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

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

#281

Post by asdff » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

lastpingstandin wrote: post #274

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…

If there was some grand conspiracy here, wouldn't it make more sense to release a working front end, and do whatever evil machinations / rigging behind the scenes... Intentionally releasing a broken app is an idiotic excuse for a conspiracy.

If there was some grand conspiracy there wouldn't even be a news story. We'd have read Iowas results in the early hours of the morning and moved on with our lives.

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

#282

Post by asdff » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

ballark wrote: post #251

hodgesrm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are arguing a conspiracy of some kind it is probably best to rule out incompetence before moving on to active malfeasance. This is after all the same political party that managed rollout of the non-functioning Obamacare website.

Please provide a reason why incompetence is any likelier than malfeasance.

Because for malfeasance you need to be smart and clever and for incompetence you need to be dumb or just tired that day and write a typo.

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

#283

Post by robomartin » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

0xEFF wrote: post #109

robomartin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please educate me on something. I fail to understand why "making custom software for " is something anyone would want to do in the context of owning and growing a real business. This seems fraught with all kinds of issues. First of all (and it seems I've been using this word a lot lately) this turns software development into a religion rather than a business with solid business strategy. The equivalent in other busin…

My dentist made me a custom night guard. Is he not owning and growing a real business? It’s quite the leap you make from there to religion.

You are extrapolating something I did not say.

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

#284

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #219

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most software development work a bootcamper is just as likely to be a solid team member as someone with a CS degree after a few years of good industry experience. They key issue isn't that they are bootcampers but that they are fresh bootcampers with no more senior people around to guide the project or mentor them. (similarly a fresh CS grad is fairly worthless in serious production work and will not improve much…

That might be true, but if I get to choose between someone with no industry experience, and another person with no industry experience whose mind has been poisoned by a certificate mill, I’m taking the former. Those boot camps are, literally, worse than useless.

Yeah I guess I would choose a CS grad also but "poisoned by a certificate mill" is pretty dramatic. I don't have any illusion fresh bootcamp grads are awesome sr devs but seriously you can, again surrounded by more senior mentors, put a high potential bootcamp grad on a project and they will be far from worse than useless almost immediately and certainly after a few months be quite valuable because their albeit very minimal and focused training got them a toehold and some skills they could apply and expand on over time. Sounds like you had a bad experience.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by asdff » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:15 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…

Chances are whatever software developers are used by the rnc also work for trump or whichever Rs campaign. If you need something done, you will probably be asking your buddy what they did to do that rather than digging through the local classifieds for someone with zero connection to your personal network at all. If your boss tells you to find a dev tomorrow, you are probably just gonna text your fellow intern buddy what company their group went with and go with that to make your life easier.

That being said, it's important to grasp what actually happened with the app rather than give in to misinformation and political apathy surrounding the news. Iowa voted by paper, so we are all just sitting tight while the hand count occurs as is traditionally done.

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

#287

Post by Dtrane » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #242

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…

If you are arguing a conspiracy of some kind it is probably best to rule out incompetence before moving on to active malfeasance. This is after all the same political party that managed rollout of the non-functioning Obamacare website.

If I were a good politician, I would definitely know hanlon's razor and make sure incompetence seemed plausible

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

#288

Post by asdff » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #85

sl1ck731 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if there is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics in any way. Especially if its a company whose sole purpose is developing software for a political party.

If you're in the vote counting business, it's a conflict of interest to also be in the vote making business for candidates.

Good thing they are in the tally business and not the counting business, then. What is the difference, you might ask? One failed last night while the other one is occurring right now.

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

#289

Post by chillwaves » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

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.

Because politics is more accessible than the tech industry. Whatever conclusions you are drawing, they are not justified.

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

#290

Post by tonicb » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

bluehat wrote: post #94

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…

Going to especially second that last bit. Not everybody is expressly data science, but most companies start running into some sort of data at one point or another. Campaigns aren't wrong to be concerned about who has their data. There is good historical reason for them to be skeptical that security on your system will be strong enough to prevent customers from accessing other customer's data. https://time.com/4155185…

Really interesting point here. Although, there is a little more nuance needed and this is one of the big issues plaguing the campaigning software space - not all are created for the same goals and not all offer the same services.

If you take your example of NationBuilder, a company I know well as I led their European expansion, it only sold software not data. Unlike most American campaign software, NationBuilder does not sell data as part of their package. NationBuilder does not believe that you can create a sustainable and powerful community by using data that you have purchased, and thus only sells the platform.

So yes I agree with you that while campaigns can (and should) be paranoid about who has access to their data, and even how it is being used, this data brokerage model isn't the model that all companies adopt and it's a really important distinction to make.

While I am here, I will add the following, tech companies who want to democratise democracy (and I'm not saying that's the mission for everyone) and help lower the barrier to entry, cannot claim to do so if they alone decide who has access to these tools. Crucial decisions, such as which parties have access to the latest technology, should not be in the hands of a few tech titans of Silicon Valley - where the power they already wield is already unmeasurable.

All of the above is a fascinating and important debate and also a very American one. Campaigning and political technology is incredibly partisan in America, compared to Europe where what we fear most are monopolies.