic was exactly the same), and this means looking at motive (just to say, constitutional law in the UK does not work like the US...at all).

I did not imply that the EU should do anything. Again, this is a common misunderstanding of the govt's position. The point of their strategy isn't to force the EU into doing anything (although that is the effect). The point is to stop the delay (the effect on the economy has been huge).

<comment><USER5> > the effect on the economy has been huge

Yes. You can see every time a pro-Brexit news event happens the pound falls and an anti-Brexit one happens it ticks up again, like today. The effect of no-deal will be even bigger, as a number of businesses which have been hanging on will be forced to close or relocate.

The default way out of this has to be to revoke, until such time as someone can get elected with a majority of MPs supporting a workable plan.

<comment><USER3> The UK has a phenomenally large number of low productivity businesses (the BoE has written tons on the productivity crisis). To suggest that businesses would go bust who wouldn't have gone bust otherwise is to confuse cause and effect.

For most businesses, it won't make a tremendous difference. Imports are becoming more expensive but this is something that likely would have occurred anyway because of weak competitiveness/low savings rate.

Exporters are probably going to come out even or ahead (the change in the £ has offset tariffs).

The situation at the border is somewhat concerning (although only worth 1-2% of GDP in most studies) but has also been distinctly complicated by the switch from CDS to CHIEF (which was supposed to happen years ago but didn't). We could get this right, unf we have got to the point where we are choosing not to.

The main concern for the UK economy is actually supply. The labour market is very tight, unemployment is the lowest it has been for four decades or so, wages are growing like crazy, and we have had deflationary effect due to the delay (which has crushed investment) but, at some point, this is going to come back and there is no spare capacity.

It would be a sweet relief for the marginal, low-productivity businesses that are suffocating the economy to fold (the reason we have low productivity and tight labour is because too many people do jobs that are unproductive, these businesses will not give up resources willingly).

<comment><USER5> Leaving aside Yellowhammer, Thomas Cook, and the various car manufacturers, the argument that low-productivity businesses are the ones holding the economy back and need to go bankrupt is really questionable. People are free to move jobs. You just have to pay them more. Evidently the wage growth has not yet caught up enough.

The other approach would be to encourage staff from overseas, which the government has spent years discouraging and has now specifically chosen to make harder for Europeans.

> We could get this right, unf we have got to the point where we are choosing > not to.

This has systematically been the Brexit approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of whatever side you are on, you have to admit that we're currently living in extraordinary times in UK politics.

A decade ago, the kind of things we've seen over the last 3-4 years would have been borderline unthinkable. If this were all a TV show, people would've called it too far-fetched or too distant from reality.

Whatever happens - there will be enough content to create movies, whole modules for university classes, and a dozen or so questions for pub quizzes.

As for Boris - imagine being the first Prime Minister in British History to be found guilty of misleading the monarchy. Now, imagine going through a shattering defeat in court, while STILL being far ahead in the polls.

<comment><USER7> > _while STILL being far ahead in the polls._

This is because of the appalling state of Labour, which is currently controlled by actual communists.

People are not stupid. Labour's current policies would be far worse than Brexit.

With a 'normal', half-decent opposition the Tories would have been overthrown years ago.

<comment><USER6> I guess it depends who you ask. I preferred the Labour policies from the last GE, but outside of some pie-in-the-sky thinking about private education and universal credit, I think they have some solid policies.

The average person doesn't care about policies, though. Labour under Ed Milliband had some good policies, but he was undone because he looked weird when eating a bacon sandwich. You could argue the same for Gordon Brown, who looked weird when he smiled when compared to the overly polished David Cameron.

IMO, the people just don't like Corbyn, and many people cling to the idea that the PM is the outright ruler of the land, when Brexit has shown the exact opposite - they are a leader, but they need a house to push their majority through.

I do agree with you, though. If Owen Smith had plotted a coup a few years later, he'd probably be 20-30 points ahead, and Boris would do everything possible to avoid a GE. The one good thing about Corbyn is that he is a campaigner, so the second a GE becomes a reality he'll be in his element.

If Boris wins, then I give up. The Tories will have sold their soul for Brexit, the Labour party will have destroyed any credibility as a viable opposition, and the Lib Dems will have aligned too heavily with the Tories to be viable themselves. I don't know where the country goes from there, but I would love to not be a part of it.

<comment><USER7> The main issue with Corbyn's Labour is that it is too much on the left, with some major policies being textbook communist (e.g. nationalisations with handing control to workers), and a Marxist as Shadow Chancellor.

Their current delirium about private education, which is also a textbook communist party style policy (suppression, assets seizure and "democratic" redistribution), only adds to this.

I could add their populist war in private landlords and calls for rent controls...

Beyond Corbyn himself this does scare many people away.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you on private schools. My other half went to a private school, and her parents were in no way wealthy. She left state education because her primary school messed her education up so much she (alongside other kids in her class) failed her Year 5 SATS and refused to take the blame for not teaching the class adequately. She went from failing in Year 5 to getting a first at uni - probably thanks to a solid private education.

With that being said, the current policy doesn't seem to be to scrap them entirely, but to remove their charity status. This does make sense, but will require more thought than what they've given so far. Removing their status ensures they're paying fair tax, but it also means that they are no longer required to share their facilities with state schools.

It's a weird policy to lead with, and the cynic in me believes they're doing so to push the class divide, in order to get more Leave voters behind them.

<comment><USER7> > _With that being said, the current policy doesn 't seem to be to scrap them > entirely, but to remove their charity status._

It does not make sense to scrap their charity status.

As you said, people who send their children to private schools are not necessarily wealthy. But in any case they do pay their taxes yet they do not use state schools' resources, which actually means more money per state school pupil. Why would these people have to pay extra taxes for not using state facilities that they already finance? (Because that's exactly what this would mean)

Private schools help the system. Hitting them would hurt everyone.

That being said, at this year party conference they did vote to scrap private schools altogether, to seize their assets, and tho redistribute these assets "democratically".

> _they 're doing so to push the class divide_

It is an ideological class war. This is communist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Summary of the judgment: [https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summar...](https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summary.pdf)

Full judgment: [https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-judgme...](https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-judgment.pdf)

<comment><USER9> I strongly recommend people read the judgment, or at least the summary. It's very clearly written, and it would let people argue about what the court found, as opposed to what they think the court might have found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that it was unanimous really drives home how obviously illegal it was. I would love to see a direct criminal or civil consequence for this, as it negatively affected the rights of all UK citizens.

<comment><USER11> The funny thing is, prorogation was a democratically elected government trying to prevent a democratically elected parliament from democratically (by members of parliament) stopping a democratic (by the populace) decision to exit the EU.

<comment><USER12> The Johnson government isn't democratically elected by any usual definition.

The government doesn't have a parliamentary majority, and Boris hasn't stood as a PM candidate in a general election.

<comment><USER13> All true - and yet this parliament seems remarkably reluctant to allow the electorate the opportunity to correct this state of affairs.

<comment><USER14> Opposition parties might be concerned about being absent from Parliament when the Brexit deadline passes.

There's another problem, too. The First Past the Post electoral system prevents the electorate from correcting the state of affairs (except perhaps by accident). Call me cynical, but calls for an early general election under the existing system look like a power grab rather than a sincere attempt to let the electorate decide.

<comment><USER13> God forbid that voters have a say!

<comment><USER14> Voters should have a say under proportional representation. Holding a general election under First Past the Post would likely hand the government to a faction with minority support. I don't mean this to be partisan or pro-/anti- Brexit, but FPTP typically doesn't settle issues and increasingly doesn't provide good government in the UK.

FPTP typically overrepresents some parties at the cost of others (and at the cost of voters). Politicians might want an election when they believe they will be more overrepresented afterwards than before. That's why it's no surprise for the opposition to suddenly stop wanting an election when the government begins to want one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a member of the commonwealth with a parliamentary democracy, I'm confused by how many people think this was the wrong call. The PM is only the first minister, the serve at the behest of parliament. I wish Canada would also remember that Parliament is supposed to hold the ultimate power of government.

<comment><USER16> > The PM is only the first minister, the serve at the behest of parliament.

As a non-Commonwealther, what exactly is the PM supposed to (or not supposed) to do? In school the PM was always explained as "their version of President," which I know waxes over tonnes of detail.

