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

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

#341

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #79

bluGill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a caucus not a primary. From what I understand there are no ballots at all - you physically walk around the room until you find the group you want to support, if your group is large enough to choose delegates (generally there are more slots than people to fill them) to the next convention. The delegates are in theory (in practice it is different) not required to vote for you, so when your group chooses people…

Once everything has been decided, an iron clad paper trail IS produced. There’s nothing anonymous about the results document and it is signed in front of witnesses. AIUI, the paper doc isn’t discarded until after the party convention.

I didn't say there was no paper trail. I said there no ballots. That is a subtle difference that if you don't go to democrat caucus in Iowa you probably don't understand.

Theoretically a group can win delegates in a caucus with just an issue not a candidate - for example you can all agree that the most important issue is Oranges (a fruit that doesn't grow in Iowa...) and get a delegate without committing to a president. Of course in practice most people show up only for the president poll and leave as soon as that is over.

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

#342

Post by esrauch » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

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…

There's no way 60k can pay for multiple people for a few months: your 60k median excludes overheads, insurance, etc.

To be honest, I'm not sure if that a few people for a few months is even enough to avoid something like this from happening: this is crazy stress launch in gymnasiums with very high device variety. It probably demands a couple months just of serious dedicated QA and dry runs if you really wanted to avoid this outcome.

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

#343

Post by freeone3000 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #218

johannes1234321 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is downloading a native app easier for Average Joe than clicking a link to a web app that's served with appropriate Cache-Control headers and uses localStorage?

Cache-Control gets ignored when browser tabs are "paged out", especially on mobile. It's egregious on Mobile Safari, where effectively only two or three pages are "live" and the remainder have to be re-grabbed. No connection? No re-grab. The version fetched might be any version from any point in history, including your "does this work?" flight that you pushed (because of course you pushed one). There's also very little mechanism to tell ahead-of-time whether a network request will work - you'll have to essentially pre-flight all server communication, which is doable, but not easily accessible the way that a "save locally, upload in background once internet" would work as a native app.

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

#344

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #261

jessaustin wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Buttigieg is 38 years old. His previous jobs were with McKinsey and "military intelligence" and his previous election total was 8,000 votes. He isn't trying to win the presidency. Iowa itself is a tiny state with a tiny number of convention delegates. The whole point of Iowa is that the winner gets some momentum. In this case, the winner won't get any momentum. That's the point.

Some people like to bore us with the "once is a coincidence" maxim. Some of them might like to pretend that this caucus is "once" and we'll have to wait a week or two to get upset about the ratfucking. Normal voters can remember four years ago, however, and this isn't even just the fourth time the national "Democratic" apparatus has ratfucked Bernie.

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

#345

Post by skrowl » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

LargeWu wrote: post #18

skrowl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With strong voter ID. Paper ballots do you no good if you can't verify that they were cast by a real person that was eligible to vote in that area, and that they only voted once.

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

> a virtually nonexistent problem

Watch Broward County FL this November. Whole boxes of filled out ballots will be "found" mysteriously. Just like every election.

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

#346

Post by LargeWu » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

skrowl wrote: post #345

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.

> a virtually nonexistent problem Watch Broward County FL this November. Whole boxes of filled out ballots will be "found" mysteriously. Just like every election.

That is election fraud, perpetrated by the people running the elections themselves, not voter fraud. If you can't trust the people running the elections, then no amount of voter ID is going to matter.

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

#347

Post by brlewis » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #343

brlewis wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is downloading a native app easier for Average Joe than clicking a link to a web app that's served with appropriate Cache-Control headers and uses localStorage?

Cache-Control gets ignored when browser tabs are "paged out", especially on mobile. It's egregious on Mobile Safari, where effectively only two or three pages are "live" and the remainder have to be re-grabbed. No connection? No re-grab. The version fetched might be any version from any point in history, including your "does this work?" flight that you pushed (because of course you pushed one). There's also very litt…

As an alternative to having them download a separate app, have them download a browser that supports the stale-if-error Cache-Control directive. It's fair to ask people doing serious work not to use Mobile Safari.

It's also fair to ask them to keep checking the native or web app to make sure the data was sent, so one doesn't have to rely on web workers staying alive in the background. Just save to localStorage, catch network errors and keep retrying.

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

#348

Post by tptacek » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #224

astronautjones wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the solution is to modernize and stop having ridiculously archaic caucuses

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.

What about the Iowa Caucuses makes you believe these are "high information" voters? They often have nonsensical positions and ranked choices. They're committed voters, but that is not at all the same thing.

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

#349

Post by bjterry » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #332

bjterry wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

I think there's something political about it, but I also believe that it could be done for non-political reasons (spiritual reasons, practical reasons, mental health reasons). As a pure narrative, it would most likely be politically motivated, but in hypothetical-land it wouldn't necessarily be. Even if there is something "political" about it, it doesn't really map to what people mean when the use the term "political." It may map to opinions about how the state should be governed, the broadest definition of political, but it's much more frequently used to refer to a particular subset of debates which are at least minimally polarizing in some way.

> 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.

All I'm trying to point out is that it's a legitimate spectrum. When I say "someone disengaged enough that they don't care who will become the next president" it's very easy for the reader to imagine someone in shoes very like theirs and making that choice somewhat actively to not be engaged.

But in the wide world, you can be simply unable (or unwilling) to devote any energy to understanding how the current political environment relates to your life, and thereby form no opinions one way or the other. Perhaps you work 16 hours a day to support your family, or you live in a country only temporarily and don't even understand the language. This would imply the fact that you lack the resources to form a political opinion is "supporting the status quo."

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

#350

Post by LargeWu » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #333

tathougies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Not only provably, but explicitly. Voter suppression was the primary intent.