U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/us/us-secretly-collecting-logs-of-business-calls.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_UIS_20130606 <comment><USER3> What happened to this being the most transparent administration "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness"[1]?

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment)

<comment><USER4> I would presume that "openness" refers to actions initiated by the administration itself. Already-established, long-running initiatives of autonomous sub-departments, even if they do fall under the purview of the executive, probably aren't included, since the administration isn't actually making any choices in how these programs are run, just letting them continue to run as they always have.

<comment><USER5> You would presume that now, yes. Nobody who was presuming that when he said it, however, made much of an effort to speak up.

Sort of like how "everybody knows" it was Congress's fault campaign promises X, Y, and Z didn't pass, yet at the time, nobody stopped to ask how much these promises can mean if the position he's campaigning for isn't capable of fulfilling them in the first place. "I presume by 'guarantee' he meant he'd try his best, since obviously the POTUS can't even introduce laws anyway. And as a former Constitutional law prof., I'm sure Obama knows that." Oh, super. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> "Nobody who was presuming that when he said it"

That problem lies with the voters, and the candidates are not going to change their behavior until the voters own up to their responsibilities.

Voters prefer to be told these little white lies about great intentions, rather than be bothered to apply basic knowledge of our federal gov't that should have been gained in junior high school. Voters whine and complain that it is the politicians fault, but voters' own behavior reward that which they claim to dislike.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree, but at the same time, by the nature of the system, people aren't capable of behaving in a way that rewards what they like. "Vote- signals," if you will, are as noisy as human communication is capable of being.

<comment><USER6> In public policy circles, it is understood that the reason that controversies even exist is always because the issue involves trade offs between competing important values. (Those issues that do not involve difficult tradeoffs are sooner or later resolved, and then forgotten because the solution is acceptable as the status quo.)

IMHO people are trying to hard too get what they "like", too often looking for a simple magic bullet, when they should be in a conversation with their elected officials about what tradeoffs are reasonable in light of our values. We should elect people who ask us to be uncomfortable at times, but for well- thought out reasons.

Our politicians are acting highly rationally, in the context of the incentives the voters offer. "Voting the bums out" is not going to change anything, until the voters opt to build a better kind of electorate. The first step is diagnosing the actual problem, rather simply believing that the problem is always Team Them.

<comment><USER5> Public policy circles can (and will) think whatever they find soothing. The rest of us continue to roll our eyes inwardly, just as one does when listening to Tolkein fans debate whether the Eagles should've merely flown the Fellowship to Mt. Doom. (I say this not as a beltway outsider but as a man who grew up 7 miles from Langley, went to the Pentagon for TYKTW Day, and who lives and works in the area to this day.)

I get what you're saying. Politics is a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous. Duh. Of course the Eagles should just fly them there.

What Tolkein geeks and policy wonks alike force themselves to ignore _in order to_ have these mine vs. yours logicality debates to begin with is that the premise of their debate is a fantasy world. "If we want blank, we should vote blank" tacitly assumes that voting blank and persuading others to vote blank can sway the outcome of an election. Any thinking individual can see immediately that this is untrue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I, for one, am already looking forward in what ways the Obama administration is going to hunt down the leaker of this document. Because - how should a government function without having a basic level of secrecy? Oh irony...

On the other hand the leak probably came even from the administration itself. After they pretty much got away with intimidating political opponents and spying on unfavorable reporters, why not unload a few other skeletons from the closet.

Worst case scenario Jon Stewart is making a 5 minute skit out of it and with twinkle in his eye moving back to bashing some more convenient subjects.

</comment><comment><USER8> The U.S. is openly storing any packet that traverses any wire it can field signal from.

Quantum Tapping:

The loophole is that they are not 'tapping' any communication until the moment when they actually observe/listen to it.

<comment><USER9> Yes presumably even with voice they can still store it. Only when a human examines (sees the data on their screen, listens to the audio) then only it is considered that a "search" has occurred.

So let's assume that there are these scumbags and all they want to do is spy on everyone and there is this pesky Constitution still getting in their way, what is the strategy to eliminate the "annoyance"?

The strategy is two-pronged:

1) Don't have statutes of limitation on data gathered in a search warrant. So say you commit what someone thinks is a crime at 99 years of age, they get a search warrant for your data and now legally they have access to all your data since the day you were born.

2) Store _everything_. Presumably this is what the new NSA complex is Utah is for.

Sure enough you'd become inconvenient at some point. Let's say you spend a night too many with the Occupy crowd or your kid installs LOIC and now a search warrant is executed. The emails you sent 10 years ago now appear and well, who knows you might have written back then, but pretty sure it can be made to stick.

Now of course you would be offered a deal. Maybe collaborate or just get scared enough of them to never step outside and never touch a computer again, well they win in that case as well.

Good luck to everyone.

<comment><USER10> You can't "store everything" for the simple reason that feeding all the traffic back to Utah would be prohibitive. The thing is, though, this is not any real comfort because _it doesn't matter._

The reason we have the 4th Amendment is to keep general warrants like this from being issued, and to help retard the "show me the man and I will find you the crime" (to quote a member of the Stalin regime) from taking root here, or at least to make it more difficult.

The problem is, for the worst abuses to occur they don't _have_ to store everything. They just get general warrants like this, inspect packets, filter "interesting subsets" out and send those back to Utah. So I think the actual strategy is two pronged, in a different direction, and both worse and more economical:

1\. Vague laws that people can be easily prosecuted for[1] particularly when it comes to terrorism. Bonus points for allowing military enforcement of domestic law.[2]

2\. Get general warrants that let them target whoever they want without recourse, which is what is going on here. Better yet, let's get retroactive immunity for any accomplices and make sure it is all really above the law.

The end result is the same, of course. The difference is that the above strategy takes a lot less time, resources, money, people, and hardware to pull off.

[1] See Harvey Silverglate (civil liberties atty, veteran of the EFF, ACLU, and FIRE), "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"

[2] This is a trend, particularly when it comes to defining terrorism but has been going on since at least Clinton. Note that Clinton asked Congress unsuccessfully for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus. See Kopel, David (former Colorado Assistant Attorney General). "No More Wacos"

<comment><USER11> > "show me the man and I will find you the crime" (to quote a member of the > Stalin regime)

The sentiment precedes Stalin. In the 1600s, Cardinal Richelieu is said to have warned, "Show me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men and I will find something to have him hanged."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _highly classified court order_

Boy does that sound like a concept which needs to die. Justice does not tend to occur behind closed doors.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. There is, as far as I can tell, no reason for this order to be secret at all, since it's so indiscriminate. I can understand (grudgingly) the argument for sealing the court order during an active investigation, since you don't necessarily want to tip off the suspect that you're "onto them". But if you're saying "give me everybody's data" then it won't be tipping anybody off.

And weighed against the idea that our government, which _we_ created, to _serve us_ needs to be almost 100% transparent in order to be accountable _to us_ , I just can't see any reason for this being kept secret.

If We The People are to police our government, we need to know what it's doing. And when it does something wrong, we need to smite it mightily.

<comment><USER14> In theory the secret stuff is given oversight by politicians. You elect the politicians, so that's the weak link to oversight by the people.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but I'm aware that GCHQ / CESG / etc have pretty rigorous scrutiny.

I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. Far too much stuff is classified as top secret or secret when it just doesn't need to be.

<comment><USER13> _In theory the secret stuff is given oversight by politicians. You elect the politicians, so that's the weak link to oversight by the people._

In theory, yes. I, for one, don't consider that an acceptable form of oversight / accountability. We need to be able to see inside the box, and know damn near everything that's going on, end to end. There is, IMO, _very_ little which truly needs to be classified: Launch codes for the nuclear missiles, things of that nature. Most of the rest, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >The order was marked "TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN," referring to communications- related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration's aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

The author not only wrote the article about this, but also put in the classification of the document source. Salt in the wound. I can't help but feel that such a detail may have been included as a response to recent events regarding members of the news media and their treatment at the hands of the government. It very much seems that the honey moon is over.