The day after the proroguing announcement, I read a bit that claimed this was "normal" in the UK Parliament. What makes this so particularly unusual and illegal?

<comment><USER5> The timing is normal (for the conference season and Queen's speech). The duration was longer than normal, and of course we're in the middle of a crisis with a ticking clock. A two-week prorogation might have worked fine. But the intent

> what exactly is the PM supposed to (or not supposed) to do?

Normally this kind of conflict doesn't arise, because the government has a large majority, and if they cease to have a majority then the PM is replaced by a no-confidence vote.

Normally the PM is supposed to Be A Good Chap and Do The Decent Thing, which are ill-defined concepts from British honour culture, but have basically gone out the window with Johnson's behaviour.

<comment><USER17> There's also an important difference between _recess_ and _progrogation_.

Recess is just a quick break for the conference season, and is normal at this time of year. Progrogation brings all parliamentary business to an end, bills are not carried over to the next session (so work on them has to start from scratch), and select committees can't sit. That's a _very_ different state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why this verdict is so important:

 _It would open the door ... to a form of judicial review that is widely accepted in the United States, which has a codified Constitution and a Supreme Court that actively interprets it._

 _Britain, by contrast, relies on an unwritten set of traditions and conventions that have treated a sovereign Parliament as the supreme law of the land. Once the courts venture into the political sphere and begin passing judgment on Parliament's actions, legal analysts say, there is no going back._

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/world/europe/uk- supreme-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/world/europe/uk-supreme- court-brexit.html)

<comment><USER5> We already have judicial review applying to governmental actions and ministerial decisions. This is not an application of judicial review to acts of Parliament. The prorogation was an act of the government, not Parliament.

<comment><USER18> Good point. WUWT NYT? Investigating...

OK, best I can figure is NYT is trying to make the point that if the UK Supreme Court is becoming willing to get involved with such highly political matters, there's no reason they wouldn't seek to extend that to Parliamentary matters. Does that comport with the facts and opinions here?

<comment><USER5> Oh, they did the usual thing of finding a quote from the other side to put in the article. That quote was of course wrong, but they probably felt the need to put it in for balance.

<comment><USER18> Technically, they've upheld the Scottish court's ruling. I'm sort of seeing the Scottish courts focused on it being illegal for Parliament not to be able to do its job. Two sides of a 2-dimensional object.

<comment><USER5> I think that since this is the English case the Scottish case now evaporates and doesn't get appealed separately, so we don't get to find out how that would have worked out.

<comment><USER19> They upheld the Scottish judgement, and overturned the English one. It was both cases.

They reached the same conclusion as the Scottish case, but with somewhat different reasons. They avoided the issue about the PM's motivations/purpose that the Scottish judgement focused on. Instead, they said the impact of the prorogation on Parliament's ability to do its job made it unlawful, so they didn't have to consider the PM's motivations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Liberal Party of Australia shortened the parliament sitting days to avoid scrutiny: [https://www.sbs.com.au/news/labor-accuses-government-of- cutt...](https://www.sbs.com.au/news/labor-accuses-government-of-cutting- sitting-days-in-2019-to-avoid-scrutiny)

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more anti-democratic changes in Australia.

<comment><USER16> I'm not a Commonwealth type, are the UK and Australian governments somehow linked?

<comment><USER5> Only through the Govenor-General, who is the Queen's standin in the Australian copy of the British system: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/dec/16/queen...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/dec/16/queen-appoints-australias-next-governor-general-with-calls- for-it-to-be-her-last)

<comment><USER21> Courts often look to judgments in other common law or Westminster systems, even though they aren't precedents as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> More importantly, does she know that there is a spider on her shoulder?

<comment><USER23> If you're interested in seeing more of these brooches, Lady Hale apparently has quite a collection [https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/11/lady-hales-best- brooches/](https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/11/lady-hales-best-brooches/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > It is worth just taking a breath and considering that a prime minister of > the United Kingdom has been found by the highest court in the land to have > acted unlawfully in shutting down the sovereign body in our constitution, > Parliament, at a time of national crisis.

...yeah, is there anything to add here?

<comment><USER25> Brexiters would argue he is fighting the remainer parliament to implement the will of the people as represented by the 2016 referendum result. It's all a bit of a mess.

Personally I think Blair's suggestion of another referendum on no deal vs remain would be the way forward as those are the most popular options with the voters. Everyone seems to hate the withdrawal agreement.

<comment><USER26> A second referendum would be a terrible idea. It might have been theoretically defendable some years ago, if events had worked out differently.

But what we've seen over the past 3.5 years is that there was already a referendum, and it's had no effect whatsoever because the ruling classes keep fighting it all the way. The UK is still a member of the EU, nearly four years after they voted last time!

Moreover, all the politicians in the two biggest political parties campaigned last time on respecting and implementing the vote. They're now not doing that.

If you voted leave last time, why would you bother doing it again? The head of the Liberal Democrats admitted on camera already that if she lost a second referendum she still wouldn't vote to implement leaving in Parliament, which surprised nobody at all.

The idea of a second referendum is proposed for exactly one reason only: so it can be rigged to give Remain a second chance. Simply re-running it would already give Remain a bigger chance than last time because so many of those who voted Leave before would be disillusioned, believe the new vote was just another lie and refuse to turn up at all.

But I doubt the establishment would take any chances. The Electoral Commission has been repeatedly found to have maliciously harassed and fined Leave supporters and campaigns, by the courts and police. For sure they'd try and bend the process significantly.

Parliament would also likely try to ensure a Remain victory. Probably by changing voting thresholds or by only offering remain/deal (i.e. remain/remain) and then campaigning on the basis that the Withdrawal Agreement is so bad it'd be better to give up entirely.

In the event that somehow a genuine no deal/remain referendum did take place, and the powers that be didn't interfere, and Leave won again, it'd be immediately challenged in courts by Gina Miller and her lawyer friends, the same Parliament would still be in power and still be refusing to implement it, and it'd change nothing.

In the end the only way out of this mess is unilaterally leaving the EU and then starting to rebuild whatever relationship is possible from scratch, replacing most sitting MPs and formalising a written constitution.

<comment><USER5> > In the end the only way out of this mess is unilaterally leaving the EU

At the cost of hundreds of thousands of jobs, colossal disruption, possible interruptions to food and medical supplies? Are you delusional that you think it's easy or do you just not care who gets harmed?

<comment><USER26> You overlooked the much more likely third option: I don't believe these claims are true. Most people supporting no deal don't believe they're true, and for valid reasons!

Let's break it down.

Loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is an economic prediction so we can't know _for sure_ if it would be true or not unless it really happens. But before the vote, this very same prediction was made in very similar form and turned out to be completely false.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-to-enter- recessio...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-to-enter-recession- with-500000-uk-jobs-lost-if-it-left-eu-new-treasury-analysis-shows)

 _Britain's economy would be tipped into a year-long recession, with at least 500,000 jobs lost and GDP around 3.6% lower, following a vote to leave the EU, new Treasury analysis launched today by the Prime Minister and Chancellor shows._

NB: This analysis was about _voting_ to Leave, not actually leaving, so we can test its correctness now. The analysis talks about the uncertainty created by two years of negotiations, saying it would destroy at best 500,000 jobs and at worst 800,000 jobs. Leave won, there have been 3.5 years of uncertainty and the economy is performing incredibly well. Employment has grown strongly since the vote. This prediction posed as scientific fact, but was riven with huge Remain bias and turned out to be nonsense.

So now the same people are making the same claim again, but won't explain why this time they're right or what they learned from their previous failure. It's entirely reasonable to assume they've learned nothing, are making these claims for political reasons and will be wrong again.

OK, now, colossal disruption. Possible interruptions to food and medical supplies.

Really?

The explanation for why such disruption would happen goes like this. The UK will implement more customs checks, which would be slow and temporarily overwhelm customs infrastructure, leading to supply chain disruptions and disasters.

Two problems with this claim.

Firstly, why would any sane government insist on customs checks if people were dying due to lack of medicine or food? Tariff income isn't that important and on day one the precise rules will be the same anyway. It'd be much more sensible to just relax customs checks to whatever level was needed to ensure continuity of supply until enough infrastructure was built.

