5 ms·

I feel really bad for the people who made this thing. It looks like it was mostly interns/people at their first job out of a bootcamp. It was a mess, sure. M

by blhack 7y ago

I feel really bad for the people who made this thing. It looks like it was mostly interns/people at their first job out of a bootcamp. It was a mess, sure. My first major project was probably a mess too, except my "mess" would have been looking at a display and going "huh?", not being accused of trying to undermine democracy.

joering2 7y ago
Its a classical example of government waste and corruption. Some shady company collected millions while interns took blame for their first app not being robust and at the level of banking app. Sadly the winner of this fiasco is Trump. It was similar with Obamacare website. Done to the tune of $5 billion dollars (!!) it was mostly prepared by IT corporations located in India, the source code is/was terrible with jQuery hosted on some third-party CDN, it was/is a disaster.
- jellicle 7y ago
  As this caucus was administered and paid for by the Iowa Democratic Party, a private corporation, this is not a classical example of government waste and corruption, unless you're making the subsidiary argument that government shouldn't farm out or privatize essential functions like elections, which I would agree with.
- teucris 7y ago
  > Its a classical example of government waste and corruption. I agree on the corruption part, but elected governments had very little to do with this. To me that’s a double edged sword - the caucus process could be an independent expression of the will of the people (in theory anyway) but it also isn’t subject to proper scrutiny nor required to be a transparent process.
silenussays 7y ago
The thing that blows my mind is that they only spend around $60k developing it. Steyer and Bloomberg have spent 400 million dollars combined on ads in South Carolina. Couldn't any of the several billionaires that support the Democrats have kicked down a couple hundred grand for this at least? Even Epstein randomly handed out 100k checks to profs at MIT. It's not that much money for these people.
- mtgx 7y ago
  Buttigieg also exchanged some money with Shadow -- the same company that's supposed to neutrally report results for the election candidates, among which Buttigieg finds himself. https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-acronym/ https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-a... Can you spell "conflict of interest/someone should do some jail time"? This sort of thing should be completely unacceptable in any election.
- vasachi 7y ago
  60k for a web page, that has a form to input about 8 numbers? With about 1000 users maximum?
  - silenussays 7y ago
    Well, apparently it wasn't enough.
    - vasachi 7y ago
      In Russia we sometimes joke, that a project can be implemented by a student paid with food. This project reeeeeally looks like such project. I mean honestly, probably anyone here can create this “app” in a day. Maybe I don’t understand the complexity, but it doesn’t feel like it has any. And if so, than no money could save it :)

by blhack 7y ago

joering2 7y ago

Its a classical example of government waste and corruption. Some shady company collected millions while interns took blame for their first app not being robust and at the level of banking app. Sadly the winner of this fiasco is Trump. It was similar with Obamacare website. Done to the tune of $5 billion dollars (!!) it was mostly prepared by IT corporations located in India, the source code is/was terrible with jQuery hosted on some third-party CDN, it was/is a disaster.

jellicle 7y ago
As this caucus was administered and paid for by the Iowa Democratic Party, a private corporation, this is not a classical example of government waste and corruption, unless you're making the subsidiary argument that government shouldn't farm out or privatize essential functions like elections, which I would agree with.
teucris 7y ago
> Its a classical example of government waste and corruption. I agree on the corruption part, but elected governments had very little to do with this. To me that’s a double edged sword - the caucus process could be an independent expression of the will of the people (in theory anyway) but it also isn’t subject to proper scrutiny nor required to be a transparent process.

silenussays 7y ago

The thing that blows my mind is that they only spend around $60k developing it. Steyer and Bloomberg have spent 400 million dollars combined on ads in South Carolina. Couldn't any of the several billionaires that support the Democrats have kicked down a couple hundred grand for this at least? Even Epstein randomly handed out 100k checks to profs at MIT. It's not that much money for these people.

mtgx 7y ago
Buttigieg also exchanged some money with Shadow -- the same company that's supposed to neutrally report results for the election candidates, among which Buttigieg finds himself. https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-acronym/ https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-a... Can you spell "conflict of interest/someone should do some jail time"? This sort of thing should be completely unacceptable in any election.
vasachi 7y ago
60k for a web page, that has a form to input about 8 numbers? With about 1000 users maximum?
- silenussays 7y ago
  Well, apparently it wasn't enough.
  - vasachi 7y ago
    In Russia we sometimes joke, that a project can be implemented by a student paid with food. This project reeeeeally looks like such project. I mean honestly, probably anyone here can create this “app” in a day. Maybe I don’t understand the complexity, but it doesn’t feel like it has any. And if so, than no money could save it :)