<comment><USER16> The clear and obvious question here is if it's "just metadata" and isn't really spying, then why is it secret at all? In fact, why don't we broadcast to the terrorists that we do this and wish them luck attacking us without the aid of electronic communication.

The secrecy only makes it look like something illegal. (And there is no doubt in my mind that it is against the spirit of American law, if not the letter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering. This administration doesn't want to be seen as a militaristic one, but the world doesn't stop being what it is because voters get tired of wars. So something has to give. More drones, expanded secret ops, more information gathering.

I don't like the idea of being spied on, not at all. But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - <USER2> openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

<comment><USER13> _But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story._

OK, for starters, let's assume that "national defense" is a proper and just role for government, and even be charitable and allow that "some" secrecy is necessary. Now, how does any of that argue for allowing the government to record call record for _everybody in the US_? What is wrong with having them identify an individual, or small group of individuals, that are suspected of $WHATEVER, and then go get a warrant, and then ask for the data? I mean, by casting a net so wide, it's obvious they're collecting a TON of data on people that aren't involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever... why should we be OK with that?

And that aside, to the extent that this is about the "War on Terror", ask yourself this: How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over _all time_ the number is on the order of a few thousand. Now every single one of those was tragic, yes, and I certainly don't want to diminish the importance of every single life... but when you look at the big picture, cancer, AIDS, car crashes, accidental slips and falls in the bathroom, accidental drownings in ones own swimming pool and even "being beaten to death by a cop" outrank "death by terrorism" in terms of scale. And is anybody seriously suggesting we should allow the State nearly unlimited power in the name of fighting accidental slips and falls, or drownings, or any of those things? No? Then why should we do it for terrorism?

And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US is probably "blowback" as a result of our aggressive, meddlesome foreign policy? Maybe one of the best ways to ensure security for our nation is to have a strong military - _at home_ \- and trade freely with everyone. After all, it seems to be far less common for strong trading partners to attack each other. Free trade, and less meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, would - IMO - be more effective at protecting us, than allowing the fracking NSA to grab call logs indiscriminately.

<comment><USER18> > How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist > attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize. Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

> And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, > that a lot of the hatred for the US...

I think this is common misconception. I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

<comment><USER13> _Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize._

Maybe. Unfortunately there's no real way to say. I mean, if I offer you a "tiger proof rock" and say that it protects against tiger attacks, will you accept as evidence, the fact that I've never been attacked by a tiger?

 _Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor._

No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy. The Japanese weren't just trying to "sow terror", it was a tactical objective to weaken the US Navy so they wouldn't be able to impede Japanese objectives in the Pacific during WWII.

 _I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this._

I don't think the argument is that the majority of the world hates us (although it might be fair to say that a majority aren't terribly _fond_ of us), but rather that - of the groups which are actively engaging in terrorist attacks directed out way - those groups are motivated by our foreign policy. I admit this view is not without controversy.

<comment><USER19> > No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", > as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active > military strategy.

Also, Hawaii at the time was not even a state.

The US actually hasn't fought a war on it's own soil since 1812.

(It HAS had numerous terrorist attacks on _foreign_ soil, however - the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983 would be but one example. In fact, 9/11 was not really an isolated incident, but the next progression in a number of terrorist attacks against the US. It just happened to be the biggest one and the first one on US soil (not counting the failed 1993 WTC bombing)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The War on Terror is taking more and more victims. Chasing this phantom is getting dangerously close to an Orwellian Paradise.

As Terry Jones said, "How do you wage war on an abstract noun, it's like deciding to bomb murder".

<comment><USER21> I would argue that terrorism is less abstract than murder. Also, the US "war on terror" is about terror that specifically relates or effects the US making it an even more specific classification.

<comment><USER22> It is not specific enough to _end_. Typically, wars end in either victory or defeat, but in the "war on terror" there is not even a clear definition of either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Previous discussion (5 hours old, still active):

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829442>

</comment><comment><USER24> No checks and balances here... at least any that aren't classified and are transparent to the public. A Tyranny, as Thomas Jefferson might refer to it.

<comment><USER23> Checks and balances are functioning perfectly. Congress voted for Patriot Act §215, President Bush signed it into law, President Obama and his congress reauthorized it, and the courts did not overturn it. The law has sat on the books, _very_ publicly, for more than a decade, and has offered myriad opportunities for citizens to debate and challenge (an example: [1]). The broader issue of NSA dragnets is probably one of the top 20 political issues in the US, making regular headlines since 2005 (if you include foreign dragnets, 1995 [2] or earlier).

Checks and balances aren't broken. This is democracy in action.

[1] [http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security- technology...](http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology- and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215)

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy>

<comment><USER25> There's no real oversight, and they are using "secret Courts" and "secret interpretations" even of these obscure and very vague laws.

<comment><USER26> It isn't really particularly obscure or vague. The Patriot Act authorizes exactly this (and many other things), explicitly and openly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> AFAIK, Amdocs processes most of the carriers billing, aka metadata. Many of Amdocs systems are based in Israel. So, does NSA need court ruling to get metadata from an Israeli company? Seems like it might be another convenient way to go around the constitution.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh, who could possibly have predicted this?

Why is everybody so surprised? I literally do not understand this.

<comment><USER29> What I don't understand is sentiment like yours. We shouldn't bring this up because "everyone knows already"? No, we should be shouting this from the roof tops and do everything we can to make people mad enough about it to act. What is your solution? Sit back and look smug while the world falls apart around us?

<comment><USER28> Some of us have been shouting for the rooftops until hoarse for the last decade and more. Suddenly everybody's reacting (and I don't mean everybody here - I mean the New York Bloody Times) like this is the very first time this has ever come up.

<comment><USER29> Good. Our only hope is that one of this "just discovered today!" waves is big enough to affect actual change. Your initial statement only serves as a "shut up and move along". How do you imagine that helps anything?

It may be cool to say "I knew this already" but I'd rather be less cool and have something done about this.

<comment><USER28> I'd say rather that _you took it_ as a "shut up and move along". Others didn't. So it may have been a less than perfectly effective expression of my intent, but that's as far as I'll go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well, it's not a surprise, but at least now there is a solid evidence. What can the public do about it though?

<comment><USER31> Loads. But the real question is, what _will_ the public do about it?

I suspect nothing what so ever. They are scared witless by terrorists and if you guys are like the UK, paedophiles. Oh, and of course, it wont happen to them, although, as we see, it already is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you don't like this, call your representatives in congress, and tell two friends about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this actually "news" (i.e. new information)? Ever since the secret room business in 2006 (about events in 2003 or earlier), the handwriting was on the wall.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A>

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/att_assisting_...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/att_assisting_n.html)

<comment><USER34> No but be careful. People round here dont seek to be informed of such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You're not being paranoid if they're really out to get you.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've never considered call detail records to be particularly private. That's all this is.

<comment><USER37> This is a _big_ difference from established law enforcement practice in that regard. Normally a prosecutor needs to issue a subpoena to the phone company to get your individual records, regarding a specific investigation. In this case, the government gets every record from all Verizon customers for the period in question. No, you would not expect that privacy would protect your records if you are specifically under investigation. But you might (certainly before the PATRIOT Act, if not before this revelation, unless you were a conspiracy nut) expect that government agencies don't have free reign to browse your records for no predefined purpose whatsoever. The potential for abuse is too huge and obvious.

We seem to be well past all that now.

<comment><USER36> Maybe its because I work in the telecom industry, I'm used to CDR's being all over the place, easy to get, export as text even, and not particularly private. It's always seemed to me that what you say on the call is far more important than who you are calling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Since everything is out anyway, and since everyone else has iterated on this point several times now, all I have to say, is:

 _FUCK YOU, BIPARTISAN, CORRUPT, DICKISH, TYRANNICAL, WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT._

 _FUCK YOU, GOVERNMENT._

</comment><comment><USER39> *Edit: nevermind.

</comment><comment><USER40> do they use Netezza or Greenplum for this sort of thing?

</comment><comment><USER41> Even taking it a step further - If monitoring my phone calls about my kid being sick and puking in the back seat of my car keeps me safe from assholes, be my guest. Listen away.

