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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

#301

Post by chipotle_coyote »

chillwaves wrote: post #293
rayiner wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caucuses are great. High information voters who have to publicly stand by their candidate, and persuade other members of their community to support their candidate. More on the “democracy” side of the equation than the “republic” side.

That is not what happened.

The OP wasn't being metaphorical in any sense, they were literally describing how caucuses work. If your first choice doesn't meet a qualifying threshold in your precinct, then you can switch your vote in the second round, and supporters of other candidates can literally try to convince you before that round. It all happens in the open with people literally crossing to different parts of the room to caucus for different candidates. The app -- and its failure -- didn't change any part of this process.

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

#302

Post by jpindar »

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.

Or they just don't talk about it at work, I sure don't.

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

#303

Post by nl »

BubRoss wrote: post #276
nl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I hate politics so much, I think every nation needs a 'caretaker' Pres/PM from the bureaucracy - someone who can clean out the cobwebs, get rid of a bunch of old laws, clean up the tax code, take on the public unions (I mean reform not destroy, I mean teachers probably need higher salaries) and basically do a big, operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics. You realize that every s…

Why would an operational house cleaning be political?

I'm going to assume good faith here, and answer it seriously.

> "clean out the cobwebs"

This isn't specific enough to respond to.

> "get rid of a bunch of old laws"

Which ones, and why? Sure there are probably some like where people can tie up horses or something that aren't especially relevant, but having them there causes no harm because they aren't used.

> "clean up the tax code"

There is no way to do this without creating winners and losers. Choosing who wins and who loses is a political act.

> "take on the public unions"

Taking on unions is one of the most political acts you can do. Whether or not it is "right", unions are a powerbase of some political groups.

> "operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics"

What - specifically - do you mean? The two examples you give here are highly political.

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

#304

Post by taurath »

listenallyall wrote: post #300
frankzinger wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...Iowa Democrats, on the advice of the national party, abandoned plans to have caucus results called in by phone because of security concerns and instead build an app..." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-s...

Security concerns? The same article states "the app had to be downloaded by bypassing a phone’s security settings" (emphasis mine)

No kidding - the instructions for the app itself came with a "secret pin code" printed out on paper for the volunteers to use to install it. Why not just give them a "secret pin code" to call in with to verify who they are, its just as secure.

The story when it fully comes out will be quite interesting. The assumptions that we all are making are almost certainly to turn out wrong in some way - I'm looking forward to trying to compare the ways in which I was wrong on my thinking today given the relatively sparse reporting thus far.

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

#305

Post by listenallyall »

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…

>> You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it

Lol, this explanation... This same political party will sue you into oblivion if the thing you "believe strongly in" happens to be a religion, and thus you are uncomfortable, say, baking a cake for a gay wedding.

Yes, under the law, sexual orientation is a protected class, while political leanings are not. But claiming a right to refuse to serve unwanted clients, while disallowing someone else's company to do the same, just reeks of massive hypocrisy.

[edited to remove objectionable (?) words]

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

#306

Post by _fbpt »

abetlen wrote: post #9

This Motherboard article has more details on the app including screenshots https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3m33x/heres-the-shadow-i... My favorite screenshot is the last one, it looks like a generic mobile Firefox error for a misspecified URL.

In particular it looks like Firefox Fenix/Preview (or possibly Reference Browser), not Fennec (regular Android). Only Fenix and Reference have bottom URL/tab bars. Fenix has a purple "Try Again" button, I don't know about Reference Browser, and Fennec has a gray button.

One possible issue is that Fennec/Fenix doesn't open http URLs in external apps by default (unsure about custom protocols), whereas Chrome does.

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

#307

Post by bananabreakfast »

js2 wrote: post #128
pessimizer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the plan was clearly that they would reuse the software for every caucus during this primary, so the $60K was one of a series of payments for the same product.

Only four states use caucuses (IA, NV, TX, CO).

CO cancelled all caucuses after 2016 when 10's of thousands of people got turned away because most of the gathering places were over capacity. Sanders supporters especially felt extremely underrepresented since they were young and showed up less early than others

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

#308

Post by taurath »

Barrin92 wrote: post #299
krainboltgreene wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wrecking american democracy It's a reporting tool. How the heck did you get to this position?

it failed to reliably report on one of the traditionally pivotal elections in the American election cycle. Which is pretty bad in an era when trust in political institutions is low. Given the numerous safety standards and qualifications we require of engineers in the most mundane jobs I'm not sure why interns get to write software that underpins the electoral process.

And putting literally any failure at the feet of a jr. developer is completely wrong.

State party officials who made the plans to use the app without clearly any vetting, the management of Shadow who must have been making insane promises on a shoestring budget, the DNC who allowed the app anywhere near an election, and even pushed the state party officials in the direction of using it.

In big tech areas, there's usually a firm assumption of liberal-leaning employees and technologists. Maybe all the democrats who can code are too busy in the advertising industry.

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

#309

Post by BubRoss »

nl wrote: post #303
BubRoss wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would an operational house cleaning be political?

I'm going to assume good faith here, and answer it seriously. > "clean out the cobwebs" This isn't specific enough to respond to. > "get rid of a bunch of old laws" Which ones, and why? Sure there are probably some like where people can tie up horses or something that aren't especially relevant, but having them there causes no harm because they aren't used. > "clean up the tax code" There is no way to do this without…

I only asked why operational house cleaning would be political

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

#310

Post by unlinked_dll »

mardifoufs wrote: post #223
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…

A fresh bootcamp graduate can be a good developer, but I would argue that someone fresh off of bootcamp is way less prepared than a CS grad to directly start working in a small team with mostly non technical people. A CS grad is usually way more knowledgeable when it comes to software architecture, handling data, optimization etc. Bootcamps usually focus on specific stacks and tools, which can be great. But that mean…

My experience has been the same with fresh grads from everywhere. There's a non negligible amount of work to get them up to speed with business communication and task definition.

Basically schools give you assignments or projects that are well defined and have clearly defined goals/results and cover solved problems. While that's true in the generic sense of business problems it's not how we work, we have to be able to take initiative to define and adjust those goals as reality shifts and goals are more loosely defined. You really have to put it the work to get new folks up to speed with defining their tasks to reach the goals.

Not for nothing but it's tough when you don't have a senior or two on hand to bring people up to speed and mentor them for a month or two before you can really get a new grad productive. And it's difficult with time constraints to do that well, I have to define my own tasks and can't spend as much time defining things for a junior as well as I'd like or train them as much as I should.

College grads may be more blank a slate but I haven't noticed a big difference in terms of actual onboarding. For what it's worth I think boot camps are the next trade schools and we're going to see a division in labor between software techs and engineers just like we have for electrical engineers and electricians or MechEs and mechanics. Tale as old as time, all the work is valuable, just more nuanced.

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