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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

#221

Post by nooron »

ncallaway wrote: post #180
jancsika wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when Republicans and Democrats walk from the Capitol to their respective fundraising call centers, is your claim that that there is a different software stack in each building to handle the call automation? I have no idea how to find out whether those tech stacks are indeed different. But if someone knows the answer I'd definitely find it instructive.

Probably. Whenever I've done calling or canvassing for progressive causes or democratic candidates we've used some version of NGP VAN ( https://www.ngpvan.com/about ). I wouldn't be surprised if there are some cross-party solutions (especially the closer you get to core infrastructure—I'm sure both parties use AWS).

You are right, in the deepest recesses there is crossover. Stripe, media companies/FB for ad buys, Microsoft Azure, AWS. It is very rare anywhere else.

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

#222

Post by allovernow »

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…

>There are not a lot of companies that make software for Democrats because it’s an awful job. You make very little money. Everyone hates you when things go wrong, which they will, because the product testing cycle and margins are nonexistent. Then everyone will assume things went wrong because...

In other words it's exactly the kind of business that attracts activist types who have non-monetary motivations and it could therefore present an opportunity for tampering, particularly since any discrepancies can be dismissed as bugs from underfunding and rushed development.

Whatever is actually going on, the system is clearly insanely broken.

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

#223

Post by mardifoufs »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #205
thedance wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 means almost no skill/knowledge outside of that specific stack

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

#224

Post by rayiner »

astronautjones wrote: post #209
ikeyany wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#225

Post by oblib »

nl wrote: post #188
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…

So... What happens when two people share authentication (which will happen!) and access the app at the same time. Maybe you are going to try and implement file-locking, yourself, badly? SQL has literally been used for this kind of app since the 1980s. It's simple to use, and easy to find developers who use it.

>>What happens when two people share authentication (which will happen!) and access the app at the same time.

If they both come from a different district and log into CouchDB they'll either only write to their file (one db, multi-user) or write to a file (or files) in their db (db per user).

If two users write to same file in same the db at the same time the DB will note the conflict and decide which data gets stored in the file.

https://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/replication/conflicts.htm...

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

#226

Post by ars »

oblib wrote: post #208
ars wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You're right, I have not used CouchDB, but from my understanding it shines on unstructured data, where you might need to store slightly different things from different places.

But in a voting application structuring the data is actually very very helpful, it keeps bad data out, and helps with auditing.

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

#227

Post by mindgam3 »

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-shadow-a...

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

#228

Post by numpad0 »

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?

How haven’t PWA disappoint you

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

#229

Post by stevenwoo »

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.

From this article,

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-...

they used the a free tier of TestFairy that limited the number of test users to 200 and on iOS used TestFlight and did not use either the app store for the final version or make an enterprise version, and possibly could not distribute the app to the approximate 1700 users. They still would have needed to get the app through the app store approval process for general release to fix the app at least on the iOS side as far as I understand it. To fix it quickly would have just required them to go back to calling in results by voice as in past years. Don't know why they did not just do that.

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

#230

Post by stevenwoo »

davidwitt415 wrote: post #137
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…

Apparently, the app wasn't wasn't released until Feb 1. Also, The New York Times reported that the Iowa Democratic Party was secretive about using the app, and that it asked that Shadow’s name be withheld from the public. "According to a person familiar with the app, its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret, especially from the Iowa precincts where it would be used." This doesn't necessarily…

As someone is not a huge fan of Democratic party - no conspiracy but total incompetence by Shadow - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-... It's like they had no one on their staff who actually released an app through the Android or iOs app stores.
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