<comment><USER42> If you read any news story about this from any newspaper, you will see that the issue is records of who called whom for how long, not full transcripts of all your calls.

However terrible and indefensible that is, let's start by addressing reality instead of imagination

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What a bunch of whiners.

It's not as if you don't hand much--if not all--of the same information over to marketing departments, app makers and ad companies when using a smart phone.

<comment><USER44> Marketing departments won't come crashing through my door dressed in a police uniform.

<comment><USER43> You've never heard of RIAA, MPAA, et al?

What happens when marketing departments realize they can use the data freely given to them to target people to blackmail and extort, rather than just flash ads at and try to sell to?

"For a monthly recurring fee of just $XX, conveniently and discreetly billed to your credit card, you can prevent this information from being sent to [spouse||significant other||law enforcement||employer]."

Or company will be founded--if not already--to buy bulk data and develop reports and profiles on individuals and groups, with law enforcement and the intelligence community as the primary customers? Sign up and buy a report/profile for $25-50.</comment></comment></comment>


How scammers get away with fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jul/07/heres-how-scammers-get-away-with-it <comment><USER2> > _because the sum stolen – £40,000 – is deemed not large enough to bother the > authorities_

There was an investigative news story on TV about a couple who would order hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise over the Internet using stolen credit card numbers and brazenly have it delivered to their _own_ home. The TV crew showed their house brimming top to bottom with boxes and boxes of fraudulently obtained goods that they would resell on eBay. They said no police ever visited them.

In every one of the frauds the couple committed, the merchant would know that he shipped to (for example) 1234 Main St, Minneapolis. The credit card issuer, bank, and defrauded card holder would have the address also. Probably hundreds of police reports were made, or am I assuming too much? If a single policeman actually followed up on one of these "too small" thefts of $100 to $1000 they could have prevented hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional theft.

I imagine that the system breaks down because no one reports the fraud or pushes to get something done, or because the police don't follow up, or both.

<comment><USER3> It's kind of bizarre. I'm no expert but I feel like tackling petty theft is a form of preventative medicine for crime. Getting away with crime might embolden people and reinforce their assumption that you can get away with it.

When I was younger some teens would water balloon my family's house a few times a week. We called the police when we thought we figured out who it was. They showed up within an hour, had a chat about it then went to the kids' houses who promptly confessed. It was all handled outside the legal system. Later I told a police officer about this story and asked why they were able to give it so much attention so promptly. He said something along the lines of, "it's easier to deter them now while they're still afraid of their parents' wrath."

<comment><USER4> I wonder if it's just economically more advantageous for the credit card companies to absorb the debt and simply nudge interest rates up a bit to recover their losses.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what they are doing except the part with "absorbing debt". Banks and credit card companies don't suffer any losses because it's the merchants who absorb them. And that's the root of the problem. Majority of CC fraud is easy to eradicate but banks just have no incentive to do it.

<comment><USER6> Sounds a little like the economics of employer based health insurance. The parties with negotiating power (companies and health insurance) don't have much incentive to get a good deal for the patient because the patient is captive. Same for merchants and credit card companies.

<comment><USER7> It could/should tho be changed so that health insurance up to x% of income is tax-deductible, but only if freely chosen on a free market by the employee, with any other constellations being taxed as regular income, without the tax- deductibility. There can still be plans only offered to employees of a specific company, but the issue of preventing an employee from shopping insurance himself is gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >The police are concerned about the prospect of vans carrying vast amounts of petrol.

There is a pictures of such trucks here: [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/gas-theft-gangs-fuel- pum...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/gas-theft-gangs-fuel-pump- skimming-scams/)

<comment><USER9> > On Oct. 1, 2015, Visa and MasterCard put in force new rules that can > penalize merchants who do not yet have chip-enabled terminals. Under the new > rules, merchants that don't have the technology to accept chip cards will > assume full liability for the cost of fraud from purchases in which the > customer presented a chip-enabled card.

> But those rules don't apply to fuel stations in the United States until > October 2017, and a great many stations won't meet that deadline, said > Verifone's Turner.

I'm not from the US though I visit often. It's the only place I ever use the magnetic stripe on my card. I tend to be able to use the chip when buying groceries, but in most restaurants & coffee shops its mag stripe all the way. Realistically is that going to change any time soon?

<comment><USER10> Chips require certification to make sure merchant is sending the right data over the network. This is why you see chip readers but the merchant only supports swipe. Visa and other card brands are trying to clean up all the screwed up data on network, really stupid things like a merchant bought a used card reader but never bothered to change the old merchant info on it.

<comment><USER11> Pinpads and terminals have to be re-injected with debit keys for the appropriate bank and reconfigured with the correct software load & merchant account before you can use hardware that was used by another merchant. If you don't do that, the other merchant is very likely to receive the funds you charge your clients cards for, short of their merchant account being closed.

The reason EMV isn't enabled at most merchants is its both more expensive than standard swipe transactions, and massively slower unless your Costco & Kroger (who both just got quick chip). 30 seconds of waiting for a card to process, combined with EMV chip read errors due to partial insertion or failing/oxidized contacts (especially common on pinpads that aren't mounted to the table, most often the Pax S300 cause those customers are cheap AF) is a recipe for long lines.

Grocers are leading the EMV transition as they are the most powerful block of merchants when it comes to beating down interchange rates and processing fees, with Walmart repeatedly suing Mastercard, and other large retailers doing the same to the other card vendors. For that small segment, they've been able to beat down Visa & Mastercard on the per kilobyte data transmission fee and on the other BS fees that make processing EMV cards more expensive than magstripe.

<comment><USER12> An honest question: why would the cost of chip processing be prohibitive and the speed of chip processing be 30 seconds of waiting in the US, when its essentially rolled out en-mass in AUS and neither of those things (appear) to applicable, or at the very least they haven't stopped mass adoption?

It certainly doesn't take 30 seconds of waiting to tap and pay here...

<comment><USER13> Probably because most US transactions are still done offline, so when an online EMV transaction is attempted the terminal has to bring up its network interface, obtain an IP, etc.

Here in the UK pretty much all terminals are always online and so EMV transactions only take a couple of seconds to authorise.

<comment><USER14> Reverse that. The US has always had online terminals because we didn't get EMV initially. Taking impressions and filling out charge slips was 'online' (call the auth center,) swipe transactions were online, and then we just do EMV online too since every credit card terminal in the country was already online.

In Europe where EMV was first introduced, offline transaction processing was extremely common because there had been no reason to put terminals online prior to the EMV rollout and merchants did what merchants do and whined about the cost of acquiring telecom, so offline mode was required in Europe.

I have literally never seen a fully offline transaction in the US (in fact, very few US cards even ship the certs necessary to conduct offline transactions), but several of them in Europe and the UK as recently as last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While customers victim of online scams and identity theft are more or less protected by big vendors or banks because of regulations, provided they act swiftly, small merchants are often on hook when a scam happens with very little options to recoup the money lost. What are the solutions for merchants? insurances? anti-fraud detection services? What could you recommend to a merchant that is starting to do business online? restrict with whom one does business with? use bigger merchants to do transactions? what works, what doesn't to mitigate risk?

<comment><USER16> see eCommerce Fraud Prevention. There are a few companies focused on this space to protect merchants from fraudulent chargebacks. But in short, you can get pretty complex with multiple vendors being leveraged, but the economics of fraud vs fraud prevention really depends on your business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> > _In one instance, it froze thousands of pounds that had arrived into an > account. "We blocked it and contacted the originating bank," says Blomfield. > "But that bank [one of the biggest UK players] said it was all fine. Then it > rang a few days later to say it looked like the customer had been conned. > Luckily, we were able to return the money."_

I wonder how often it happens that the bank simply keeps the money it froze, either telling nothing to the originating bank, or telling the originating bank that the money has been transferred or withdrawn. For two banks that rarely deal with each and are in different countries, what can the originating bank possibly do other than take whatever the receiving bank says at face value?

</comment><comment><USER17> "...and one [scam] so simple we are banned from telling you about it."

Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> I used my chip card in Canada during the last week. I used my visa chip card heavily for gas, bc ferries, food, etc. I remember giving out my card number, expiry date and security code to an agency that offers whale seeing tours in Victoria Island. Next day, I saw two charges: $108.XX from Chick-A-Fil, Salisbury, MD and $1.00 from Sweden. The card issuer called me right away to verify what's going on.

I wonder how my cc details were compromised. Was it a skimmer at gas stations? or one of those credit card scanners in Canada (Canadians seems to use PIN number with credit cards) or bcferries.com website.

I am not sure.

<comment><USER19> I recently returned from a trip to the USA and was a bit surprised that they asked for ZIP code instead of PIN for my credit card. While the NY subway accepted my non-US ZIP code, some gas stations did not as they apparently checked the entered ZIP code against valid US ZIP codes.

<comment><USER20> To my knowledge, in some machines non-US ZIP codes are accepted up to a cash limit (can't remember if it's daily or for transaction).

Probably your bill at the gas stations was higher than the one for the subway tickets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "because the sum stolen – £40,000 – is deemed not large enough to bother the authorities"

You just apply broken window theory to everyone of them.Punish swiftly to discourage bad behavior.

Students who sell their accounts for cash;charge them with conspiracy to commit fraud and money-laundering.

Some of the criminal activities described in the article are kind of chutzpah

</comment><comment><USER22> "These 'mule' accounts are a vital link for crooks moving money around the banking system."

Indeed. A vast majority of digital financial crimes in some way rely upon these types of accounts. I really don't understand why I haven't heard of any of these people who sell their accounts to criminals being charged as accessories (before the fact). Perhaps because enforcement is low in general. But I think that a lot of the alleged college students doing this wouldn't risk ruining their future on felony fraud charges for $200 if we started prosecuting some of these people. The mere fact that not all of the money was routed back out and some remained as payment is essentially the smoking gun that they were knowingly involved. Any decent investigator/detective would be able to break these students in 15 minutes once presented with that evidence.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _Frustratingly, there are few mechanisms for banks to communicate with each > other. "In the US, there is a web portal for banks to contact each other on > these issues. Here, it's just email, Blomfield adds. "Sometimes we are even > told to use a fax."_

Interesting. In many ways the Americans are far behind (still writing checks, lack of chip and pin) but in this arena they have Europe beat.

</comment><comment><USER24> > because of his ears... ear positions are the most difficult thing to fake

ROFL :)

Credit Card security model, with CVV, is so broken, but also so widespread, it is cheaper to cover fraud than change it. Especially if card processors (Visa, MasterCard) can shift damages onto merchants.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it depends. If it's a really big bank, even when it's only $100 the police will probably follow up on it. But with the small competitor banks even big sums like $40k will not get pursued. And you can't say $40k is not a big sum. It certainly is.

As a bank one has other options besides the law, though. Lawyers, private detectives, even deals with gangs. It's not impossible to survive such things and defend against it.

The only thing stopping the bank is the bank itself. Like most organisations a bank is probably barely able to achieve what it makes money with and everything else trailing off into nirvana in an unlimited amount of bureaucracy.

</comment><comment><USER26> Though informative , it felt like an Advertorial for the Monzo bank...

<comment><USER27> It was, duh.

<comment><USER28> Exactly.</comment></comment></comment>


LOLCODE - T-A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE <comment><AUTHOR> Why isn't LOLCODE more popular? [A few possible reasons] [1] I can think of:

* The benefits it offers over C++ are (or were) not significant enough to make people invest in the switch

* Library availability lacked compared with C++

* It is unsure whether there is "Garbage Collection", and whether it is optional.

* It's not backed by a big name - and our industry is obsessed with big names.

* Perhaps a lack of literature and interest by academic institutions to teach it.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692230)

<comment><USER2> Also, memes such as "can has <xxx>" are considered passé now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> and whitespace ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_langu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_language%29) ) - and it was developed by Chris Morris ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_%28satirist%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_%28satirist%29) )

<comment><USER4> I suspect, though I could be wrong, that the Chris Morris who worked on Whitespace at Durham is this guy - [https://www.dur.ac.uk/cis/about/person/?id=4018](https://www.dur.ac.uk/cis/about/person/?id=4018) and is not the famous comedian, though I personally have never seen them in the same room at the same time.

<comment><USER3> you could well be right. infact, i'll go as far as saying you are right. i learned something today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Brainfuck was a thing too! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck)

<comment><USER6> Many of you reading this may have overheard (or participated in) a conversation like this while studying CS or something related:

"Hey, so what language did you use for the assignment?"

"...Java. I don't know. I was going to use C but I don't care, I just wanted to be done with it, you know?"

"Yeah but the assignment LITERALLY said you could use ANY programming language as long as the guy can execute your code, right?"

"Okay? So?"

"You know what Steve did? He wrote it in BRAINFUCK. HAHAHAHA."

"Whaaat? Haha!"

"You know what BRAINFUCK is?"

"Uh... no, what? Haha."

"It's like this... like a two-dimensional Turing machine or something and only uses special characters and it's almost impossible to read! But it's a Turing machine so it can do everything any other programming language can do!"

"And it's literally called Brain-Fuck?!? Hahaha!"

"Yeah! Hahaha I wish I could have seen the look on the guys face who had to execute and test it but you know they said any programming language is okay so they totally have to do it!"

"Haha yeah Steve always does shit like this!"

<comment><USER7> In my CS assignments I couldn't choose the languages.

The only thing was the seminar "current programming languages" where everyone had to do a talk about a language of his choice. I did "The Shakespeare Programming Language".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But is there a framework?

</comment><comment><USER9> Be sure to check out [http://lolcode.codeschool.com](http://lolcode.codeschool.com) for a great tutorial on your way to mastering LOLCODE.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't forget trollscript as well then :-) [https://github.com/tombell/trollscript](https://github.com/tombell/trollscript)

</comment><comment><USER11> Haha I wrote a (partially complete) compiler and virtual machine for it a number of years ago. I'll have to dig it up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Might I say though, the project has improved greatly since I last came across it.

</comment><comment><USER13> can I has > import

</comment><comment><USER14> awsum thx

</comment><comment><USER12> LOL. I remember when this was a "thing".

<comment><USER15> I remember when OpenBSD decided to add it to their kernel _.[http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20130401070038](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20130401070038)

_Yes, I know, shhh.

<comment><USER12> April Fools.</comment></comment></comment>


Brexit – where now? The flow diagrams - <AUTHOR> https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow-diagrams/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a Brit and the politics of this are not my concern. However the information dissemination and internet aspect of the story is quite fascinating.

I have no idea what's going on. I tried to ignore it, but my friends who care deeply about it can get quite upset so I've been pulled into several private conversations. Because of that, on several occasions I've looked around the web in an effort to easily understand what's going on.

No luck.

Two things come to mind. First, complexity can be used as a wonderful shield against openness and accountability. You can be as open and accountable as anybody would like, but as long as most people find the situation impenetrable and you do not, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing as not being open at all. Second, I don't see how any reasonable public discussion happens at all in an information environment like this. It's a fail. If they wanted no public discussion, they should have made that choice. This is probably the worst situation a democracy can find itself in: lots of upset people arguing about things which they have no idea the true status of. You might as well watch a puppet show. There's no nuanced conversation possible. It is contrast turned as high as possible.

It's not the decision as much as the uncertainty. I can't help but think the net failed us here -- but I don't know how it could have done better. The betting markets at least will give you an up/down version of the likely outcomes. Oddly enough that might be the best source of information.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the net failed us ... I think the 'net is maybe the only thing that's slowed this disaster down. Yes yes whatever about the disinformation campaign that allegedly influenced the vote, but misinformation has always been a tool in the political toolkit. What's different this time around is that the net provides the means to _route around_ the official narrative and dig into what's going on. Yes, you might dig the wrong way and come up with bullshit but anyone that can evaluate information can figure this out, and once the honest and educated manage to get to grips with the non-official details then the net provides a means to mobilise.

If anything it's politics has broken the 'net, not the other way round. But the net provides a means to save politics.

