The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Mikers]

	Quote:	curley
	Ahhhh! GB is on the same level as Noth Koreans? Gee, why didn't you tell me that at the beginning of this thread?

Not really. In North Korea the bloke in charge is really in charge. In fact, if the government does fall here he might do well to stand as an independent. There wouldn’t be so much cabinet disagreement if we ran things North Korea style.

	Quote:
	Well before; within the next 20 minutes, I would suggest. It's over 2,940,000 now.

The petition has been stalled at 2,971,394 signatures for the last 14 minutes... Hmmm... Maybe they lost count and had to start again?

[curley]

	Quote:	Mikers
	Not really. In North Korea the bloke in charge is really in charge. In fact, if the government does fall here he might do well to stand as an independent. There wouldn’t be so much cabinet disagreement if we ran things North Korea style.

Handing the reins back to the queen would be easier.

Sure wonder what she would decide actually.

	Quote:
	The petition has been stalled at 2,971,394 signatures for the last 14 minutes... Hmmm... Maybe they lost count and had to start again?

Pubs open at 11 in GB.

	Quote:
	The petition has been stalled at 2,971,394 signatures for the last 14 minutes... Hmmm... Maybe they lost count and had to start again?

Topped 3 million now... 3,008,594

	Quote:
	The petition has been stalled at 2,971,394 signatures for the last 14 minutes... Hmmm... Maybe they lost count and had to start again?

Seems to have moved to 3,008,594 and stalled again. Perhaps they're only doing 15 minute refreshes now?

[Mikers]

	Quote:
	Seems to have moved to 3,008,594 and stalled again. Perhaps they're only doing 15 minute refreshes now?

so moving quickly then stopped suddenly. strange. Its almost like there's some form of robot signing it thats broken down and not people.

[higgybaby]

So 3 million+ remainers went to the effort of clicking on a link and typing in their details, from the comfort of their notebook ,on their sofas. Wow.

Looks like they are finally taking it seriously. As opposed to getting off their complacent backsides 1001 days ago in large enough numbers.

Okay many people have changed their minds. But .... in both directions.

[curley]

	Quote:	higgybaby
	So 3 million+ remainers went to the effort of clicking on a link and typing in their details .....

ad agency's paradise.

	Quote:	curley
	ad agency's paradise.

How so?

[amogles]

	Quote:	Mikers
	so moving quickly then stopped suddenly. strange. Its almost like there's some form of robot signing it thats broken down and not people.

One way of dealing with server overload on a server that is not powerful enough to correctly process all the traffic, is to stop or at least reduce the priority of various non-essential background tasks. That could include the routine that tallies up the total after every sign-in.

[SponPlague]

	Quote:
	Tell that to the North Koreans. Maybe Mrs May will draw inspiration from this for any parliamentary vote on her leadership!

How does this work?

	Quote:	Mikers
	so moving quickly then stopped suddenly. strange. Its almost like there's some form of robot signing it thats broken down and not people.

They also got a surprisingly decent amount of votes during the night.

	Quote:	amogles
	One way of dealing with server overload on a server that is not powerful enough to correctly process all the traffic, is to stop or at least reduce the priority of various non-essential background tasks. That could include the routine that tallies up the total after every sign-in.

Easiest fix, extend cache times and hope for the best We would almost forget it these days, but all that counting in db's is pretty hard on the load, especially on a site that normally sees no significant traffic that is suddenly spiking on read's and writes it is very normal to go down frequently till scaled up.

[Mikers]

	Quote:	amogles
	One way of dealing with server overload on a server that is not powerful enough to correctly process all the traffic, is to stop or at least reduce the priority of various non-essential background tasks. That could include the routine that tallies up the total after every sign-in.

It could. thats a possibility. You could also make it more powerful on the fly, scale out, scale up, throttle the input stream, flag the data you want, suspend batch processes, paint it green so its more environmentally friendly or show it pictures of naked female computers so it gets excited and processes more.

All these are possibilities.

Or it could be that there's too many requests coming in from automated robots which means its falling behind.

Please lets not have this argument, I am begging you. I have worked my entire career, 25 years, in IT infrastructure operations and design.

	Quote:
	They also got a surprisingly decent amount of votes during the night.

British citizens live all over the world. They do let us out occasionally, you know.

[Blueangel]

	Quote:
	British citizens live all over the world. They do let us out occasionally, you know.

Plus the millions who work night shifts.

[SponPlague]

This sort of thing, if happening, is nothing new. When, in the 70s, there was a phone poll about whether to kill off Batman’s buddy, Robin, urban legend has it one guy had his modem make non-stop calls to the death number.

The organisers said the final vote was so close that if true, the guy had swung it for death...

[bowlie]

It took over 4 hours for the sole British citizen in our clan to get her verify email. Votes are only counted on verification.

The beeb has a story of the likelihood of bots here

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47668946

Of course there is no way of telling how many of the 6% who voted from other countries are actually citizens.

	Quote:	bowlie
	It took over 4 hours for the sole British citizen in our clan to get her verify email. Votes are only counted on verification.

Took about 20 seconds when I did it earlier, so I don't think that's the reason for slow updates.

	Quote:	bowlie
	Of course there is no way of telling how many of the 6% who voted from other countries are actually citizens.

Nor the 94% who claim to live in the UK. Just typing a valid postcode is all that's needed, so the whole thing is meaningless, except that it's quite likely that a significant proportion of the 3.3 million who've clicked it so far are genuine.

But I agree with the beeb's article that it's unlikely that bots are being used.

[DanLF]

	Quote:
	Took about 20 seconds when I did it earlier, so I don't think that's the reason for slow updates. Nor the 94% who claim to live in the UK. Just typing a valid postcode is all that's needed, so the whole thing is meaningless, except that it's quite likely that a significant proportion of the 3.3 million who've clicked it so far are genuine. But I agree with the beeb's article that it's unlikely that bots are being used.

This is from the petition website:

	Quote:
	The personal data we collect from people who start and sign petitions will include: your name your email address your postcode the country you live in whether you are a British citizen the IP address you use when starting or signing a petition

From the IP address they can know who is and is not in the UK. Unless a person uses a VPN. But then an IP can only used once, so this would probably make little difference to the overall figure.

So it's more than just trusting a postcode, and I would argue has some meaning.

Every time stlemens accuses someone he disagrees with of being a sockpuppet, you guys have to check the same stuff right?