The referendum that is to be held in 1-O is about much more than language, cultural identity or economics: it is currently about defending the civil rights of the country and the ability of catalans to be able to freely decide their own future, exactly as it happened in other more democratic countries such as Canada or the UK.

But it isn't. It would be, if it were done legally, with general support, completely in the open, with fair campaigning for both sides, and with central support (which is what happened in the UK). But 1-O isn't a fair expression of the Catalan people's right to self-determination. That's just a thin veil based on a fair, but right now unattainable, ideal. What is really going on under the hood is basically an illegitimate power-grab by the pro-independence parties. Running a "democratic" process that is single-handedly controlled and promoted by those with an interest in a single outcome isn't democracy, it's the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, because the outcome will inevitably be what they want (as those who disagree will have a much lower participation in the poll than those who agree).

Yes, this is tough for the Catalan people, because they have not been given a fair chance to express their will yet, but this isn't it by any stretch of the imagination. 1-O isn't about self-determination, it's a bullshit political move that rises up to the political bullshit standard of the central government (which is legendarily full of it too).

The proof is that the outcome wildly differed from random polls.

It's a pretty obvious conclusion that if a referendum is unilaterally pushed by the party with one outcome as their agenda, that there will be a large bias for that outcome. Yes, it's difficult to make these kinds of polls perfectly fair (just look at Brexit or the US election for examples where things *probably* went the opposite way of what the population truly wanted by a small margin), but to even have a chance at approximating fairness the whole process has to be significantly backed by both sides. Otherwise there's no chance and it just becomes, at best, a publicity stunt, and at worst, an authoritarian attempt to force an outcome on the populace under a thin veil of "democracy". Democracy only works if we all at least agree on the *process*; without such agreement there can be no democracy.

The vote was already illegitimate; this is just going to slant it further. They already tried a non-binding "referendum" in 2014 with predictable results: 80% pro-independence (even though fair polls show more like 40%). The only way to have a fair referendum is to do it in a way that is approved and legal; the moment it becomes dodgy in any way, it severely biases the results because of course participation is going to be severely skewed towards people who want to vote yes.

This is why the central government only really has two choices: they can either support a completely legitimate referendum (whether this can actually be done legally or not based on the Constitution is unclear), or they can wholly suppress attempts. They can't allow an illegitimate referendum to go through because the result is going to be obvious and not representative of the citizens' will. The pro-independence regional government has stated they intend to declare independence within 48 hours after a "yes" victory; this would be ridiculous in this case given that result would in no way be accurate with the current circumstances surrounding the referendum.

(Note: I don't approve of the censorship part, just trying to explain what is going on.)

All of those disasters are trivial to plan for.

Step 1: have two datacenters in different locations
Step 2: test that you can fail over to the other site regularly

That's it. That takes care of every single disaster you have listed, with one solution. There is no excuse to not have two sites for a company as big as BA.

WannaCry exploits Windows XP's poor security and then uses security against the user, which is then defeated by, again, Windows XP's poor security.

It's security fail all the way down.

Deleted from your view only. As most databases, it will only flag records as "deleted", but not overwrite it.

Oh, then the anonymization and deletion pipelines I kept running while I worked for Google were all a ruse?

Seriously, this deceitful cynicism is getting old.

I'm not saying 10-15% isn't a big deal. The meters need to be fixed, but 10-15% isn't 600%.

If lighting is not the main driver of your energy usage, then there is no way replacing your light bulbs with LEDs is going to increase the metered energy usage. Even if the LEDs are causing your meter to over-report, which would likely only happen under ideal conditions that are not your case, the energy saved by switching away from incandescents would more than make up for it and you'd still wind up with a lowered bill. Given that lighting isn't the main component of your energy usage, it's unlikely you'd have this issue at all.

I pulled that 10-15% figure out of nowhere, but it's an educated guess for the kind of effect you might see under ideal conditions for an actual household that might actually exist. You'd still have to use identical LED bulbs behind dimmers set to the same dim setting and have that be a significant portion of your energy consumption to get a significant effect with the flawed meters. It's difficult to say exactly what the effect with mixed loads will be, but the tests in the article have all the hallmarks of a pathological scenario, and my opinion it's all going to be mostly a wash for the majority of people.

On the other hand, it's worth noting that typical AC dimmers, in general, tend to be terrible from an electrical engineering standpoint. Meter shenanigans aside (though for the same reasons), they also cause tons of RF interference and have other issues, and often significantly shorten the lifespan of whatever bulbs you connect them to. You're beter off with DC/PWM dimming (e.g. lights with built in brightness control, not standalone AC dimmers) or smart bulbs.

Oh, I don't expect them to. Power factor requirements need to dealt with via legal standards - customers shouldn't have to think about it.

