
Move Fast and Break the Iowa Caucus - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/opinion/iowa-caucus-app.html
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thedudeabides5
Great title. Good reminder to the occasional overconfident technologist
(myself included) not to trust untested machines with critical
responsibilities.

When your gmail doesn't load for 30 seconds, that's not the end of the world.
When an app breaks a process that's been working relatively smoothly for
hundreds of years, it may be time to take a moment and reflect.

Also another example of why spreadsheets will never die. As long as the human
can see the data, the inevitable machine breaks can only cause so much damage.

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jhbadger
Although even spreadsheets have gotten too "smart" for their own good and can
corrupt data. Biologists have actually had to rename the septin-1 gene because
spreadsheets containing its abbreviation "sept1" get automatically changed to
01-Sep in Excel.

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rednerrus
I feel like a company named "Shadow" funded by "Acronym" doesn't instill
confidence.

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peac3
I think whats more alarming, is that if you read either Shadow or Acronym's
websites is that they are primarily based on an ideological "Progressive"
position. Is this what anyone wants the future of politics. Shadowy opaque
companies running an arms race to win elections.

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saeranv
What's wrong with them being ideologically progressive? This is tech developed
for the Democratic Party, of course they're going to be progressive.

~~~
inkeddeveloper
Not sure how tech and progressive politics interact; handling of data is
another issue but that's not the tech side IMO.

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dnpp123
More infos :

[https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/04/mysterious-startup-
shadow...](https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/04/mysterious-startup-shadow-under-
scrutiny-after-iowa-caucus-meltdown/amp/?__twitter_impression=true)

[https://twitter.com/drmistercody/status/1224597485781303297](https://twitter.com/drmistercody/status/1224597485781303297)

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mc3
Good old votetech