Secondly and more importantly, people who actually run ports are saying the infrastructure is already built and it's not true that there'd be large disruptions in case of no deal.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/12/08/lettersthe- uk...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/12/08/lettersthe-uks-ports- will-not-seize-no-deal-brexit-whatever/)

The CEO of the UK Major Ports Group says:

 _I write on behalf of the United Kingdom's major port operators, responsible for handling 75 per cent of the country's seaborne trade. Dover, handling around 6 per cent of UK port volumes, faces a unique combination of Brexit risk factors that are not faced by most major UK ports. These ports already have the capacity and infrastructure to handle large volumes of both EU and non-EU trade today without logjam._

So apparently the people running the ports think only Dover might have issues, but if it gets overloaded traffic would just go elsewhere. What does the head of Dover Port think about this?

In Bloomberg:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/u-k- port-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/u-k-port-of- dover-says-it-s-100-ready-for-no-deal-brexit)

 _The Port of Dover -- through which a sixth of the U.K.'s trade in goods flows -- can cope with any disruption thrown up by a no-deal Brexit, Chief Executive Officer Doug Bannister said, suggesting some of the direr predictions of chaos are wide of the mark._

So people who run ports are saying this is just politically driven scaremongering.

As for medicines, if you look at the NHS advice page, it says the extent of their plans is hiring additional space on planes or ferries to handle temporary transport disruption (which, remember, port operators are saying won't actually be an issue): [https://www.england.nhs.uk/eu- exit/medicines/medicines-faq/](https://www.england.nhs.uk/eu- exit/medicines/medicines-faq/)

So the claims being made here to try and terrify the British population into giving up on Brexit, it's all stuff we heard before or people outside of the establishment are saying isn't true.

<comment><USER27> Somewhat off topic, but is there a name for this convention:

> Most people supporting no deal don't believe they're true, and for valid > reasons!

> Let's break it down.

It is the same pattern and cadence that Sheryl Sandberg uses when describing exciting new privacy initiatives in interviews, but it's also used by PR managers at many tech firms.

Is there a PR school where they describe the subconscious thought process of a typical audience:

> Sure, I want to join this really fun bandwagon with all of the enthusiastic > people developing privacy policies at Facebook, or learning all the great > ways that a no deal Brexit is going to be truly awesome for the UK. However, > that's just my emotional response to wanting to be included, so please give > me some nominally rational arguments for post hoc rationalization

I think it probably works, at least until it is overused, but I am curious about whether there is a name for the whole approach.

<comment><USER26> What convention? You mean stating what you believe and then providing arguments for it? I'm not sure why you believe a normal argumentation structure is somehow linked to PR firms.

Do you have any actual rebuttals or, would you rather just make innuendos and insinuations (about what I'm not entirely sure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We are living in interesting times

<comment><USER29> This is indeed astounding and unprecidented - the court ruling, that is, not proroging Parliament to avoid its scrutiny. (There was a much more clear-cut example of that at the end of the Major administration where he suddenly prorogued Parliament for the entire three-week period between his announcement and the general election, most likely to avoid scrutiny of a corruption scandal involving his party. He was one of the folks who submitted briefs in support of the claim that this prorogration was unprecidented and unlawful.)

<comment><USER30> Major certainly took the pee with his parliament shutdown, making him a hyopcrite when complaining about Boris (stupidly) taking the same approach

<comment><USER25> It takes a thief to catch a thief

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Important technical question: is Bercow still the Speaker? If not, who is? I thought he resigned at the end of the last term, which may or may not be reverted by this result.

<comment><USER31> He is due to retire October 31st, or at the calling of a general election and dissolution of parliament, whichever comes sooner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any punishment, or is the law's spirit that punishment is the potential non-reelection of a PM in such cases?

<comment><USER33> They didn't rule that the PM committed a crime. Just that the prorogation was unlawful and effectively never happened.

<comment><USER34> So... all of this was just a loud news cycle with no actual effect on anything other than "Parliament can continue doing what it does" ? (I actually can't tell, not trying to be a dick)

<comment><USER5> Prior to this ruling, Parliament was _not_ able to continue doing anything because it had been prorogued (suspended). The ruling allows it to continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Speaking as somebody who approved of Boris's strategy to leave on Oct 31:

In normal times, with a moral leader, this would be an instant resigning matter.

Boris's response has been predictably complacent.

"I accept the verdict but strongly disagree with it" will become a go-to phrase of every burglar and other criminal caught red handed.

Btw, (UK) word of the year:

Prorogation

<comment><USER36> Out of genuine curiosity, why do you approve of the prime minister's strategy?

<comment><USER35> To clarify: I'm a Remainer, and not a Tory supporter.

However, I remember discussing the issue at referendum time with my Leave voting neighbours who were very much the supposedly angry working class type that have been ridiculed and condescended to repeatedly by the liberal media.

They (my friends and neighbours) were adamant that "it doesn't matter what we vote anyway, _they_ will just stop it happening."

At the time, I thought they were being paranoid.

Now they look prescient and wise. Parliament has had 3 years to honour the vote of the people.

Boris Johnson (who I have little like for and am suspicious of his character) is the first leader who has shown the will to make that decision happen.

So, though I regret the referendum decision (and that the moral impetus has been taken on by people I don't feel a natural affinity to), I respect it and support his move to enact it without further delay.

<comment><USER37> Why would you vote in an explicitly non-binding "advisory" referendum and think that this somehow mandated the government to act? Particularly when the win margin was a couple of percent.

<comment><USER35> Whatever the technical niceties of "advisory" there was never any dispute that the referendum would decide the future of Britain within the EU.

The whole "advisory", "win margin" etc. phrasing is post-vote weasel words by the losing side (mine). Those are nullification criteria to be established _before_ the vote, not after it doesn't go your way.

If Remain had won by a similar small margin, do you think we would have been using those words to acknowledge some moral failure of our victory?

Personally, I doubt it.

<comment><USER37> It seems weird to initiate something as radical as a _total political realignment of your country_ on the basis of a 2% win margin, particularly when you don't actually have a concrete plan for how you're doing it (and when no majority of the pro-Brexit voters seem to support the actual plans that have been proposed.) The total failure of your politicians to complete this project after several free and democratic parliamentary elections seems to me to be a reflection of that fact, rather than some kind of weasel.

>If Remain had won by a similar small margin, do you think we would have been using those words to acknowledge some moral failure of our victory?

Not really -- preserving your existing trade relationships doesn't seem like the kind of thing that requires an overwhelming majority.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure how to respond without repeating myself.

 _Those are nullification criteria to be established before the vote, not after it doesn 't go your way._

The decision was made, it just needs to be delivered. I agree it has taken far too long to do so.

<comment><USER37> Nobody established any nullification criteria. They just said "do you want to leave the EU". Parliament then negotiated an exit deal. The problem seems to be that the many of the same voters who said "yes" are unable to get their representatives to agree on accepting that deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps the strongest judgement against the government that could have been delivered - and unanimous too. Great to see.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh no. Please. Can the UK please already exit the EU? By all means, rejoin us the day after Brexit, but this time with mandatory entering of the Schengen zone and the Euro...

<comment><USER25> I can see this must be a bit trying for the Europeans.

<comment><USER38> Mostly it's because continental Europeans are _utterly fed up_ with the chaos that is Brexit. Right now the uncertainity is extremely expensive for every company involved with UK trade, as precautions like capacity on ferries or in warehouses gobble up money and organization time.

For what it's worth the UK can also cancel Brexit, but that would not solve the problem that the "special deal" for the UK is a massive inequality against all other EU states and can be/is abused by EU-sceptics across the EU, and in addition canceling the Brexit would be a signal towards Hungary, Poland and the rest of Visegrad that they can drag the entire EU on the nose ring and then suddenly canceling everything, while all other parties have to pick up the tab.

<comment><USER24> all fair points except that as you said the price has already been paid, cancelling now wouldn't return the time nor money spent, companies that made the move to amsterdam, paris or frankfurt won't just go back, etc.

