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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

#331

Post by dragonwriter »

pas wrote: post #329
godelski wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's the kind of money you spend funding two interns for a few months. Is it a surprise that this app looks like it was designed by a few interns on a tight schedule?

70K is the median programmer income in the US. (Based on a very thorough let's look at the first thing Google regurgitates!) It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months. Plus Shadow Inc's overhead + profit. It's absolutely bonkers how shitty the industry is. A kid can throw together an app in a few days, but somehow 60K USD is not enough. That said I work in "consulting…

> 70K is the median programmer income in the US. (Based on a very thorough let's look at the first thing Google regurgitates!)

BLS, which while not perfect has far better data than most other sources trying to do this independently, says $84,280 in 2018.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

> It should have been enough to fund a business analyst and an app developer for a few months

Probably. But that doesn't matter if no one advised the client that they needed a realistic, production-like field test (most of the cost for which wouldn't have been part of the contract, since it would have been client side; the developer-side support for that is a small fraction of the cost.) Errors in report definitions that exclude some data in circumstances that don't come up in developer-constructed testing scenarios is, like, not at all uncommon.

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

#332

Post by madeofpalk »

bjterry wrote: post #330
madeofpalk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even if many people think that they "aren't very political" and are incorrect, there are some people that aren't very political and this is justified. For example, if you are a 5 year old and you believe you are not very political, you are probably correct. If you have been living in the woods for the last 30 years, don't know anything about modern politics, and believe that you are not very political, it would be we…

You don't think there's anything political about removing yourself from society for 30 years and living in the woods?

> I think if someone is disengaged enough that they don't care who will become the next president, and there are no local political issues they will argue with someone about

What this is saying is that they are happy with the status quo, and they see no room for improvement, or they're not bothered if things are improved one way or another. You can be not interested in politics, but I think doing that is just supporting the current politics.

For many people, just existing is pretty political, like when an entire country has a debate and a vote on whether you should be afforded basic human rights.

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

#333

Post by cyphar »

tathougies wrote: post #24
LargeWu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, in reality, a virtually nonexistent problem. It's often used as a rationale for voter suppression, though.

False: not having voter ID is used as a rationale for voter ressurection though: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/2-investigators-chic...

Courts found that the North Carolina voter ID laws were designed to be discriminatory[1]. Same in Texas[2]. So it's definitely true in at least two cases that voter ID laws were provably designed for voter suppression.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-c... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/20/texas-voter-...

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

#334

Post by Psyladine »

bart_spoon wrote: post #255
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 '…

Absolutely not. There remains 0 evidence that the microtargeting strategies employed by both the Obama and Trump campaigns did anything. It gets lots of press, but literally no one has presented anything to demonstrate that any of it moved the needle at all. I personally worked on digital marketing campaigns for years as a data scientist in a previous job, and have become entirely disillusioned with the entire notion…

"advertising doesn't work" didn't work for RC Cola... There is more to it than clickthrough. It's saturation. You don't have to believe in the system for the system to believe in you.

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/04/im_not_the_one_you_s...

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

#335

Post by relaxing »

cosmodisk wrote: post #325
mncolinlee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100/hr is remarkably low in agency mobile work. When I was doing agency work five years ago, even our Bulgarian developers were billed out at more than that. I was billed out at 3x that back then and it would be more now. It's really challenging to find skilled developers who want to perform agency work and to keep them from leaving for a competing firm.

There would be endless queues if those Bulgarian devs would get even a fraction of that rate. They were lucky if they were getting more than $10-15/h. I also doubt there would be huge shortage of US devs willing to do the work if they were to get $120-150/h. The other problem is modus operandi of a standard software agency- it just suck your sole out for those extra lines of code.

The developers don’t get all the money they’re billed out for. The billable rate goes to the company to pay business expenses, of which developer salary is a minor fraction.

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

#336

Post by sopooneo »

nl wrote: post #175
Aperocky wrote: post #144

Earlier 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.

A large amount of the cost (perhaps most of it) isn't in building the software, it's in working out what they need. Yes, a webapp will cost less. But if the vendor did this bad a job on an app they probably could do just as bad on a webapp. Changing tech wouldn't have solved the problem for this vendor.

Absolutely yes. It's true of all organizations, but I've found that with non-profits especially, just figuring out the need you are trying to address is quite difficult.

It makes me think of all that uproar for some iPad app for the TSA that just randomly showed a left or right arrow to send tell people which line to get in. Surely easy to code. But I bet it was months or years of interviews to determine that's all they actually needed.

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

#337

Post by claudeganon »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #301
chillwaves wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

But the Iowa caucuses also has a delegate apportionment system that privileges rural voters over those in large cities, similar to the electoral college. It strains meaning to describe something designed to produce an undemocratic outcome as being more democratic than republican.

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

#338

Post by claudeganon »

jessaustin wrote: post #126
tptacek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as an "Iowa DNC". You presumably mean the IDP, the Iowa Democratic Party. They're separate organizations. The DNC and the state parties are often at odds with each other. There's a good series of "Reply All" episodes about this, focusing on the Alabama Democratic Party.

Since I heard those episodes I've been hoping that the Alabama situation isn't typical. Do you have any special insight about Iowa? Is there an Iowa kingmaker running everything from behind the scenes?

Given that the failed caucus app CEO is married to a Buttigeig staffer and was partying with the Iowa Democratic Party head and other members of the Buttigeig campaign right before the caucuses, I would say so:

https://mobile.twitter.com/taraemcg/status/12239909781277245...

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

#339

Post by jadell »

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…

Did they make the text-banking app for Buttigieg, or merely sell them SaaS? Biden, Clinton, other Dem campaigns, and the DNC have all used Shadow's software.

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

#340

Post by bluGill »

csours wrote: post #102
bluGill wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An app like this should not be on any app store ever. You want only pre-chosen people to have access to the app. It does no good for anyone else to have access to this and it can hurt. 4 years ago I had the Republican app on my phone. I was the backup reporter just in case the main reporter had problems. Since the main reporter used the app correctly I didn't use it, but I had access to it.

Access to install the app MUST not constitute Access to the system behind the app.

I agree, and there was more security. However access to the app implies the ability to DoS the remote with too many login attempts... Restricting access to the app was just one layer in the security scheme making it a little harder for someone who wanted to mess with the system.
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