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

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

#201

Post by johannes1234321 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #196

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…

But these are precinct officials, who took the time to become volunteers in this. They should be able to spend 1/100 of the effort that would take them to file taxes and preload a webapp.

From my experience with volunteers in different non-tech areas I have doubts.

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

#202

Post by phonon » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #127

wenbin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two founders of Instagram spent $65k (out of $500k they raised) to launch the very first version of Instagram in 2010 [1]. [1] https://lnns.co/8zhgtOF0YCo

So what? What's your point?

That they should have used Django for the backend :-)

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

#203

Post by uoaei » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #131

padseeker wrote: post #42

Shadow has got to be the worst name for a company associated with politics, unless you want to rub it in everyone's face

I’m truly astounded that anyone thought this was a good name and took the time to write this marketing copy: Why Shadow? When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion. We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side “Shadow” of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large. https://shadowinc.io/about

About as good of an intuition about optics as HRC and her whole campaign.

Remember "deplorables"?

Many people at this company were directly involved with the HRC '16 campaign.

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

#204

Post by zacharycohn » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #95

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…

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…

Unless they're A) very large, and B) selling commodities, a company that works with one party will not hired by the other party. The two parties have two completely different sets of infrastructure.

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

#205

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

thedance wrote: post #191

3uclid wrote: post #63

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps). ...Yikes.

The career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking american democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.

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 if they don't get the opportunity to work on serious projects with great sr devs and leadership invested in mentoring them)

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

#206

Post by jumelles » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #153

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 don't think this is a failure because an iOS app was delivered instead of a website.

One of the issues was that the app needed to be installed outside of the App Store. It seems that by being an app and not a website another hurdle was introduced.

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

#207

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

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.

fresh bootcampers with no sr devs to guide things. If you have no real world expertise then it is that easy to screw things up, apparently.

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

#208

Post by oblib » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #183

oblib wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With CouchDB you could have all that data in 1678 human readable files. Or 1678 password protected databases with one or more human readable files in them and let CouchDB handle user auth, which CouchDB makes really easy. You could do the same thing with a simple flat file database using directories and files and system level user access, and it'd be very fast too. This is pretty much the kind of thing CouchDB is des…

I have a feeling you haven't used SQL databases very often. This is exactly the kind of thing that SQL database is shine at and noSQL databases do poorly.

> 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, and it makes it very easy.

That's not the same as saying SQL won't work. Or even that it's a bad choice by design if it's what you're familiar with and good at using it.

How much time have you spent with CouchDB?

I do know that those coming from a long history of using SQL dbs often have a hard time using CouchDB. I had a hard time with SQL, so maybe it's a right brain/left brain kind of thing. Or maybe it's just not really wanting to learn a different way to do what you already know how to do with a different tool.

I chose to use a hand rolled flat file database early on (around 2000) as a backend for my web apps. When CouchDB hit v1.4 I switched to it because it worked very much the same as my db and offered a lot of advantages. It's gotten a lot better over the years since too.

So yeah, my view comes from a different perspective.

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

#209

Post by astronautjones » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:34 AM UTC

ikeyany wrote: post #33

yongjik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for tooting the horn again, but this is really a solved problem. You go with paper ballots and vote-counting machines. The result is available pretty fast, and when there's concern you can always re-count everything by hand. This is how it's supposed to work: https://youtu.be/ViK9pe9Pv_s?t=27

That's never been how caucuses work, so it's not quite a solution to this problem.

the solution is to modernize and stop having ridiculously archaic caucuses

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

#210

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #88

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…

One underlying question is why there was an app for this in the first place, when election process activists basically say do it on paper and by hand with people and audits. Anecdotally, nations doing it that way seem to report faster than when software and electronics become involved.

[deleted]