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

If I understand each of us correctly, my position is that the internet has provided a ton of information and drama, just nothing of use to the general public. Your position is _because of the vast amount of information_ , we can identify these problems and route around them.

I can certainly see where you might be correct. I think the key question is this: does the emotional impact of all the noise outweigh the nuggets of useful information a person may find here or there? (And I use the term "noise" generously. A cynic would consider this a form camouflage)

In a way, this is the discussion the net is having all over, right? Do you get more social control by creating these made-for-internet dramas that hide the actual important stuff? Or does the fact that the information can exist much easier now and be published instantaneously to millions easily overcome that?

I'm with the "people decide based on emotion, then use reason to justify their decisions" group of folks, but that's only because I come at this from a sales/startup angle. It very well may be different in the political realm.

<comment><USER3> I think anybody that's educated can filter out the noise usually and get at some element of the truth. This is an option that would have been mostly unavailable beforehand.

Anybody that's easily swept up by rumours and bullshit was always just getting sucked in by the tabloids and the mainstream press anyway so their situation remains unchanged.

What is particularly interesting in the case of Brexit, and perhaps tangential is how the Brexiteers keep getting caught out speaking out both sides of their mouths time after time. They make a deal in Brussels and then fly home and speak to factory workers in Grimsby contradicting that deal. It's reported immediately online and goes straight back to Brussels where they're _" like really?"_.

<comment><USER2> I'm going to disengage because I believe this is getting too far into local politics for me.

However I want to make sure you understand my point.

 _"...I think anybody that's educated can filter out the noise usually and get at some element of the truth...Anybody that's easily swept up by rumours and bullshit..."_

You understand that's not the way it works, right? This isn't an intelligence test. My point was about how humans make decisions, not how stupid people gossip and believe things they shouldn't. That's a great topic, but not my point. You don't educate or smart your way about of being human. It doesn't work like that.

I used to love to discuss politics with folks, mainly because it was the one area in which really smart people believed really stupid things. It was -- and remains -- an excellent place to observe clanning and how the human mind works. (I stopped bringing it up, though, because as it turns out, text conversations have a completely different dynamic than in-person conversations.)

Thanks for the chat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tinfoil hat: I'm actually on record as speculating that Brexit is just a big currency trading scam. Imagine that you go into Brexit _knowing_ that you will make it fail. You spend 2 years sitting on your prosterior, not actually forming a deal and then at the last minute: OMG what are we going to do. The currency bounces around like a yoyo. You time all the nice low points. And then you cancel it saying "Oh we tried our best. Nothing we could have done. The EU was bent on screwing us if we left". The pound jumps 20 or 30 cents on the pound overnight.

I will literally fall over if it actually comes to pass, but like I said, this was my somewhat tongue in cheek speculation about 6 months ago (although I predicted that the budget would fail leading to a general election and an opportunity to repeal Brexit at that point, so I'm already technically wrong).

<comment><USER5> I hope this post is intended as sarcasm, and others interpret as such.

There are 650 MPs in Parliament, with vastly different constituencies and agendas. You would need 326 currently elected MPs to be on board with this plan, not even considering the possibility of election results changing those dynamics.

And at the beginning of this process it was not clear that the UK could unilaterally rescind Article 50, either, which adds further risks and complications. Not to mention the referendum itself was decided by over 33 million people casting votes.

That is a completely impractical collective action problem and a conspiracy theory on par with others like the moon landing or 9/11.

<comment><USER4> I'm not really serious, but I _do_ slightly wonder. You don't have to really get everybody on board, though. You just have to do such a bad job at negotiating a deal that nobody in their right mind would accept it. I think you might have to have the majority of the cabinet involved, though, so I think your point still stands.

Still... Why did Boris Johnson drop out of the leader race when we was practically a shoe in for PM? I think there _are_ some shenanigans going on here and May has a really narrow tightrope to walk to survive...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine if Florida wanted to leave the US and renegotiate their trade and governmental relationship with China/Brazil/Iceland, etc?

\- Why would a country give Florida a better trade deal or more rights than the US?

\- How do Floridians benefit from suddenly being unable to freely cross the border to the US?

And this is why Brexit is so screwed up: the promise was "all the benefits you have now plus we'll renegotiate and get a bunch more when we aren't being held back anymore", but it's really hard to fundamentally see why/how that could happen.

EDIT: bunch of replies to this that maybe miss the main thrust of this question which is "Why would a country give a better deal to Florida in this scenario?"

<comment><USER7> While I'm a firm remainer, I'd still say it's not quite the same as you've described. It would be closer to New York leaving the US if we were to do it by GDP (with Germany being California and France Texas) with New York of course having much more political and financial power than Florida. With it would go numerous financial institutions and various other corporate headquarters that are based there. Also, while I know this is a very dumbed down way of looking at the issue, many people felt that the UKs contribution to the EU was not reciprocated, and the EU was only there to funnel money away from the UK down to Greece, Spain, Portugal and the like, place strange legislation that took control away from people, and force us to take in immigrants that take jobs away from British citizens and send their earnings abroad to their families in other countries.

Again, this is all the simplified, digestible summaries of arguments that were given to the British public during the referendum, hence the result of the vote. Of course, the MPs should be there make an informed decision because it's their full time job, not the general public that will only have a passing knowledge of it that is often learnt through biased media. 2 years of thorough coverage on the issue has made it clear to most people that the above summaries are not accurate, and mostly fabrications by people with a vested interest in destabilising and shorting the pound.

<comment><USER8> The idea that the U.K. was getting used is an interesting one considering they are the only one who get/got a rebate on their EU contributions: relative to their GDP the U.K. is/was objectively paying less than other members (when looking st the last couple of decades - the U.K. was struggling economically when the rebate was negotiated).

<comment><USER9> The UK also get proportionally less from the EU that those that didn't get a rebate. This was the _reason_ the rebate was given, why else would the EU agree to it?

It's only recently that the matter of the rebate is being spun to bash the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few weeks ago I was in Basel, Switzerland, which is uniquely positioned at the cross of the Swiss, German and French borders.

There are suburbs of the city that are in German and French territory: Basel trams and buses will get to either side, with no notice you are crossing a national border.

You can cross the Rhine from Weil am Rhein (Germany) to Huningue (France) through a footbridge, with the only thing marking the cross being a German and French flags side by side, on the French side of the river.

[https://en.radreisen.at/data/thumbs/_data_pic_Frankreich_Reg...](https://en.radreisen.at/data/thumbs/_data_pic_Frankreich_Region_Basel_Sternfahrt_Huningue_WeilamRhein_2_jpg.1539077909.800x600x75.crop.jpg)

No border, no checks, even normal police nowhere to be seen. 75 years ago (and pretty much over the course of their history) these two countries were at bitter war between themselves.

I cannot fathom why people would do anything that could cause returning to those times a possibility.

As flawed the EU is, it has been instrumental in ensuring decades of peace. The (partial but undoubtful) loss of sovereignity for individual members should be considered a fair price to pay.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

<comment><USER11> One difficulty in drawing a conclusion from your story is that Switzerland is not in the EU.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but the story is not inherently about the EU. It's about the free movement between neighbouring countries, which is something Leave campaigners are determined to stop as part of our withdrawal. Leaving could've been over relatively quickly if all we did was leave the EU but keep our place in the single market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aside, a few click saving/general things with draw.io (and as a UK resident you'll excuse me if I avoid the actual subject):

1) Add #U to the URL then the path to the diagram to create a link that loads it directly:

[https://www.draw.io/#Uhttps://jonworth.eu/downloads/29jandia...](https://www.draw.io/#Uhttps://jonworth.eu/downloads/29jandiagrams/BrexitPlanB-V22.xml)

2) File->Embed->HTML gives you an HTML snippet that you embed in your page to render a vector version of the diagram. Click the viewer opens up a lightbox, zoomable vector version, that can include the diagram data in the snippet, and a edit option from the lightbox to navigate to the editor with the diagram loaded.

