This guy made that $47,000 TSA app in 10 minutes
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Developer Kevin Burke recently revealed that the TSA paid IBM $336,413.59 for "mobile application development," which included the creation of a Randomizer app.
What did this app do? Basically, it randomly selected which lane (left or right) passengers should go into in a security line.
If that doesn't sound like a particularly difficult app to code, that's because it's not. In fact, developer Chris Pacia recently uploaded a YouTube video of himself coding a similar app in around 10 minutes. Pacia says his going rate for development is $100 an hour, which means this app cost him less than $20 dollars in labor to build.
TSA told Mashable that only $47,400 of its IBM contract was actually used to build this app, but declined to explain where the remaining $289,000 went. Still, even taking into account added paperwork and security measures, $47,400 is a far cry from $20.
Here is the video: