Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#201

Post by xoa »

The New York Times also had an article yesterday [1] looking at some of the regular pro-Brexit people who just plain do not believe any warnings about no-deal. One quote though really jumped out at me since it was related to one of the earliest projects I ever did, working on a small bit of the Y2K problem, and I think it really serves as an example of a fundamental difficulty when dealing with public facing threats:

>Mr. Ridley compared the anticipation mounting before the Brexit deadline to the run-up to forestall the Millennium Bug, also known as Y2K, in which companies worldwide scrambled to avert technical breakdowns when digital systems switched from 1999 to 2000.

>“It’ll be like Y2K,” he said. “Remember that one? They were like panic, panic, panic, the world’s going to end, the electric grid’s going to go down,” Mr. Ridley said. “None of it is going to happen.”

I knew that this was the impression left with the general public after that, but it's really unfortunate because in my recollection Y2K is quite possibly one of the most unified, successful responses to a serious tech problem our industry has ever managed to pull off. Yeah, it didn't amount to much... after hundreds of thousands to millions of man YEARS of work. I know people who had gone full time digging through ancient code bases back by 1998 or so, wouldn't be surprised if some had started in 97. Initial issues began bubbling up well before 00 after all, stuff like credit card expiration dates that were a few years in the future. Enormous amounts of resources were sunk into working on it, sometimes for clean fixes and sometimes for hacks [2], and overall it worked. But of course then we ended up with "well what was the point of all the hype or effort, everything was fine!" and the public taking literally the opposite lesson.

I can't remember if there is a technical term for this class of problem (beyond "life in ops"), where it's like air, the general "success" state is "nobody even thinks about it most of the time" but the failure state is catastrophic. It's an issue with security too of course. Ops and security are non-revenue generating, but their absence can certainly be revenue destroying. It's hard to get budget support there.

It seems like a really hard problem, particularly when future testing isn't available and results are irreversible.

----

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/world/europe/no-deal-brex...

2: Old systems are still in service that are still using 2-digit dates, but just were patches so that 00 to 30 were assumed to be 2000s while >30 were 1900s, so there is actually still lurking remnants of Y2K that will come up again if not dealt with by 2030 or so. And of course there is the 32-bit unix time issue for 2038, examples of which have also cropped up a few times already too.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#203

Post by [deleted] »

yholio wrote: post #87
gonehome wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? If you think that most of the people are actually looking at or arguing about the implementation of any specific policy (I'd suspect this is the minority). It seems more likely people are just arguing about which tribe they're a part of. In that case nobody cares about what the best outcome is or what the truth is. If you can get a brexit deal passed that still allows the UK to 'brexit' in name only, but other…

Some might say that a good outcome is one where the people can freely make their own choices and accept the consequences. The plight of the British might serve as a cautionary tale informing the decisions of some other country, that's certainly a good thing in some sense. Democracy is not guaranteed to deliver prosperity or lead only to the correct decisions, yet it's the best system we have.

[deleted]

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#204

Post by mywittyname »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #99

I'll be the first to admit: I'm an American. I fundamentally do not understand Brexit. I understand the following timeline: 1. A largely disseminated, nation-wide vote occurs, bolstered by nationalist sentiment, that the EU is bad for the UK. This vote results in a conclusion that UK should leave the EU. 2. This is controversial, due to the majority of the populace in general not desiring to leave the EU, but not vot…

You know how Trump promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? Most people, regardless of political persuasion, knew a wall would be built, but that the USA would pay for it.

May promised a divorce which would be a "good deal brexit," or one that includes trade deals which benefited the UK, but without any of the "undesirable" EU requirements. Most people, regardless of political persuasion, divorce could happen, but knew that the Britain wasn't going to get a "good deal" brexit.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#205

Post by hannasanarion »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #131
balabaster wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "woman of great importance in the UK government" is the Prime Minister. For the purpose of this discussion, and until she's voted out, she is the most important person in the United Kingdom.

10-4. Why is she being resoundedly disapproved upon by her own gov't? Presumably, the same gov't that put forth this vote? At least some significant margin of politicians must have wanted this vote knowing that 'yes' is on the table. Where are they?

Because she promised a submarine made of cheese, and delivered a submarine made of cheese, and the people who demanded a submarine made of cheese are mad that it doesn't taste good enough or dive deep enough.

There is no such thing as a favorable brexit deal. Britain is already in the most favorable position possible with regards to EU relations: they have all of the benefits of EU membership, but with a special deal that means they're exempted from some of the membership dues, and they can have their own immigration policy and their own money. Britain has a more beneficial position in the EU than any other country in the world, in or out.

There is absolutely no way that the EU is going to let them leave and keep most of the benefits of membership. The hardliners want to get everything and give nothing, and surprise surprise, the EU wasn't going to let them have everything in exchange for nothing, so the hardliners hate it, and everybody else hates it because it was a stupid idea in the first place.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#206

Post by pjdemers »

m0zg wrote: post #71

Of course it "failed". The government did everything it could to sabotage it and arrive at as unfavorable a set of exit conditions as possible. Even if she did want to get a good deal, May doesn't strike me as a cutthroat negotiator. Couple this with her unwillingness to abide by the will of the people (the size of the voting margin is somewhat irrelevant in a properly functioning democracy), and you get this. This w…

> You don't get a re-do just because you didn't like the outcome.

Elections need to be held regularly. "one person, one vote, one time" is not a democracy.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#207

Post by noddy1 »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #92
vinceguidry wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit is a real problem that the human race is faced with. There can be no higher question than that of what rules people should be using to deal with each other. For most of human history the rules were imposed by force. You open your market because if you don't, I'll escalate from sending a strongly worded missive all the way up to sending my armies to pillage your countryside. Recently we've moved to a more contr…

I’m not sure. I think we’ll leave or stay in the EU and it won’t make a tangible difference in the long run. Not in the way that say the internet, smartphones, antibiotics, nuclear weapons/power, quantum physics etc etc have made a difference to the world. MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon, so we’ll be trading with the EU regardless, it’s all semanitics and minor politics.

The brexit issue is part of the bigger issue of the ongoing suicide of europe. Birmingham, where my father was born, is now majority non-anglosaxon, and with continued weak immigration controls europe will be majority african/arab/muslim in 50 years. There has never been an ethnic african science nobel prize winner, and despite 1.6 billion of the world's population being muslim, muslims have only won 2 nobel prizes in the sciences. So would changing the ethnic makeup of europe from ethnic european to majority african/arab/islamic alter the future of human civilization and progress to great detriment? Probably. You could argue that it is more important than any of the recent technical advances, because it may determine whether humanity pushes forward and progresses as a civilisation, or just doesn't.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#208

Post by hollerith »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #154
hollerith wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon Was the Korean war a major war in your book? To the Korean people it was. In that war, the US's having nukes did not prevent North Korea from starting the war, did not prevent the Soviets from sending MIGs with Soviet pilots against the US army and air force and did not prevent China from sending a million soldiers.

From a euro centric perspective Korea is a proxy war. MAD blocks major conflict directly between two nuclear states or states with strong nuclear allies. It doesn’t prevent wars fought in other territories backed by nuclear states (eg Syria)

China sends a million soldiers over its border with Korea with the usual instructions to try to kills as many soldiers of the enemy (composed mostly of US soldiers) as possible, and your reply is that that is not a major conflict between the US and China?

Alternatively, do you claim that the fact that China at that time lacked nukes somehow emboldened China whereas if they had had nukes, they would have hesitated?

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#209

Post by mrec »

yholio wrote: post #169
mrec wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are trying to camouflage that reality with a bad deal They're not, May is, and May is not a Brexiter. The Brexiters generally are pushing to leave on WTO terms, not so much as a preferred end state but in recognition of the fact that only a genuine commitment to doing so has any chance of convincing the EU to agree to sensible terms such as Canada+. If the EU can keep the UK under its thumb forever then of cou…

There is no Canada+ on the table and there never was, it's just "Canada" without the "+": a set of trade liberalization measures that cover some physical goods and very few services. It's a bad match for Britain's needs: http://www.policyreview.co.uk/eu-uk-canada/ It's hard to understand why Germany or France, who stand to gain from excluding the powerful UK service sector from the EU financial markets, would think t…

Donald Tusk has repeatedly offered "Canada +++" to Great Britain. (Not to the United Kingdom, as part of their "we're going to annex Northern Ireland as a punishment beating" approach.)

> UK still needs to respect the EU regulations

WHEN EXPORTING TO THE EU, yes. The ~90% of UK businesses that don't do any trade with the EU do not. Those trading with the rest of the world outside the EU - a majority of the UK's trade, and rising steadily - do not.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#210

Post by HuShifang »

m0zg wrote: post #161
abalone wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the size of the voting margin is somewhat irrelevant in a properly functioning democracy Literally, no. The size of the margin is a direct factor in many democratic processes and determines how resilient the decision is to subsequent challenge. Major, foundational changes are rarely decided by simple majorities in one event. > You don't get a re-do just because you didn't like the outcome. To say otherwise opens yo…

Literally yes. Some elections right here in the US are decided by as few as a dozen votes, and people accept the results. > You just called some referendums "bullshit" You're putting words in my mouth Cathy Newman style here.

...Pending the next election -- which generally occurs 2-6 years later. (Or, in the case of passed referendums, some future election, depending on when the modifying referendum makes it on the ballot.) Leaving the EU is far less readily reversible.
Post reply on HN