3) draw.io is open source, [https://github.com/jgraph/drawio](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio), if you don't want to depend on a third-party for the viewer, clone the repo, host it as a static site (doesn't need a back-end) and reference the viewer on that site instead of www.draw.io.

<comment><USER14> Dunno why you're being downvoted. The page itself isn't loading anymore, and the link you've provided in (1) does still load, so if anyone else is unable to load the page in question, see this link (1) to see the flowchart at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A parliament that HAS to choose among N possible futures or else the one of those N that is _least_ popular wins.

Yet they seen convinced that the only thing they can do is do yes/no votes to reach a majority for one of the N alternatives. If this is for legal/constitutional reasons (it most likely is) then it's a horrible mistake to not have realized this and corrected it.

Parliament needs a simple and legal way to swiftly select the most popular option among N options where none have a majority. This isn't a dangerous legal loophole - the acceptance of such an N-way tie and the selection of the N options can still be decided with majority.

There should be a ranked or Condorcet vote and the winner should be enacted. It should have happened a year ago at least.

<comment><USER16> Well, archaic voting practices are constitutional practice. But the UK constitution is 'unwritten'. That means these practices could be easily changed, given the will.

In Westminster, voting usually happens by each MP physically moving into one of two lobbies. That is a very time consuming process, that can easily take twenty minutes per vote. There are no ballots, let alone a computerised voting system.

That the recent indicative votes happened on paper is _extraordinarily_ modern. Preferential voting would clearly be a step too far.

<comment><USER17> It's not a complete innovation. Voting on paper has been the practice for some divisions for some time (deferred divisions where instead of voting immediately, MPs vote on paper the next day).

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the explanation. Still, it is absurd they don't use paper (or computers) for all votes.

<comment><USER17> Quaint maybe but I would not go so far as to say absurd. There is something to be said for physically getting up and indicating your choice that way. Seems to me to give more weight to the process. Pushing a button seems rather clinical by contrast. Plus I am sure they appreciate the piss break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is two days outdated. We are at meaningful vote 3 phase.

I assume this is going to fail again which gives it a 80% hard brexit chance with 20% rescinding brexit.

I have always been all-in on "no brexit" for last three years. It's a dog and pony show.

<comment><USER19> It's not a "meaningful vote" today (29th) - it's only a vote on the withdrawal agreement, not the political declaration. According to the Attorney General that means it's not a "meaningful vote" as previously defined.

And it's going to be voted down, of course.

<comment><USER20> Whatever happened to the speaker's declaration that the government couldn't keep bringing up the same bill?

Is this actually different, or did everyone forget that?

<comment><USER21> This is not a repeat, it is some kind of sneaky half-vote just on the WA that will not ensure an orderly Brexit on May 22.

It appears that Theresa May is trying to run the clock past the April deadline for a long delay, so we're back in a "her deal or no deal" situation. Then again the EU will probably not stand for that.

<comment><USER14> A European Commission spokesman said: "The withdrawal agreement negotiated between both parties is indeed both necessary and sufficient to ensure the orderly withdrawal of the UK."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice diagram, but it's already out of date. The indicative votes already passed, there was no consensus and I think now they'll do a second round? I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of MPs are confused about what's happening.

Anyway, the central delusion of Brexit is that the British public vote to have a foreign sovereign government give them something. Technically they voted for the British government to leave the EU, but what they really voted for is to have the EU give them an unbelievably awesome deal that screws over the EU. That is not going to happen, so now we're witnessing this mass political delusion crash into reality.

</comment><comment><USER23> Unsurprisingly there are several possibilities not accounted for here.

One being that the 3rd vote passes, the PM resigns (which she's already agreed to do), a new leader is elected _and_ a general election is held soon after which will essentially be a 'second referendum' election in which we end up rejoining the EU in less than 5 years. A true Schrödinger's brexit.

<comment><USER24> Sadly we'll never be able to rejoin with the amazing deal we have now, with our rebate and opt-outs intact.

And no matter the outcome, we've lost our dignity. We'll never get back our reputation for stability.

<comment><USER25> Which would oblige the UK to join the Schengen area adopt the Euro.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps you forgot the word "and" after "Schengen area". Because these are two different things as Switzerland shows (Switzerland being in the Schengen area but not adopting the Euro).

<comment><USER25> Indeed I did however I feel as though that is obvious and your comment is rather facetious.

<comment><USER26> Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No wonder the public feel powerless.

The options are so obfuscated behind political complexity AND ever-changing that a simple voter (me) can't hope to keep up.

The moment you half-understand a scenario it is outdated, the days it takes to form a layperson's reasonable opinion are wasted grasping at now-irrelevant information.

It takes multiple hours per day to try and understand the details and their strategic importance.

I will forever remember this as a contradictory moment when the British public's political awareness was both at its greatest and weakest.

No positive outcomes look possible any more.

<comment><USER28> This is why it should not have been a simple majority public vote. Either leave it for the politicians which or make it a two thirds majority (so if a civil war breaks out the side that lost the vote has to defeat 2x people).

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately, that all only makes sense if we were given the vote in order to make the decision to leave the EU or not.

But that wasn't why. It was to stem the haemorrhaging of MPs and voters to UKIP for the 2015 GE. As such, the calculation was that anything other than a straight fight wouldn't resolve the question.

I see no reason to disagree with that calculation. I mean, say it was a 2/3rds vote and we got the result we did. How likely would it be that Farage et al would just say "Fair cop" and move on?

The truth is it was a high risk punt, same as with the Scottish referendum and AV vote, to kill any constitutional questions for a generation. If it had succeeded as the other two had done, we would likely have Tory hegemony for at least another decade. And Cameron could have argued (quite reasonably) that he was the most democratic PM in our history.

And the way I see, it the calculation was based on the idea that the British people are generally pretty conservative (with a lowercase c). This worked well for AV (I mean who votes to retain FPTP?), reasonably well for Scotland and spectacularly well for Brexit. The only problem was that, it turns out, we're too conservative: we didn't want the status quo, we wanted the Edwardian era back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These are fabulous - they take serious work to follow through, but are clear, and give a great sense of structure.

Great work - props to Jon Worth!

<comment><USER31> It does not describe what finger was licked and held up in what wind, though.

<comment><USER30> I produced exactly this kind of chart when engaged in a semi-hostile management take-over, including the wild guesstimates of probabilities.

But then I further did a stability analysis to see which of the probabilities needed to be more accurate, and thus require more careful measurement. That identified critical decisions and pathways, and which of the other party's decisions should be nudged.

Here, though, there's not really a lot to be gained by greater precision, although your point is taken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Basically we're sitting at no deal or no brexit. If no deal happens I have to leave the UK in the next 2 weeks...

<comment><USER33> Do you though? As per gov.uk[0]:

> The rights and status of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens living in the UK will > remain the same until 30 June 2021.

[0]: [https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens- families/what-...](https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens- families/what-settled-and-presettled-status-means)

<comment><USER34> OP has EU citizenship, OP's partner does not. OP was under the impression that their non-EU partner will loose their right to work in the UK.

That's definitely not the case though, and I've replied to OP on the steps to securing a "Settled Status" for their partner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These are great, but a little out of date (the situation has changed a lot in the last 48 hours...). It's the visualisation I've wanted all along though!

</comment><comment><USER36> Neat, but it seems to be missing the upcoming parliament vote on Monday. That one seems very important to me.

<comment><USER37> The EU has stated that they need to hear by close of today if any extension beyond the 12th of APril and they said they would only do that if the UK agreed the deal May got offered in which nobody of any voting stance likes.

In short, the EU is dictating Brexit direction more than the UK now.

So unless they agree May's deal, any other extension has to be voted upon.

However technically the UK could cancel article 50, then resubmit it and give an extension of upto 2 years as article 50 covers a 2 year period and in that time the end date can be earlier. Whilst technically they could do that and the EU would be powerless to stop them, it would be a complete and utter gaming of the political and legal system.

<comment><USER38> The Article 50 treaty says very clearly that unilateral revocation isn't possible. The ECJ has done what's expected for the EU and simply ripped it up, but will the other heads of state accept the treaty they all signed just being voided like that?

