The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by jmull » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:04 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #246

jmull wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the…

How is this even helping Buttigieg? The count has been frozen at "62%" for six hours now. That just happens to be the first/only level at which "Mayor Pete" had a delegate lead over Bernie, even though Bernie still leads the popular vote. Several days from now, when the count ticks up to 100%, Bernie will lead both measures by large margins. Still, in the meantime, the corporate media can pretend like the Mayor is ah…

But your scenario doesn’t actually help Buttigieg. Also the app people can’t control the timing of the manual reporting, so there would somehow be a completely new element of the conspiracy. And you’re switching from a conspiracy orchestrated by Buttigieg to one orchestrated by the corporate media, Bloomberg, and/or the industrial military complex.

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

#262

Post by krrrh » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #185

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.…

$60K would probably be enough to create a landline boiler room phone bank staffed with volunteers to answer the phones from people reporting results. It wouldn't have the "wow" factor, but it would be a lot more secure.

With $60k, they need not even be volunteers.

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

#263

Post by oblib » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #237

oblib wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a feeling you haven't used SQL databases very often. No, I've not. I just never liked the way it worked so I have to honest and open about my prejudice. > This is exactly the kind of thing that [...] noSQL databases do poorly. That's really not true. I've built web apps that do pretty much exactly what that voting apps does and I use CouchDB to do it because it was built specifically for this kind of thing,…

(Not the person you are replying to, but..) I've used CouchDB on and off for some years[1], although I've used SQL databases for longer. I've also used NoSQL databases ranging from MongoDB to Cassandra, Hadoop, BDB (and variants), DynomoDB, etc. CouchDB (or any other NoSQL database) just isn't the best choice here. The application is literally tables of relational data with multiple simultaneous users which is pretty…

"The application is literally tables of relational data with multiple simultaneous users"

How is this data "relational"?

Each precinct has 3 numbers to submit for each candidate, that's not a big task for one person, and none of those precinct's candidates numbers are related to anything else in the db except the grand total of all precincts numbers and that's a one way relationship. The grand totals never change any of the data they're derived from.

If you want to give each candidate's precinct representative access to the precinct's db in CouchDB than you just limit their access to one file for their specific candidate in a db for their specific precinct, so by design it's purposely not related to any other candidate or precinct.

That's why CouchDB is a good choice for this kind of app.

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

#264

Post by coding123 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #59

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

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.…

I heard the same thing in my morning radio program, it was NPR but I don't know what program.

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

#265

Post by mycall » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

pricees wrote: post #7

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

How 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.

I don't know. I feel this may be a great application of blockchain and public ledger tech. Of course it would need to be open source... And... You know.. Obviously written in Rust.

https://votecoin.site

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

#266

Post by matchbok » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:13 AM UTC

mindgam3 wrote: post #227

Let me get this straight. A company deeply embedded in the Democratic establishment (0) that has worked directly with Buttigieg — the candidate with close ties to Facebook aka the company undermining democracy since 2016 — managed to totally screw up, potentially undermining the campaign of Sanders, the anti-establishment candidate. Yeah, democracy is fucked. 0. https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-sha…

Never let facts or reality get in the way of a good old conspiracy. Everything you just said is extremely exaggerated.

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

#267

Post by WheelsAtLarge » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:15 AM UTC

This app failed because no one did enough testing and enough training. What I saw was a relatively simple app to input some data. The problem seems to have been that they never tested it at scale and they assumed that all the users would be able to download it and use it.

My experience is that customers hate to pay for testing once they see the product running. They assume that it's done. I had a customer tell me that if I did the programming right it should always work and testing should be minimal. I had to explain to him that that's not the case with software and testing is one of the most important parts of the software development cycle. He felt it was a waste and that I was looking to add extra costs for no reason.

I bet there was not enough money. People seem to feel that a few grand will cover the costs. They figure 10k is an outrageous amount. What they don't seem to understand is that it will barely cover the costs of planning the app.

Both the developers and the people that approved the app for use need to take responsibility. Too bad since it could have saved a lot of money and time in the long run.

BTW, this could have been a Google Form with a spreadsheet as a back end. But user training would have still been an issue. You can't get around that.

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

#268

Post by SyneRyder » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #229

code4tee wrote: post #198

I don’t agree with the use of an app here for many reasons. That said, such an app would basically need secure authentication and a form to upload some pre-templated numbers. It seems pretty hard to screw that up so badly but clearly it’s quite easy to make a complete dumpster fire from those requirements.

From this article, https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-... they used the a free tier of TestFairy that limited the number of test users to 200 and on iOS used TestFlight and did not use either the app store for the final version or make an enterprise version, and possibly could not distribute the app to the approximate 1700 users. They still would have needed to get the app through the app sto…

> To fix it quickly would have just required them to go back to calling in results by voice as in past years. Don't know why they did not just do that.

They did that - but apparently the phone number for calling in the results was the same as for "help my app doesn't work", so the phone line was flooded. Unfortunately I don't have the source link to hand, so feel free to treat that as hearsay.

However, CNN had a live cross to someone trying to call in their results, and after an hour on hold, when they finally got through, the other side hung up on them while they were broadcasting live on air:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus...

"It took an hour and a half for Shawn Sebastian to get hung up on in 10 seconds. And it unfolded on national television Monday, making the moment, in the words of some, “one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen on cable TV.”"

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

#269

Post by matchbok » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #246

jmull wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the…

How is this even helping Buttigieg? The count has been frozen at "62%" for six hours now. That just happens to be the first/only level at which "Mayor Pete" had a delegate lead over Bernie, even though Bernie still leads the popular vote. Several days from now, when the count ticks up to 100%, Bernie will lead both measures by large margins. Still, in the meantime, the corporate media can pretend like the Mayor is ah…

Sanders does poorly (because most people don't like him and and lost last time)

"Must be a conspiracy!!!"

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

#270

Post by jliptzin » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

giarc wrote: post #241

Aperocky wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agree with you. Why an app, heck this could be done with a private Google Sheet. If they wanted call in tool, I could set this up in Twilio in 5-10 minutes.

Yea, exactly. The stupidity is mind boggling.