I find it absolutely fascinating that the Iowa caucuses, which run on paper, had problems due to the failure of the app the Iowa Democratic Party selected. CNBC described the situation as representing “one of the most stunning failures of information security ever”.
The Iowa caucuses have always been as low-tech as one could possibly get. People physically stand in an area designated for the candidate they want to support. Everyone is counted. Numbers are literally written down on paper. After some math is done (also on paper), there is a second vote – minus the candidates that did not get enough support to be viable. Once again, someone counts the people, writes down the totals, and that determines the number of delegates each candidate receives.
The problem isn’t with this process, which has worked well in the past. Instead, the problem is entirely with an app that the Democratic National Committee recommended Iowa stop using altogether.
The New York Times reported that the app was “quickly put together in just the past two months.” Precinct captains had difficulty getting the app to function properly. From what I’ve read, it appears that the app would crash, or was not sending the full results to the Iowa Democratic Party. People resorted to calling in the results – which was standard practice previous to this year’s Iowa caucus. Some experienced hold delays of up to an hour.
In addition, the Iowa Democratic Party stated: “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results.” Spokeswoman Mandy McClure assured people the app didn’t go down and was not hacked. It is very fortunate that all of the data from the Iowa caucuses had been written down on paper. That information is still accessible.
This situation serves as an example of why it isn’t smart to report votes via an app. Things can get glitchy. Voting on paper is way more secure than electronic voting. We should be shifting back to that – nationwide.
Much has been said about the new Touch Bar feature on the latest version of Apple’s flagship laptop, the MacBook Pro. Some see Touch Bar as a cool new feature, with unlimited potential for different uses. Others look at Touch Bar as a gimmicky afterthought. Just a new shiny thing in a parade of new shiny Apple things that doesn’t add much in the way of true functionality to the MacBook Pro. The debate is sure to rage on for months (if not years) to come.
I used the crowdfunding platform Tilt a few times back when it was called Crowdtilt. My overall experience with Tilt was good, as I was able to successfully fund a couple of small campaigns. Since then, Tilt has expanded beyond just crowdfunding campaigns into event ticketing and peer-to-peer payments. All of these new features are front and center in the new Tilt 3.0 app.
Popular productivity and note-taking/sharing app Evernote announced it will be making changes to the different tiers the company has offered to its users. The biggest changes will impact those who use Evernote’s free Basic tier. The company has also said it will be raising prices for its two paid tiers for new subscribers, but won’t be raising rates on existing customers right away.
Posting classified ads can be an annoying but unavoidable aspect of modern life. It used to be, the only way to get a classified ad out into the world was to call up your local newspaper or other circular and pay an inflated rate for a few lines of text, followed by a phone number. This process has improved somewhat in the digital age. Sites like Craigslist make it relatively easy to post classified ads. But there may still be some room to improve the classified ad experience.