Hacker News Reader

I thought the assertion was their apps were never run. Not that the videos were never watched.

Right--that's the assertion made is this well-done and damning post:

https://medium.com/hackers-and-hacking/b839268fb82d

> I quickly checked Testflight and our app data to see if it had been run.

So, the assumption is that judges' computers don't block phone-home and other tracking/analytics services? That'd be a very poor and dangerous assumption to make.

Testflight is an Android/iOS app analytics tool.

Our app created a record in salesforce the first time it's run on any device. No new records. They confirm in their press release that the final 5 were chosen on video/description alone.

"We instructed both our first and second round judges to evaluate the submissions using the apps’ description, screen shots and the demo video using the same four criteria"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com