<comment><USER38> With a canceling of the brexit the time and money spent would be wasted, while with a brexit (no matter if deal or no deal scenario) there would be at least no waste plus the chance that a harsh Brexit will prevent Visegrad, Italy and Greece from further pursuing their dream of "becoming independent from the dictators in Brussels".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So what's the result, vote of no confidence?

<comment><USER9> Unlikely to happen straight away. Due to a quirk of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, a successful VoNC now would allow the Prime Minister to run out the clock by refusing to resign, waiting the maximum two weeks to attempt a superseding Vote of Confidence, then calling the latest legal election after he inevitably lost. And Parliament would then be dissolved for the election, leaving only Johnson at the controls over the critical period leading up to Brexit day.

There are other routes out of the situation after a VoNC, but they involve Parliament being able to agree on a new PM, which is tricky given that the Leader of the Opposition is cordially despised by much of the Commons and there are deep political problems with any of the other potential candidates. It also would require Boris to either resign or be sacked after losing the VoNC, which is by no means a done deal given that he's ignoring all the other conventions and there's no obvious mechanisms for a forcible dismissal (one hasn't been needed since the early 19th Century, as PMs have done the decent thing on losing the confidence of the House).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The court is usurping the authority of parliament. Quite unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well this is going to be fun, especially as it's the middle of party conference season as well. At what point do the remaining unsacked Conservatives admit they've lost? They're already a long way short of a majority. Are we going to have a no confidence vote soon, or are we going to continue with the weird governance by Parliament from the opposition benches?

<comment><USER41> > Are we going to have a no confidence vote soon

Can't be soon enough.

<comment><USER5> .. but not before disarming the Oct 31 timebomb. Which is why it's not happened yet.

<comment><USER33> They had a chance of an election on Oct 15 but threw it away.

<comment><USER42> Who threw it away? BJ wanted an election then for his own political purposes, it isn't the duty of parliament to just go along with that. Once an extension has been requested, then an election can be held, and BJ probably won't have much say in the timing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm reminded of a psychologist's description of sociopaths, that they "leave a trail of destruction in life".

BJ seems to have the hallmarks of sociopathy, having known a few myself, and he's made a total mess here. And elsewhere - talk to anyone who's worked in TFL and they all (that I've met) will tell you about stupid plans that have come across their desk, done without any traffic analysis but pushed through nonetheless.

This all might force a written constitution, which is long overdue in the UK. Something good may come of this at least.

<comment><USER44> Either that or the Prime Minister could simply be trying to implement the result of the referendum, as voters were told the government would.

<comment><USER45> Voters were deciding based on abject lies in the referendum campaign. Then the government carried on lying during whole process. This makes whole referendum mandate very weak.

It's probably best to redo whole thing.

<comment><USER11> > It's probably best to redo whole thing.

How many times?

<comment><USER43> I'll answer that. Exactly once more.

If people have not changed their mind the result will be the same.

If they have changed their mind they will have done it with the enormous, painful benefit of the past few years of hindsight.

In either case the result will be clearer than what we have now.

If the UK then votes to leave, I'll go with that, regretfully but I will.

<comment><USER44> That sets a terrible precedent: lose a vote, use every resource you can to thwart implementing the outcome, get a second vote.

<comment><USER43> Then let's ignore the fact that the UK is tearing itself apart over this and carry on, regardless of the possibility that people may have changed their mind and that brexit is looking more damaging than ever, and that BoJo's career has been built on opportunism (before the referendum was he for or against brexit?) and lies (£350 million?)

Yes, push on, let's. Let's not compromise, rethink, allow a possibly bad decision to be reconsidered. Push on, forward, forward!

Since neither side wish to compromise, the above was my suggestion of a way forwards, where I would support brexit if I lost a 2nd ref.

What's yours?

(Oh, one more thing - the world's ecosystem has possibly started to collapse, which may kill millions and cause wars killing more, perhaps many more. But, BREXIT!!!!)

<comment><USER44> If you think the Office of National Statistics lie, then I suggest you take it up with them.

The nation isn't tearing itself apart. A bunch of us who lost the vote have decided to attempt to thwart the result. May was a remainer and a weak negotiator, other remainers are weakening the UKs negotiating position by insisting we can't walk away from a bad deal.

We lost. It's over. The vote was to leave. Let's leave.

And yes then let's fix the environment, knife crime and everything else too.

<comment><USER43> You appear to have confused BoJo with the ONS. I did not.

> The nation isn't tearing itself apart

We'll have to disagree there. Granted it's not actual civil war but it's politically stressed badly.

> We lost. It's over. The vote was to leave. Let's leave.

What is so terrifying about having a 2nd (and final) vote to check we haven't changed our minds? Specifically, what is wrong with it? Are people not allowed to change view in the light of new information?

<comment><USER44> > > > and lies (£350 million?) ...

> You appear to have confused BoJo with the ONS. I did not.

Are you sure? BoJo quoted the ONS correctly the UK sends the EU 350M. That the EU returns 150 of it doesn't change that the EU is determining how the UK spend the UK's money and then takes half of it for the EU.

> What is so terrifying about having a 2nd (and final) vote to check we > haven't changed our minds?

> Specifically, what is wrong with it?

> Are people not allowed to change view in the light of new information?

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090)

<comment><USER43> > BoJo quoted the ONS correctly the UK sends the EU 350M.

You seem shaky on a number of things - are you a UK resident?

OK, to answer your point [https://metro.co.uk/2017/04/27/heres-how- spectacularly-wrong...](https://metro.co.uk/2017/04/27/heres-how- spectacularly-wrong-the-brexit-bus-350million-lie-was-6600987/)

"Just in case you hadn't already cottoned on, the number plastered on the side of the Brexit bus was a big fat lie.

[...]

According to the new official estimates, the UK actually makes a net contribution to the EU of around £199 million a week."

So BloJo lied. Do you find it acceptable for a politician to lie to you?

> That the EU returns 150 of it doesn't change that the EU is determining how > the UK spend the UK's money and then takes half of it for the EU.

True but irrelevant. Boris lied. That was my point. The ONS doesn't come into it.

Me: >> Are people not allowed to change view in the light of new information?

You: > See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090)

Just points me back to your earlier post which says "That sets a terrible precedent: lose a vote, use every resource you can to thwart implementing the outcome, get a second vote". That doesn't answer the question so let me try again, same question, please answer Yes or No.

<comment><USER44> From the article you just posted:

"The ONS figures for 2015 suggest the UK's gross contribution to the EU, before the cash rebate received by the UK, totalled £19.6 billion – or about £376 million a week. "

> You: see > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21060090)

> Just points me back to your earlier post which says "That sets a terrible > precedent: lose a vote, use every resource you can to thwart implementing > the outcome, get a second vote".

Yes. You seem to not have either read or understood that point.

> That doesn't answer the question so let me try again, same question, please > answer Yes or No.

Yes. However having a second referendum is spectacularly dangerous and undemocratic as you've already read, hopefully three times now. Maybe you can ingest that information, process it and even respond if you'd like to rebut it.

<comment><USER43> Yes, before the cash rebate it was ~£350M/week (or £376M/week according to this). Which boris used without accounting for the rebate which would have brought it down to considerably less.

He lied and you seem ok with it.

> Yes. However having a second referendum is spectacularly dangerous and > undemocratic as you've already read

So Yes, people can change their mind, you allow, but no they shouldn't have a 2nd vote, you say, despite the fact they may have changed their mind.

So what am I supposed to conclude from that?

IMO it's problematic either way, but if we had a 2nd referendum at least "the will of the people" would be clearer. Which may give us a way forwards, which I proposed as a compromise, but you are trying to shut down.

Your compromise/way forward is... what?

<comment><USER44> I mentioned why the EU having control of our money is bad in a previous post you responded to and didn't read.

There is no compromise. We lost. Asking people to vote a second time before disrespects the first referendum. I have explained this a fourth time. I'm blocking you now. You'll say it's because you're making amazing points, but actually it's because you're talking to yourself.

<comment><USER43> > I mentioned why the EU having control of our money is bad in a previous post

and I responded "True but irrelevant. Boris lied".

> Asking people to vote a second time before disrespects the first referendum

"Good evening madam, please be seated"

"Thank you. Let's see, I think I'll have the fish... no wait, the chicken looks good. I'll have the chick-"

"NO! You will have the fish"

"But I want the ch-"

"Do not do this! You wanted the fish and you will have the fish"

"But I changed my m-"

"You are disrespecting your first choice _and I cannot allow this!_ "

Well, that's not how I see things.

