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.
The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
191–200 of 399 posts
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#192How long will it take our society to realize that democracy is threatened when machines are involved in voting or vote counting? Going back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is imperative.
Paper ballots with scanned results in the booth. No scan means redo your vote. That way you have a track record + instant results. Folks can take home the stub to ensure non-repudiation etc.. They can look up the serial number on the stub they take home to see for sure it was recorded. FYI we should also have basic ID requirements for voting. The arguments against it are kind of ridiculous, and federal or state ID sh…
You realize that every single thing you said there is political, right?
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#193Checked 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.
The career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking american democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
IKR? And for all options they may end up with, they chose an APP. WHY? Does laptop not exist anymore? Does phones lack the ability to open webpages anymore? Hasn't logging in been one of the things we perfected over 30 years?
Yes, if you want to have a small tool for volunteers without logistics of shipping machines, laptops don't exist anymore. Developing desktop software for such purpose is way more complex, especially when considering updates etc. Which Windows version are you targeting? And Mac? What libraries you need? For app development, even if for two platforms (Android and iOS) it is a lot simpler these days, than desktop.
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
" 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.
Aren't you literally proposing that there is a conspiracy? And since there is no evidence then isn't that a theory?
What do you think it should be called? "conspiracy speculation"/"conspiracy hypothesis"/"possibility of a conspiracy"?
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
By being an app, they can easily advise the user "download it in advance and register in advance" by that verify they have it installed. Then they can make sure the app will work to collect the data in case of wifi/mobile network issues so that the user enters the data on the caucus site and if that building for whatever reason has no network go outside to upload. Making sure that average Joe preloads a webapp and to…
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
IKR? And for all options they may end up with, they chose an APP. WHY? Does laptop not exist anymore? Does phones lack the ability to open webpages anymore? Hasn't logging in been one of the things we perfected over 30 years?
Yes, if you want to have a small tool for volunteers without logistics of shipping machines, laptops don't exist anymore. Developing desktop software for such purpose is way more complex, especially when considering updates etc. Which Windows version are you targeting? And Mac? What libraries you need? For app development, even if for two platforms (Android and iOS) it is a lot simpler these days, than desktop.
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#198It seems pretty hard to screw that up so badly but clearly it’s quite easy to make a complete dumpster fire from those requirements.
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
With the exception of CTO, none of them seem to be engineers. If I'm on the hiring end, this is not something that will help. Instead, if someone's going to sell me the importance of their title at their 6 people startup, it's going to negatively affect their chances.
Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night
#200Ok, did anyone actually design the app?