Probably yes - ultimately what happens in the EU is always and everywhere about politics. Written law hardly matters.

<comment><USER39> You are incorrect. The ECJ confirmed on 10 Dec 2018 that unilateral revocation is possible. Indeed the exact title of the press release from the ECJ after the judgement was "The United Kingdom is free to revoke unilaterally the notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU".

<comment><USER38> How is what I'm saying incorrect? You're agreeing with me that the ECJ voided the treaty. Here's what Article 50 says:

 _3\. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period._

The treaties cease to apply two years after the notification date unless the Council decides unanimously to extend.

The ECJ read this and said, nope, unanimous consent not required actually, the country can simply revoke it (i.e. extend indefinitely) at any time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't think this covers (MV3)/2 or whatever today's vote is called?

<comment><USER41> Yeah, the latest two have "Meaningful Vote 3" taken into account.

<comment><USER40> But aren't we just having a part of MV3 voted on today, which is how it got round the ban on just repeating the same thing over and over again?

<comment><USER41> Fair point, I guess that's what ganeshkrishnan was referring to about it being two days out of date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Excellent work!</comment>


Most college graduates wish they majored in something different - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/most-college-graduates-wish-they-majored-in-something-different <comment><USER2> A surprisingly high number of people I know and work with have degrees completely unrelated to the field they are in. Of course this is purely anecdotal, but it is something that comes up often in discussions. OTOH their degrees did help them get the jobs that launched their differently-oriented careers, and I haven't heard that the degrees they got held them back in any particular way.

Everything else comes through experience. You end up learning the trade one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER3> Right, I reckon I'm one of them. Moreover, it took me overly long to figure that out.</comment>


Elixir is for programmers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pluralsight.com/elixir-is-for-programmers <comment><USER2> I really like Elixir.

Not only does it have a clean, pleasant syntax, macros, but it has all the good parts from Erlang, namely:

* BEAM VM (isolated heaps, very well tuned scheduler, concurrent garbage collection)

* Pattern matching, once you've tried it, it is hard to go back.

* Ability to call Erlang code

BEAM VM is really a secret gem and many didn't get a chance to play with it because they didn't like Erlang's syntax (personally, I do like Erlang's syntax, but I think many don't). Well there is little excuse now.

If you like DSLs and macros (yes, yes, I know it makes many people scared) this you can do neat stuff like these projects:

[https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto](https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto) \-- DSL to query databases

<comment><USER3> This is what I came here to say. All of the 'raw language' niceties that Geoffrey mentioned in the article are true, but for me one of the greatest things in Elixir is processes. Just, the way the Erlang system operates is so well thought out, I'm more impressed every time I learn something new.

Shameless self-promotion here - I run [http://www.elixirsips.com](http://www.elixirsips.com), which is a screencast series that releases 2 new episodes per week covering some topic in Elixir. I started it out as I started learning Elixir, and I've been going for quite a while now (I'm on Episode 33 next, so 16 weeks so far). It's the most fun I've had with a programming language since I first saw Ruby, and I think the BEAM VM is the future (as is Rust/Go/clojure's core.async, other concurrency- oriented programming models, etc).

So yeah, Elixir's amazing and everyone should play with it. I think just looking at these items mentioned in the article aren't even giving it a fair shake - learn about Erlang's concurrency and distribution models, or else you aren't even scratching the surface :)

<comment><USER4> I'm a subscriber to Elixir Sips, and just wanted to say that the videos are well worth it to anyone looking to get into Elixir. I'm a happy subscriber, and look forward to more videos.

knewter doesn't know me, and I don't know him.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for this resource.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ever since I started getting into Clojure, I've been getting interested in these other functional programming languages. Lately I've been checking out Elixir. I don't know what draws me to it (most likely the pretty website and logo :P, and partly because I hate the Java ecosystem). I want to get into it as well, but I just don't see myself using it for anything? I mean for the types of problems I'm capable of solving, Clojure (and Python) seems to be sufficient. To me, it seems Erlang (and thus Elixir) only offers its advantages when building _really_ large distributed systems. Is there any other use case for Erlang/Elixir?

I'm still going to be reading up on Erlang/Elixir for fun and to expand on how I approach problems, but right now I only associate Erlang with large distributed systems and I want to add other stuff to that association.

<comment><USER2> > Is there any other use case for Erlang/Elixir?

Yes, the use case is usually for highly concurrent system. There just happen to be quite a few of those in recent years. Multiple things happening at the same time colloquially speaking. Now it won't be good for fast concurrent problems, like say multiplying matrices, or computing FFT, you'd use a GPU and Fortran for that perhaps. But think of large game server with multiple worlds, and players trading with each other. Think of a large distributed database (like Riak). Think of the backend of large VOIP systems with multiple calls happening at the same time. Or maybe a large chat system (Ejabberd).

Erlang as a general purpose programming language is also interesting. It forces you to think about problems in a different way. Actually 2 ways: -- functional and using actors.

Also, its primary characteristic and design goal is fault tolerance. That was #1 item on the TODO list when it was designed. It is one of the very few languages and systems that has that as the primary goal. Many of the other features -- concurrency, isolation, run-time code upgrade, immutability of data structures, kind of fall out of that. So that is another general area that you might consider where using it makes sense.

On types -- many criticize Erlang for not having a static type system. Not all is lost. Erlang has a way to analyze its types using dialyzer. It is a success typing system. [http://erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/typespec.html](http://erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/typespec.html) . The more you annotate the code the better it gets. Dialyzer will not catch all the errors BUT when it complains, it is guaranteed to be an error.

To go hand in hand with that. It has very neat (3rd) party testing tools available. One of the most interesting ones are for Property Tests. These allow you to specify model constraint on your code and it will automatically generate tests to try to find failing use cases that break the constraint.

Anyway, hopefully this gives a bit more of an idea.

To go hand in hand with that, on the testing side it has

<comment><USER7> Your message got cut off.

<comment><USER8> he forgot to trap exit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is a write up about Elixir by Joe Armstrong (he had a little something to do with Erlang)

[http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with- elixir.html](http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html)

<comment><USER10> Parts of it are almost readable!

<comment><USER11> yeah. nothing like light gray on light gray to make my day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting to see Elixir mentioned more and more. I don't _quite_ see the use-case for it, but I'm so content with Erlang I'm almost surely not the audience the language targets. Will be fun to see if Elixir builds its own community or if Elixir folks slowly filter into the Erlang community as a whole.

\- - -

EDIT

It occurs to me that the HN crowd might like Lisp Flavored Erlang: [http://lfe.github.io/](http://lfe.github.io/) It's a lisp-2 written by Robert Virding, co-creator of Erlang, and is backed by a great group of folks.

<comment><USER13> Erlang is awesome, but the syntax is just so out there that it's hard to get used to it when you're usually hacking with Ruby/Python/PHP etc.

If I would be working with a functional language for 8 hours a day, perhaps Erlang wouldn't seem so alien, but I'm not so it is.

Elixir for this reason is truly a godsend, and perhaps with time I can see myself sipping more and more Erlang because of it.

<comment><USER14> _usually hacking with Ruby /Python/PHP etc_

Erlang is designed to create solid production systems. If someone is obsessed with quick hacks and fad-of-the-week programming, they will feel uncomfortable in a real development environment.

<comment><USER11> i don't know from your high horse, but from down here, erlang satisfies my needs for badly written hacks just fine.

more so that all implementations have a in memory DB so i don't even have to bother with that as i would have with php... so yeah, installing yaws and writting
hello world
<erl>...</erl> is as PHPish as it gets for quick web prototypes.

<comment><USER11> the above said, the easy of use of yaws is what makes me reticent to even start to play with elixir. i'd be very pissed it i like it but had to go back to plain erl for web prototypes.

<comment><USER15> Try [https://github.com/s1n4/leptus](https://github.com/s1n4/leptus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you liked the nice simple assert, you can get an imitation in Python tests using py.test: [http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html](http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html)

Source code:

        def test_function():
             assert f() == 4

Output:

            def test_function():
        >       assert f() == 4
        E       assert 3 == 4
        E        +  where 3 = f()

Here's how it works: [http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html#assert- details](http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html#assert-details) \-- when importing the test module, all simple asserts are rewritten (which has some limitations if side effects are involved).