<comment><USER44> > > "The ONS figures for 2015 suggest the UK's gross contribution to the EU, > before the cash rebate received by the UK, totalled £19.6 billion – or about > £376 million a week. "

> "True but irrelevant. Boris lied".

I mentioned you were having a discussion with yourself earlier, but thanks for providing an example.

"Fish is better"

"I'll have the chick-"

 _Person A shits all over chicken before it arrives_

"Hah fish is better don't you want fish now?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ok so this means...that there should be an election? This is exactly what should have been called weeks ago, yet there is resistance from Labour. Why?

<comment><USER47> Labour are resistant to an election as they know they won't win.

<comment><USER48> Labour and other party members knew this was a trap. But the real reason they abstained is they wanted to truly rule out a no-deal brexit plan and also to further scrutinize the government.

Boris is now forced to ask Brussels for an extension due to parliament taking over the brexit process. Only then a general election can happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is so, so wrong.

</comment><comment><USER44> A pity.

\- The previous parliamentary session was the longest since the civil war (the English one if you're American).

\- This prorogue was for an extra four days - which seems quite reasonable considering:

1\. there are politicians, who previously campaigned on the losing side of the referendum, bent on hampering negotiations by making the UK accept any deal the EU offers, which is likely to result in a one-sided deal for the UK

2\. the last few days of the negotiations are likely to be critical.

<comment><USER42> "there are politicians, who previously campaigned on the losing side of the referendum, bent on hampering negotiations by making the UK accept any deal the EU offers"

Like what? Mays deal that MPs rejected?

<comment><USER44> Like campaigning to accept any deal.

<comment><USER42> Who's campaigning to accept any deal?

The whole problem is ~50% of parliament want to remain, the other half don't all agree on what deal they want.

So if there is a subset that will accept any deal, there clearly isnt enough to make a difference about anything.

<comment><USER44> The remain folks are campaigning against no deal being on the table, which forces the UK to accept any deal.

<comment><USER42> You seem to be poor at basic logic.

Against no deal != in favour of / having to accept, any deal.

<comment><USER44> You should improve your own logic.

'Against no deal' does not mean 'no deal must not be on the table'.

The PM is against no deal. He has stated so many, many times.

He also understands that the UK must be prepared to walk away in order to get a reasonable deal. Do you understand that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Read this before forming an opinion..

"Why Hasn't Brexit Happened?"

[https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit- happe...](https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happe..).

<comment><USER51> "Please click here to go back to the Claremont Institute home page"

<comment><USER52> Where the current headline is "Defend America - Defeat Multiculturalism", if you wanted to know how unbiased the source is likely to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think this is a terrible verdict. The British courts are interfering with the functioning of parliament. This would never happen in America, because it would trample on the very notion of the three separate branches.

<comment><USER54> What? The queen via the prime minister interfered. The court said the prime minister can fuck off and restored parliament to functioning.

<comment><USER53> Until he dismisses it again. It means next to nothing other than one branch interfering in the operations of another. Brexit will happen whether you want it to our not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Was plainly obvious why Boris went for the long shutdown, whatever he chose to say, because of the also-suspect behaviour of the multi-party opposition him wanting to see one law (Brexit Clause 10) implemented without conflicting laws being made up on the fly.

Stupid though, as much of that shutdown wouldn't have made any difference during the party conference season, which they strangely don't hold during their summer recess.</comment>


Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009.
As a 22 year old fresh out of college, I had launched an early prototype of a marketing platform in 2009 here, got initial users from HN (including patio11) who gave their feedback that my product was trying to do too many things. Their inputs are what that led me to focusing on one thing (A/B testing) and that's how I built and launched "Visual Website Optimizer"(now called VWO). Here's that Show HN thread from 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
I can't thank this community enough - without Hacker News, VWO wouldn't have existed. Today, we're a team of 250+ people and seen that initial "Show HN" grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding). If anyone's interested in reading more, I've blogged this journey (from launch to now) on our website: https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/
For any early stage entrepreneurs / indie hackers reading this, I'm sharing my story to let you know that you don't need connections, funding or breakthroughs to build a successful business. All you need is a hunger to make it happen and a community (like this one) to give you honest feedback for iterating on your product. If you are what Paul Graham calls as relentless resourceful, you will build a successful business.
So, thank you HN! Thanks @patio11 for your feedback and initial shoutouts in 2009. And thanks Paul. Beyond YC funding, you've impacted lives of many other folks (like me) through your essays and by making Hn happen.
PS: I don't know if this post will get any attention on HN today, but I felt like I had to do this :) <comment><USER2> First of all congratulations. A lot of Show HN start enthusiastically and then a year later the domain name doesn't resolve anymore. I'm glad you kept jabbing.

In 2011, we were knee deep in google products. We used Google Analytics and the now defunct Google Web Optimizer (no not the one in GA). Our business team wasn't too happy about using GWO. There was something in the script triggered bounce rates in Google Analytics.

Our first solution was to build a script to manage which script to load first. But, we saw that if you don't load GA right away, the metrics were somehow off. But loading GA first sometimes double counts page views.

So as a result, I build an internal A/B testing tool that worked seamlessly. Since it was controlled in the back-end, I could decide when to load the script without causing the double page views. After months of testing, the business team decided to use Visual Web Optimizer. I was pretty pissed.

But, vwo solved the issues of double counting, and redirect. Not sure how it worked but everyone was happy about it. I started working exclusively with this tool and implemented it in a dozen teams. It was a great tool.

But then, a new manager was hired, he said he knew a better tool, and moved our team to optimizely. There was no reason whatsoever. Until I left, I kept recommending and implementing vwo in other teams for a/b testing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for recommending VWO. And sorry about replacing your internally built a/b testing tool :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well done Paras!

You have come a long way since you asked me questions about [http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab- testing/](http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/). I'm glad that it was part of your journey!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ben, your thought process on A/B testing has been a big influence. The deck of yours on effective A/B testing (above) is pure gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat meta, but great to see that most of the accounts on the original thread are still active.

I haven't got a successful startup to show for it, but I have been on HN for more than 10 years, and feel like it has played a significant role in forming my worldview.

I hope we'll still be here in another 10 (or 30) years, nitpicking each other's ideas!

<comment><USER5> I'm with you; 13 years(ish) now and I'm still trying to make something.

<comment><USER6> Wow, until this moment I hadn't really thought about how I've been using HN for over 13 years, and reddit for almost 15 years.

There are people who are using the internet who have never known the world without those things.

I feel older now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hope I'm not too late for some one to see my post. This is a huge inspiration and an amazing story.

I'm genuinely curious - not being a smart ass. Isn't 250 employees a lot for the number listed ($20M+)? $2M of rev a month divided by 250+ people is only 7-8K a month. I guess if the majority are overseas that can work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're comfortably profitable as we're based out of India.

Having a big team is the reason our customer support [1] is best in industry. We have a large team of dedicated and passionate people ready to guide customers for all their problems.

[1] [https://vwo.com/why-us/customer-success/](https://vwo.com/why- us/customer-success/)

<comment><USER8> Nice. Love a business that makes customer support a top priority.

How has the covid situation impacted it? What few changes made significant difference in how you coped with it?

Also what is the customer service software do you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, covid has impacted us like most SaaS businesses. We released a free product VWO Deploy for helping our customers update their websites with notices and updates quickly without IT: vwo.com/deploy

We use Zendesk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's awesome that HackerNews exists. Sadly, every other platform on the internet seems to criticize and discourage new products (except product hunt).

<comment><USER10> I spent >1 year building a new dating app. Somebody posted a dating app idea on reddit that closely matches what I built. I messaged the author asking for feedback on my design. They didn't reply and even downvoted my comment on their thread.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/exzcsm/dating_app_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/exzcsm/dating_app_idea/fgo7v7o/)

There are all kinds of people in the world. I'm glad HN exists.

HN mods: Thanks for your hard work.

HN commenters: Thanks for being kind.