But in practice no consumer is going to have an electrical load equivalent to what this test used. It's just extremely unlikely in a home scenario. So even if you buy cheapo LED lights with a bad power factor, and even if you use dimmers, it isn't going to be this bad. Nonetheless, meters should be improved to better deal with this scenario - the testing standards for them need to be updated.

Again, I'm not saying that's *acceptable*. I don't know why everyone seems to think I'm some kind of advocate for the power companies or something.

All I'm saying is the 600% number is just pure clickbait intended to induce outrage. Yes, these meters need fixing, but there is no indication that this is some kind of conspiracy theory to overcharge customers. Measuring power usage accurately is actually a difficult engineering problem when terribly non-ideal loads are present, and the 600% figure came up during a practically worst-case scenario test, with meters using a particular technology susceptible to it (note that another tecnology under-measured under the same conditions, so it goes both ways). The problem is simply that meter testing standards do not test for this, so meters are not certified to be able to deal with it.

What's the actual effect with real-world loads? We don't know. Someone needs to run a better study to find out. The testing standards need to be updated to test a wider variety of load conditions.

The simple fact of the matter is that no meter is ever going to be perfect, and in fact, some load conditions will never work due to sheer physics. Industrial customers are actually charged higher rates if their power factor is poor, because in fact using misbehaving loads like these puts a higher strain on the grid and increases transmission losses; residential users are actually getting a good deal there because they can have whatever horrible power factor they want and the power company has to suck it up and deliver it. Would you expect your meter to accurately be able to measure the power consumption of a load that averages 100W, but actually draws 10000W during 1% of the AC cycle? Would you consider that a reasonable load? It's great to think AC power is a magical perfect sine wave and you're allowed to draw whatever current waveform you want, but the laws of physics mean that isn't the case. The more you deviate from an ideal resistive load, the more problems you're going to cause. These meters should be improved to better deal with less than ideal loads, but no meter will ever be able to deal with an arbitrary load. Because physics.

Analog meters can be broken and under-measure too. You only have two data points. You don't know which one is incorrect. You need an additional control to find out.

Maybe your smart meter is reading too high. Maybe not. This article proves nothing relevant to your home, since its tests only yielded incorrect readings with a load that is definitely not what you have at home. That is not to say your smart meter definitely isn't over-reporting usage, but nothing you've said so far proves it is either.

Most modern PC PSUs have power factor correction circuitry (it's mandatory in Europe) and wouldn't cause these kinds of wild readings.

You can go to small claims court all you like, just don't expect to cite this study and automatically get an 83% refund on your electricity bill. You're going to have to prove that you're actually being overcharged and that your meter actually has excessive readings in your case (unless this becomes a class action, which would probably involve a much more detailed study under practical conditions and yield some average refund given the average amount overcharged).

All I'm saying is the chances of you being charged 6x usage are basically nonexistent. Yes, these meters have a problem that needs to be fixed, but the headline is clickbait. More realistically some fraction of people are being charged 10-15% over actual usage or some similar low figure, if they have the right usage pattern (e.g. a significant of lights behind dimmers and a large portion of their power usage is for lighting). Maybe not even that; this study didn't really perform a proper root cause analysis, so it's entirely possible that the excessive readings are a pathological case that goes away for all practical purposes once you add some resistive/well-behaved parallel loads.

Does it measure the incorrect amount of energy? Yes. Is it defective? Yes. Are the testing standard broken? Yes. Are people actually being charged 6 times their power usage in practice? No.

As I said, there is a certification failure here, but the headline and the statistic that all of these news sites are parrotting is pure clickbait.

56% measured power usage much greater than what was actually being used in a ridiculous corner case scenario involving a parallel string of identical low-quality LED lights with an absolutely dismal power factor, connected to a dimmer to make the power factor even more extreme. Read the actual article with the current waveforms. They looks like something a 2 year old scribbled on a piece of paper, not a sine wave.

Yes, there's a certification failure here (meters are not tested with non-sinusoidal current loads), but no, nobody's meter is actually measuring 6 times real power usage in reality. The moment you have any reasonable loads in parallel the current waveform will start being something more reasonably approximating a sine wave and the meter will read more accurately.

This is the actual list of tests from the article:

• Resistive load 1800W: <3%
• 20 LED + 30 CFL <3%
• 20 LED + 30 CFL + Cx <3%
• Dimmer 90deg, LED+CFL -28%, +64%
• Dimmer 90deg, LED+CFL + line choke <3%
• Dimmer 135deg, LED+CFL -32%, +575%

So no, unless your whole house consists of crappy LED and CFL lights behind a huge shared dimmer at a 135 degrees setting, and no other appliances, your meter isn't going to read 600% of real energy consumption. To even get 164% readings you still need everything behind a dimmer at 90 degrees.

His bank probably runs on mainframes.