No more verbose self.assertTheItemIsInThisList(item, list) at least.

<comment><USER17> The problems with side effects have been fixed for a while: [http://pybites.blogspot.com/2011/07/behind-scenes-of- pytests...](http://pybites.blogspot.com/2011/07/behind-scenes-of-pytests-new- assertion.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently started programming in Elixir. I chose to rewrite the customized Hubot instance I'm running at my company from the ground up in it - it's been a great way to learn the language, and especially OTP.

OTP is really what makes Elixir (and Erlang for that matter) so impressive. Supervised, lightweight processes just seems so obvious as a solution to fault tolerance and concurrency - coming from C#, where doing multi-threaded programming is error-prone at best, Elixir/OTP is a dream. I do miss the type system from C# or Scala, but type specifications help to mitigate the loss.

The one other feature that has been really pleasing to work with is pattern matching. Scala is the only other language I've used with some form of it, and after using Elixir/Erlang's pattern matching, Scala's seems deficient in comparison. It's an insanely powerful construct, I wish more languages had it.

</comment><comment><USER19> A couple months ago I got into Project Euler and decided to tackle all of the problems with Elixir. It was a great way to learn syntax and performance nuances. Definitely a tool that I enjoy using and will be keeping up with.

</comment><comment><USER20>
        if(condition, do: a, else: b)

looks like a function, but that implies Elixir does lazy evaluation so that only one of a or b gets evaluated. Or is something else going on?

<comment><USER21> _if_ is a macro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Edit: The below is actually wrong

> For years I've wanted to be able to write my own control flow structures, > such as an each...else that runs an else block if the each is empty > (Handlebars templates have this).

Actually, python does have a (little-known) `for...else` structure that does what you want.

[http://psung.blogspot.ca/2007/12/for-else-in- python.html](http://psung.blogspot.ca/2007/12/for-else-in-python.html)

<comment><USER23> python's for/else doesn't do what the grandparent post asked for -- that post asked for the else clause to execute if the container that was being iterated over is empty, and in python's for/else (as your link notes) the else clause executes whenever the for clause terminates _normally_ (that is, other than by a break statement). These are very different constructs.

<comment><USER22> So it does. I wonder what language I was thinking of then.

<comment><USER24> This is a long shot, but could you be thinking of the Django template language?

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/#for- empty)

        {% for athlete in athlete_list %}

{{ athlete.name }}

        {% empty %}

Sorry, no athletes in this list.

        {% endfor %}

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pot, meet kettle. Or whatever the positive version of that is. [http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptab...](http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> Someone should probably point out that it's homoiconic too.

<comment><USER27> I think it's interesting the extent to which lisp is slowly but steadily insinuating itself into people's brains and into new languages.

There are the modern, obvious lisps like Racket and Clojure.

Then there are things like Honu, Pyret, Elixir, and more, which sidestep many people's "parenoia" [sic]. They do the homoiconic, macro thing without any supposedly frightening s-expressions.

Because, as I read this post, I'm thinking, well hell, _all_ of these features [1] are syntactic sugar that already exist in e.g. Racket, and if they didn't, could be added by anyone. Especially anything like "I always wanted this control structure in Python/Ruby/whatever", well, you can just _do_ it. This is really liberating.

Sure you can argue that people will do dumb things with this capability, or that you "don't really need X", and so on. But being able to do it when you need/want is really awesome.

[1] I'm referring to the points in the post, not everything that Elixir and/or Erlang can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm very interested in Elixir but I'm having trouble understanding the benefit of the 'upcase' example at the end of the article. Compared to a single function with a conversion table, a function per character seems like a tremendous amount of overhead.

Is the purpose of implementing upcase this way to make it more easily parallelizeable in the map/reduce sense?

<comment><USER29> It's pretty cool.. read the "Okay, but just how metaprogrammable are we talking?" section in this article: [http://devintorr.es/blog/2013/06/11/elixir-its-not-about- syn...](http://devintorr.es/blog/2013/06/11/elixir-its-not-about-syntax/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How Elixir offer type check - compile time parameter validity check on each specialized types - or similar feature?

Is this type inferencing language?

<comment><USER31> I suspect it's actually done at runtime. Erlang for instance is dynamically typed, but also has pattern matching. I suspect Elixir is similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Learning me some Elixir now and I like it. I wish anonymous functions didn't have different call syntax though.

<comment><USER33> There's talk around removing it.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/elixir-lang- core/HzU...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/elixir-lang- core/HzUEAVmbD00)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> FWIW, Groovy also has those smart asserts. They're nice. Not a big enough deal that i'd start a feature list with them, but nice.

<comment><USER35> Groovy seems like such a... Forgotten language, sometimes. For what it's worth, I've always really liked it. And I hate Java with the fire of one thousand suns.

<comment><USER36> 7 months ago, Groovy wasn't even in Tiobe's top 50. Two months ago (Oct 2013), it had reached #18. This month, it's back down to #46. The person who pulled off that trick didn't forget Groovy, and in fact utilized the feedback effect to keep the afterglow going. Just type "Groovy Programming" into Google and see some of the links...

5\. www.infoworld.com Groovy breaks into top 20 list of programming languages

8\. www.eweek.com Groovy Programming Language Sees Major Boost in Popularity

22\. cacm.acm.org Groovy Programming Language Sees Major Boost in Popularity

24\. jaxenter.com Groovy makes debut entry into programming language top twenty

30\. glaforge.appspot.com Interview about Groovy's popularity boost -- Guillaume Laforge's Blog

But Groovy's "surge in popularity" was probably timed to coincide with a due diligence investigation on Pivotal Inc, or someone there selling a consulting contract.

"After a long discussion with one of the Tiobe index readers, it turned out that the data that is produced by one of the Chinese sites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms. So this was a bug," Janssen said. "After we had fixed this bug, Groovy lost much of its ratings." [http://www.infoworld.com/t/application- development/c-pulls-a...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/application- development/c-pulls-away-java-among-top-programming-languages-230603)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Too bad the lists aren't counting lists and are dumb cons cells. :(

Has a cool Leiningen (clojure) inspired build/dependency tool.

<comment><USER22> There are many things in Elixir that seem to be inspired by Clojure and/or lisp in general (which I think is great, by the way):

* AST-level macros with quote/unquote

* Reducers (efficient list processing)

* Protocols (which are like inside-out interfaces)

<comment><USER37> The Elixir macros aren't built on homoiconicity though.

Reducers aren't really intended for processing lists, they're best for processing vectors and trees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow, that center-aligned text is hard to read!

</comment><comment><USER39> I tried to like Erlang, but the syntax turned me off.

Elixir was just what I needed. Makes the power of Erlang accessible. I like Elixir's docs, tooling, and syntax, and look forward to seeing it progress.</comment>


Improving on the Unix shell - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2017/03/03/improve-on-unix-shell/ <comment><USER2> The most powerful aspect of the shell (I use bash, though would strongly recommend zsh to newcomers) offers _is that the same tool is used for both interactive and scripting tasks_.

That is, there's no cognitive switch between "I'm working on this interactively", and "I'm working on this in a scripting sense". This also allows the user to try out and learn new capabilities or features in an interactive, rapid-feedback mode, and then apply them to scripting.

There's also a vastly greater opportunity for exposure and practice -- the shell _is what you use_ , and you're constantly refining skills.

The fact that virtually _all_ of my scripts start off as command and pipelines that then get iteratively extended, is another key element -- it's trivially easy to go from "manual" to "scripted".

There are other elements -- the degree to which a good shell supports recall and revision of earlier commands (discovering incremental recursive search in bash was a sea change for me), defining aliases and functions, and much more.

And of course, there are the limitations and gotchyas, some of which were somewhat fairly considered in the "death of the Unix Philosophy" essay -- otherwise rather poorly considered, IMO, for reasons well-stated in the discussion on that thread.</comment>