<comment><USER11> Not too derail this thread too much but I like the idea for your app, I made something similar for platonic friendships a while back and still am a big believer in the idea! How much traction have you gotten with your app?

<comment><USER10> Cool. Can you share a link?

I haven't launched my app anywhere yet. I struggled with devops tooling, started to get burned out, and now lockdown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats paras. I've been a big fan of your original work but I was rather disappointed to see your recent work like [https://pushcrew.com](https://pushcrew.com) which is everything that is wrong with the internet today.

So many Indian sites are using your technology to make web browsing a nightmare for visitors and spam unsuspecting readers with web notifications.

I hate such popups and modals created by pushcrew like the fact it forces users to optin to these notifications on articles. It was not what the web notification api was designed for.

<comment><USER13> I am using nextdns with several block lists, both pushcrew and vwo are blocked for me.

<comment><USER14> Not surprising given the product... Almost all analytical tracking/telemertry will be blocked, Google Analytics etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations! It's a big milestone and growing a company to 250+ people is no small feat. That you did this without major institutional funding is awesome!

And thanks for writing up your story. I bet there's another 22-year old kid lurking in here somewhere and getting inspired to start something.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, small world. I had a brief exchange with you when you were an intern at IISc in the summer of 2006 and came to a talk of mine.

At that time you were interested in the cognitive abilities of bacteria, but looks like you took a different but equally successful path.

Congratulations!

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember! That internship stint at IISc ended up with this paper on modeling a gene network in E. coli: [https://bit.ly/3flh6nh](https://bit.ly/3flh6nh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats. Really inspiring. I would like to know how many old SHOW HN posts turned out to be that successful.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey Paras, This is very encouraging and exciting. Congratulations. Would you please share with us your user acquisition journey and also how you determined pricing and the various pricing tiers.

Any other stories in your journey would be appreciated e.g Growing your team, sales and marketing

* Edit - Added more areas I would need your input from

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few podcasts and interviews about the initial days of VWO. You may find the following resources helpful:

[1] My very first interview in 2012: [https://mixergy.com/interviews/chopra- visual-website-optimiz...](https://mixergy.com/interviews/chopra-visual- website-optimizer-interview/)

[2] A relatively recent one: [https://inc42.com/startups/wingify-paras-chopra- saas-startup...](https://inc42.com/startups/wingify-paras-chopra-saas- startup/)

[3] I've been blogging about many lessons I've learned on my blog [https://invertedpassion.com](https://invertedpassion.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the sort of post I come to HN for. Fantastic work, and congratulations on your success.

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats on your hard work Paras! As someone whose company/employer has used VWO for years now, it's by far the best A/B testing solution on the market, and a seriously powerful piece of kit that a lot of companies have really overlooked the potential in.

Interesting to hear that it was first posted on Hacker News as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Congratulations! Such an inspirational success story. I still remember that icon set from your 2009 UI screenshot :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm giddy with happiness that you remember the 2009 screenshot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats Paras, it's great seeing far VWO has come!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kalid. I remember exchanging messages with you.

Also, love BetterExplained.com - without it, I would have never developed an intuition of exponential and logarithm functions. You do a great job at that.

<comment><USER22> Appreciate it Paras! I remember our exchanges fondly as well :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Congratulations, Paras! I was one of the very early customers and am so glad you came this far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for giving us revenue in those early days. As a bootstrapped company, that was the only source of funding that helped us sustain and grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats, Paras. I've been a huge fan of VWO and fairly recently built somewhat of a competitor - evolv.ai. I've referenced your sales assets, training videos, and I have sent people your direction when they weren't a fit for our offering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We're also inspired by evolv.ai's unique take on website optimization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations! As a new member, I am happy to see how this community can help others.

</comment><comment> jonathan-kosgei It's insane how I was thinking of doing this exact same thing this same week and how similar our stories are! Though we're much earlier in our journey :)

I launched ipdata here 3 yrs ago, at 21 while still in college and now 3yrs later we're a profitable bootstrapped company.

Congratulations on your incredible success!

Here is our thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15879115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15879115)

Thank you HN!

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not much involved with web dev so my knowledge of A/B testing tooling isn't great. However,I went on to your website to check the product, clicked around for a bit and I was like: 'ok,this is good,yes,this one's nice too. What about x,y,z..Oh, they've got these too'. And suddenly there's a shower of ideas for A/B testing for any future project. Looks like a good product,well done!

</comment><comment><USER27> Cool. I have seen VWO before while looking for a tool, more than once. This history is one more proof that big things can start small.

</comment><comment><USER28> Congrats! It always amazes me that there are still big/old players in a field that I thought I was familiar with.. I have seen many A/B testing tools but somehow never yours, I must be living in a different Google bubble. Guess that shows that there is always room for more players.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, and that's a great learning for us. For us, it's easy to assume that we've saturated our potential after being around ten years into the market but that's not true at all.

Your comment is a great reminder towards that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> VWO and Optimizely are still incredibly expensive for basic A/B testing. I feel like this could disrupted pretty easily with a $29/mo offer. If you know any service like this, feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to connect you with many startups.

<comment><USER30> Your profile has no email id. Is there another way to reach you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Congratulations on the feat attained despite taking a decade. It still shows one should not relent as success is within, above all, HN community is a very supportive one, in which the OP can benefit from the diverse wealth of knowledge in here, be it criticism or good feedback

</comment><comment><USER32> Congratulations on the milestone, and thanks for sharing your story in the blog post. It's great to see a product's evolution over a decade.

I want to highlight that it's not as clear-cut as this: "If you are what Paul Graham calls as relentless resourceful, you will build a successful business."

I know there are people reading who consider themselves relentless and resourceful, yet are not successful after perhaps a decade or more of trying. The mental health impact of long-term failure can be crushing (I've been there).

They should understand that there is an element of luck involved, and if they didn't make it to $20MM straight from college, that doesn't mean they're worthless or can't make it anymore. The experiences of dead-ends and failures can be channeled into something that will set them apart, but it takes honesty. Luck is not a one-way thing: you need to be in a position to take advantage of the luck that comes your way, and mentally ready to jump on it.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely! The OP certainly deserves much due respect, especially for taking the time to share and document his business efforts.

However there are tons of people who likely "made the right moves" but were simply not as lucky or lacked resources to make success happen. If anything, this recent pandemic should shed light on how certain events are beyond any one individual's control.

<comment><USER15> You're not necessarily wrong, but you have to be careful with this kind of thinking as it can easily be interpreted as fatalism.

The reality is that yes, luck plays a role, but success isn't a coin-flip. It's more like poker, where luck dominates individual hands, but good decisions dominate the long-game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thanks for sharing this! I've followed you since that show HN post (tried the product back in the day but never stuck) and am happy you have achieved success!! Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER35> Congrats on your success!

May I ask how you ended up with a three letter dot com?

<comment><AUTHOR> We paid $30k for it (but I guess that was a steal, so we lucked out on this one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Congratulations and thank you for sharing your story. For someone starting to get into the entrepreneur world your story is inspiring. Wish you all the best for future.

</comment><comment><USER37> Congratulations Paras. Good to see your post. I live down the road from NSP. I find it remarkable that you built a deep tech company in that part of the world.

</comment><comment><USER38> Congratulations Paras!! Wish you continued success. It would be awesome to hear from you what specific things and people helped you to be successful in HN.

</comment><comment><USER39> So cool to see more bootstrapped successes! Congrats :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Congrats! Would love to hear more about how you acquired your earliest customers and what growth channels have worked best for you.

</comment><comment><USER41> Congrats and thanks for sharing your story. It's just amazing how many startups this community has helped built.

</comment><comment><USER42> I used this product in the early days and it was great! Glad to see you guys have been so successful since.

</comment><comment><USER43> Congrats Paras! 10 years is no small feat. Thanks for sharing, and hope to see this again in another decade!

</comment><comment><USER44> Congrats Paras! couldn't be more proud! Know a lot of the extremely hard work put in via Sparsh!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Sparsh has put a lot of hard work and I'm lucky to have him as a co- founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Congratulations! And thank you for posting this. These kind of stories are inspiring and feed motivation.

