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The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

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Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#151

Post by hcknwscommenter »

briandear wrote: post #57
ch4s3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in 2016 it wasn't Well, you aren't technically wrong here, but I disagree with the sentiment. The RNC leveraged a the same kind of data used by the Obama team in '12 to squeak out an Electoral College win in `16. I think it's easy to get overly ambitious with civic tech and deliver expensive garbage. However, when people stay focused and deliver then I think the results speak for themselves. While the '12 and '…

> to squeak out an Electoral College win in `16. 304 to 227 wasn’t a “squeak”

That's one way of looking at it. Another way, is to break out how many of those electoral college points were won at razor thin margins. The reality is that the election was VERY close. 107,000 votes in three states decided the whole darn thing. WI, MI, PA, and FL were won by Trump with less than 2% margins each.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#152

Post by madeofpalk »

Aperocky wrote: post #144
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60k for an app that runs results collections for the Iowa Democratic Caucus sounds absurdly low. By comparison, just to get an app like that assessed for security issues --- and my assumption is that this is not an especially complicated app --- you'd already in the neighborhood of 20k.

Why they can't just do a https website with login is beyond me. Why an App? We all know there's nothing in it but boilerplate.

Would it matter? You've still got to build it, the cost would be (roughly) the same.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#153

Post by madeofpalk »

Aperocky wrote: post #132
war1025 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I heard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this morning on the radio. That sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which seems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-hours, or 15 man-weeks. That is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this.…

Why does it have to be an app? This is the part that confuse d me the most. Do it from an web page, use cloud, heck, it could even be cheaper. You only had 1000 precincts, all you had to deal with is 1000 calls - and if one of them went wrong, you'll let that person know through some kind of reviewing mechanism. I understand that $60K is nothing but this kind of failure is absurd.

I don't think this is a failure because an iOS app was delivered instead of a website.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#154

Post by peteretep »

Aperocky wrote: post #147
nooron wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks. Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republ…

I don't know how strong political beliefs correlate with technical ability, but from my anecdotal evidence, the people I work with are highly competent and not very political. While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

> While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

I mean, we’re doing anecdata here, but that doesn’t match my experience at all

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#155

Post by allovernow »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #146
allovernow wrote: post #40

The owners and staffers at Shadow INC have a severe conflict of interest. The company is loaded with former Clinton staffers and the CEO sent a tweet in support of Buttigeig, who recently paid tens of thousands to the company. Other suspicious dealings are a premature victory announcement by Buttigeig's campaign and a leak of a picture of paper tallies which included a PIN allegedly used to login to the tally app. Lo…

" I'm not necessarily trying to suggest anything" Aren't you though? I mean, your post is essentially "CLINTON" "ALLEGED" "SEVERE" "LEAK" . Lot's of words meant to imply some grand conspiracy. The reality is almost certainly that the developer (who has an unfortunate name) probably just didn't have enough time/budget to put out a decent product. Not everything is an actual conspiracy.

Is it really difficult to believe that a group of people in charge of something may be biased?

Calling it a "conspiracy" theory is just dismissive slander at this point. People have conspired successfully to achieve far greater and more malicious goals.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#156

Post by jancsika »

nooron wrote: post #66
whylie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Shadow is a firm that makes custom software for Democrats and progressives. If I can ask, why the specific nature for their clientele? Isolating your solutions to a specific political party seems strange to me especially if the emphasis on making money. If anything, money normally supersedes political leanings at the end of the day which makes the whole fiasco even stranger to me. Wouldn't you want to provide a solu…

Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks. Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republ…

So when Republicans and Democrats walk from the Capitol to their respective fundraising call centers, is your claim that that there is a different software stack in each building to handle the call automation?

I have no idea how to find out whether those tech stacks are indeed different. But if someone knows the answer I'd definitely find it instructive.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#157

Post by Aperocky »

peteretep wrote: post #154
Aperocky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how strong political beliefs correlate with technical ability, but from my anecdotal evidence, the people I work with are highly competent and not very political. While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

> While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech. I mean, we’re doing anecdata here, but that doesn’t match my experience at all

Thanks for your observation.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#158

Post by boardwaalk »

xnyan wrote: post #129
pastor_elm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple RESTful mobile-friendly web page could have handled this easy. What were these people thinking?

Counterpoint, the primary use environment of the application will be on a smartphone. Web applications are not even second class citizens on iOS. In a situation where the user will be entering data all night, opening and closing and refreshing, variable internet connection quality and so on, all else being equal I would imagine the ideal platform would be a native application. I lean towards agreeing with you that a…

You could use local storage and make an offline web app to avoid data loss.

I agree a web app isn't great for low friction data entry, but they only enter the totals for each candidate x each round, so that'd be a dozen or two dozen short numbers for the whole night per user.

I found this which has some specifics: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/iowa-caucus-voting-a...

The only extra thing I see is a photo upload. Which is not rocket science from a web app either. At least on iOS you can take people right to the photo gallery or the camera.

I would really like to believe this isn't a flask app I couldn't whip up in an afternoon and polish over a week in my free time... but I'm having a hard time.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#159

Post by umeshunni »

Aperocky wrote: post #134
3uclid wrote: post #63

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps). ...Yikes.

For a company of its size, it certainly got a good amount of C-titled people. CEO, COO, CTO... Here's the thing I don't understand about them, I thought startups were averse to this? Am I wrong about startups or am I wrong about them being a startup?

Titles are a form of compensation. When you are a cash-strapped startup, especially in a domain that's not particularly lucrative, you pay people with titles.

If this incident hadn't happened, these folks could have proudly claimed that they were the CTO/COO/CPO etc of Shadow Inc on their LinkedIns and whatever article BuzzFeed/Forbes wrote about them.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#160

Post by madeofpalk »

Aperocky wrote: post #147
nooron wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks. Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republ…

I don't know how strong political beliefs correlate with technical ability, but from my anecdotal evidence, the people I work with are highly competent and not very political. While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

for what it's worth, usually people think they are not very political, but that thought itself is quite political.
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