</comment><comment><USER46> Great being here on your original post and this one. Time does fly. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER47> What was year one like?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote about it here: [https://vwo.com/blog/vwo- evolution-10-years/](https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Congrats. Amazing story

</comment><comment><USER49> congrats paras really inspiring, one word that I will remember and keep it as inspiration is: "All you need is a hunger to make it happen", thanks.

</comment><comment><USER50> Congratulations. Your journey is inspiring!

</comment><comment><USER51> you should have pricing upfront without any forms to request it - I hate that approach

<comment><USER52> He probably A/B tested it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We have, multiple times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> So cool! All the best for your future.

</comment><comment><USER54> Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER55> Bootstrapped! Amazing!

</comment><comment><USER56> Cheers! Well done!

</comment><comment><USER57> Congrats Paras!

</comment><comment><USER58> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER59> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER60> Congrats Paras !

</comment><comment><USER61> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER62> this is really cool. congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER63> Mad respect.

</comment><comment><USER64> Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER65> Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER66> Congrats

</comment><comment><USER67> Congrats

</comment><comment><USER68> so sick man.

</comment><comment><USER69> What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

<comment><USER70> From the guidelines -

 _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data._

<comment><USER71> No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very weird about this post.

<comment><USER72> Please don't do this here. Plenty of new accounts are old users.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MailChimp OAuth2 library for Django - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kennethlove/Banana-Py

<comment><AUTHOR> A little library I put together over the weekend for MailChimp's new OAuth2 offering. Lets your users authenticate against MailChimp and you get back their credintials so you can create a user or whatever.

Super-simple but it works.

Demo app here: <https://github.com/kennethlove/Django-MailChimp-OAuth2>

</comment><comment><USER2> I know what Mailchimp, Django and OAuth2 are, but I'm struggling to understand the purpose of this library. Can you shed a bit of light on how or where this might be used?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Say you're building an app that leverages MailChimp's platform for sending emails. Someone that uses MailChimp could come sign up for your app using their MailChimp account, which would be validated through this library and the OAuth2 provider (MailChimp) and you'd know they were a real user and you'd have API keys to make calls on their behalf.

So now they can use their account and your app and everything is hunky dory.

I know that's pretty general and all, but that's how you'd use it. MailChimp is trying to move away from API keys and all that 'messy' authentication and toward OAuth2.

<comment><USER3> Do many users sign up for MailChimp accounts? I thought they were a mass mailer/newsletter company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't really answer that since I don't work for MailChimp.

The OAuth2 service is aimed at people building apps for people that _use_ MailChimp, not people that subscribe to a mailing list hosted on MailChimp.

Like how you'd use Twitter's OAuth2 service to build apps for people that use Twitter, not those that just read feeds.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zendesk Support: Announcing the Removal of Insights Reporting - <AUTHOR> https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039417653 <comment><AUTHOR> the tl;dr is that if you only ever used the built in reports, it's a change of interface. If you ever customized reports or (as I perceive it) used the data, expect to pay an additional $9/agent/month.

Customers have until Feb 5, 2021 to make a decision.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate my startup MyRunningMate - <AUTHOR>

http://myrunningmate.com
An app that provides political campaigns the means to run and manage a virtual phone bank. Once setup, volunteers call a provided phone number which automatically connects them to voters one after another. An accompanying web page allows the volunteer to monitor their calls and report on the outcome of those calls.
Please poke around and try it out. You can test it out without actually contacting voters. No need to fill in real contact info, just make it all up.
Building this app took 16 days. The last three weekends and nights after my day job. Now comes the hard part for me, marketing it. I am going to aim for downballot campaigns. For a few reasons, no one below federal level campaigns use my main competition. I am also hoping the name MyRunningMate will be a container company for several services directed at political campaigns. <comment><USER2> Live Demo link not working on Chrome on Mac. Quickly just wanted to see how the data (and phone numbers get in). Down ballot races can buy voter lists, but not easily obtain phone-numbers. Do you do lookup?

<comment><AUTHOR> No app errors. Was it a javascript error?

The campaign will have to have a voter list already. Most will buy or have access to one via the local party.

<comment><USER2> The button becomes giant when I click it. Works if you don't click the button (just click the image).

I volunteer on a lot of small campaigns (state level) -- we can buy voter list in MA, but that only has name, address -- no phone number. We get phone number from your competitors products.

Party provides data sporadically --- usually only if there's a big election, and not in a downloadable way (through their software). Different states are different, of course, but in MA, that's been my experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Long weekend. The button bug was my last commit and I didn't push it live.

Yeah, some of the lists would come from the competitor. I'm hoping to offer some services they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://myrunningmate.com></comment>


Check if your email is amongst those compromised in Gawker break-in - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=350662

<comment><USER2> What is the point of including the domain tied to the address? It just decreases the anonymity of what you've hashed, and actually does a disservice. There are corporate domains in there and the namespace of what to search for becomes a lot smaller.

In addition, my domain is my name. I saw many others in the file that this was the case for. It's not a big leap to compute my e-mail from 'jedsmith.org', and I'm sure it isn't for those guys either. You're leaking data with this view.

Here's a version that is far more anonymous (and easier, I think): <http://undertow.jedsmith.org/gawker/>

<comment><USER3> I like it.

OS X users, if you are paranoid about using online tools for the SHA-256 hashing, you can do this from the command line with sha256deep.

Via Homebrew it'd go like this (replace the 1st step with whatever package manager you like):

$ brew install md5deep

$ echo -n my@email | sha256deep

d869524229c1e2f6139194fee1aac14f873b008dd0279458cbdfb6b3fbade1d2

<comment><USER4> …or without installing anything:

        $ echo -n 'my@email' |openssl dgst -sha256
        d869524229c1e2f6139194fee1aac14f873b008dd0279458cbdfb6b3fbade1d2

<comment><USER5> Or, with the cryptically named 'md5'...

        echo -n 'my@email' | md5

<comment><USER6> md5 != sha256

       $ echo -n 'my@email' | shasum -a 256
       d869524229c1e2f6139194fee1aac14f873b008dd0279458cbdfb6b3fbade1d2  -

<comment><USER5> Ah - true - we're talking about different things though (which is my fault to start with, but I see confusion in others too).

MD5 is what's used in the linked spreadsheet's email address fields, which is what I thought we were talking about. SHA-256 is used in jedsmith's lists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fuck. What the fuck did I even need a Gawker account for?

(Thanks for making this. I was going to download the torrent, but assumed that I did not ever visit their site, much less make an account. Wrong!)

<comment><USER8> You needed it if you commented on a post.

<comment><USER9> Unless you posted with Facebook or Twitter auth

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're on OSX, it's 'md5' and not 'md5sum.'

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the point of these tools that let you know whether Gawker's database held my email address? It's no secret that I have a Gawker account, and a Twitter account, and a Facebook account... What I would like to know is how likely it is that my _password_ could be compromised. How were the passwords stored? Hashed? Salted and hashed?

<comment> brown9-2 Because some of us don't remember if we have an account on the site and might not be able to download a ~500mb torrent to verify if we do/did.

<comment><USER12> Just go to Gawker site and try the link "Forgot Password". If your email is not registered with Gawker, it will tell you the same.

<comment> brown9-2 This sounds like a bad idea if the site is still comprimised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thats great, thanks. I was relieved to not find my email in the list, although I could swear I've commented on gawker sites.

<comment><USER14> You probably used Facebook Connect.

This, btw, is a great example of when using a trusted 3rd party login is a big win.

<comment><USER15> Still, it's annoying when they can turn around and use such a login to spam things to another account.

sadly, I'm on the list, and it was an account i was banned from posting with about 2 years ago. I wish I could have deleted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If your email is in that list, expect it to get spammed heavily in the coming days.

While it's nice of random social whatever startup hint.io to warn people that their password is compromised, linking to their landing page multiple times in the email makes me think they have ulterior motives.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got a "We've detected unusual activity on your account" lockout on my Gmail account this morning. Since I can't find anything suspicious on the account I assume it's just bots hammering away, trying the Gawker password and other guesses. Anyone else get that?

<comment><USER18> I had that as well. No strange IP addresses are listed as having accessed it, so I assume it's safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have to say I am underwhelmed by the speed of browing this table.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, that is most unfortunate.

A big thanks for the heads up.

</comment><comment><USER21> 266 emails whose domain end with .gov

Very interesting.

<comment><USER7> Interesting that people only have a work account, or interesting that people who work for the government also slack off at work?

.gov is not just Obama and super-secret crytpo scientists. It's also the person who makes sure that every form they send out has an OMB Control Number.

<comment><USER21> (I wasn't going to reply but since I'm getting pretty heavily down-voted I will)

I was commenting on how I thought it was interesting that so many government employee's would use their work email for (most likely) non-work related sites.

Also I find it interesting how assuming you were off such a small comment I posted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://www.didigetgawkered.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> For some reason every md5 from this spreadsheet I try to decrypt, I get nothing. I'm using online tools like md5decrypter.com to do this. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> md5 is a hash function, and hash functions are designed to have two properties:

1) they are _hiding_. You (theoretically) can't reverse the function by any method other than brute-force.

2) they are *binding. You (theoretically) can't find any other input that hashes to the same output by any method other than brute-force.

Any tool that "decrypts" md5 hashes most likely does so by generating what is called a rainbow table -- a giant list of many possible inputs, and the hashes they generate. If you look at the spreadsheet and find a hash from your rainbow table, voila, you know what it came from. To make it harder to use rainbow tables, any security-conscious site will "salt" the passwords before hashing them, by adding a random string prefix. The point is for the random "salt" to be different for each password you are hashing, so a standard (unsalted) rainbow table won't work, and further, the same rainbow table won't work for every password.

(md5 itself has been shown to be vulnerable to collision attacks, which is why I said "theoretically")

<comment><USER23> Okay thank you for the explanation. Let me try and apply my rudimentary knowledge here...

So a hash function is used to encrypt data by translating it with a certain rule set--I've learned about a simple key%b type function before. But with md5 this hashing function isn't the same each time a new code is created? How is the system able to decode it then? _Something_ out there has to know how to translate that back into a readable string right?

And collision is when different strings end up with the same encrypted code (except if you use a hash chain structure). So how is this used in an attack?

Sorry for all the questions. I know I could probably google this but I always learn better through instruction. Thanks!

<comment><USER25> "_Something_ out there has to know how to translate that back into a readable string right?"

Wrong. That's exactly your misunderstanding - MD5 is _not_ an encryption function, but a hashing function.

The way it works is, given some string, it will output a new, random-looking string. It's impossible to go backwards, i.e. given the output of running MD5, you can't tell the input.

In a nutshell, The way password authentication works is this: when you sign up to a site, a hash of your password is saved. At this point no one, not even the site itself, can tell what your password was.

When you want to log in, you send the password over to the site, they hash it again, and compare the output with the saved hash. If you put in the same password, the hash will come out the same. And it's very, very hard to find a different string which _isn't_ your password which will get you the same hash output.

<comment><USER26> "The way password authentication works is this: when you sign up to a site, a hash of your password is saved."

That's an assumption that's been proven wrong _way_ too many times...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> thx, great tool, mine was part of the leak .... i commented once about a year ago .....

</comment><comment><USER28> Thank goodness I always use mailinator for junk like that.

</comment><comment><USER29> Warning: logging into any of the compromised Gawker accounts might result in exposure to the inane life details of a Gawker reader!</comment>


The Climate-Industrial Complex - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html <comment><USER2> A counter-point: _Björn Lomborg's claim that sea levels are not rising faster than predicted are unfounded and used by those wanting to downplay climate change_

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif- green/2009/mar/03/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif- green/2009/mar/03/sea-levels-rising)

<comment><USER3> FTA : _the German government's Advisory Council on Global Change has proposed to limit long-term sea level rise to a maximum of one meter, as a policy goal along-side the European Union's goal to limit warming to 2C._

And that's it in a nutshell. The politicians are so out of touch with reality, they think they can hold back the sea and change the temperature of the world by writing things on bits of paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I'm sure windmill makers are lobbying as hard as they can, can you honestly be concerned about them given their fossil fuel position like coal, oil, natural gas, and car companies?

<comment><USER5> I agree: this problem is small potatoes compared to the entrenched fossil fuel interests, who've effectively dictated national policy for decades.

<comment><USER6> Suppose it turns out that (for example) unpredictable variation in output of wind-powered generating stations introduces too much uncertainty into the grid to effectively balance supply against load, so control and distribution requirements limit wind power's contribution to about 5% of demand [1].

Then, if we aren't careful, we'll wind up with an over-subsidized wind turbine industry with nothing to do other than provide service to a niche market and lobby congress for more money for "research and development," promising that _someday, maybe_ the right solution will come along.

Rent-seeking by a big company does not justify rent-seeking by a small company that hopes to become a big company, because success will make it _another_ big rent-seeking company.

[1] This is a real problem that hasn't been solved yet. There are ideas about what to do, but none of them is a slam dunk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> And the author, Mr Lomborg, makes money by being skeptical of climate change. _shrug_

<comment><USER7> Unlike Al Gore and his fearmongering?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's pretty much what the author of the linked article said -- did you read it?

Personally, I think Al Gore's a pretty smart guy and if he just wanted to get rich, there are easier ways...

But sure, lets agree that both sides have something to gain and move on. This silliness about the "Big Green" lobby is distracting from a meaningful discussion about global warming and how seriously to take it.

<comment><USER3> _lets agree that both sides have something to gain and move on. This silliness about the "Big Green" lobby is distracting from a meaningful discussion about global warming and how seriously to take it._

I disagree with this. The main thrust against any refutation of human caused global warming is always that the author is in the paid service of an oil company, lobby group. You cannot have it both ways. You can't allow people to use that argument to brand people who refute or discount human-caused global warming as paid skeptics, and then brush it aside when the argument is used in reverse.

<comment><USER2> I'm not having it both ways. I'm saying that you can make this argument about both sides. The linked article implies Al Gore's in it for the case, so there ya go.

This is a silly argument. My whole point was that we should move beyond questioning motives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> if you're against nuclear power go read up on the subject until you realize that you're wrong.

<comment><USER9> I've done a bit of work recently for some small scale alternative energy projects. Various combinations of catalyzed electrolysis, wave energy, natural heat differential, and more. I've learned two main lessons:

1\. The second law of thermodynamics is a beast.

2\. Nuclear energy is amazingly clean, safe, and reliable compared to the alternatives and slightly more expensive than necessary because of political pressures.

<comment><USER10> _More_ expensive than necessary? It's my understanding that the nuclear industry has been the recipient of some massive subsidies, not the least of which is the liability cap for a major disaster after which the taxpayers will foot the bill.

I'm not dogmatic either way about nuclear. Do I think it's better than burning coal? Yes. Do I think that we should focus resources on developing truly renewable energy sources? Yes.

Nuclear energy is not so clean at the uranium mining sites, either.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there have been subsidies but there are also huge costs associated with licensing and permitting (not to mention lawsuits of all sorts) to build a nuclear power plant. On the whole the costs are more than the subsidies.

Uranium mining sites are not so clean compared to where I live but are clean compared to a coal mine. The real question is whether they are cleaner than the alternatives.

My main point isn't that nuclear energy is perfect, just that it is an amazingly good choice to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Predictable, given the author and the venue. No information content.

"... despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost- benefit test." Really? Which evidence is that?

<comment><USER11> > Really? Which evidence is that?

The UN's climate change committee's numbers. They found that action now was economically justified now only if they used a negative discount rate.

Do you want to argue that they dramatically overstated the costs now? Or, do you want argue that they understated the costs later? If you like both of their numbers, then you get to argue, as they tried, that spending $1 now to eliminate a problem that will cost <$1 to fix later is a good idea.

It's almost unheard of to use a negative discount rate because time is worth money.

<comment><USER10> Can you point me to where in the WG3 report it says that? I can't say I've read it carefully, but my impression from the Summary was that there are substantial mitigation measures that are both "market feasible" (comparable ROI of investing the money otherwise) and "society feasible" (meaning it will be a net profit, but if you wanted to maximize profit you'd invest it elsewhere).

<comment><USER11> My mistake, I was referring specifically to the Stern Report - there's a good discussion at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review> .

The IPCC (ipcc.ch) also plays games with discount rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The climate issue is the most irrational topic in the world right now.</comment>