1. Tell them that you provide a service to clients yourself.
2. Ask them if they can give you information on which app`s reputation system was tempered with.
3. Tell them that you will address this issue immediately and that you will remove the apps from the Appstore (indefinitely!!). Don tell them you will talk with your customers and try to fix this or something. Be frank and let them know that you apply a no tolerance strategy (just like them).
Seems to me like their DB is not reachable from all their webservers..
Or perhaps they did push a fix that has not reached all fo their webservers yet.
EDIT: now (few minutes later)it loads just fine, seems the fix had to be pushed to all servers and thats why it sometimes loads and sometimes it doesn`t
Silicon Valley is what it is, because some of the most brilliant people from all over the world migrate there in order to collaborate and built cool stuff.
It does not sort out his psycological problems, but after reading his post, I assume this will at least stop this from spiralling out of control and give him some peace of mind, at least for some time.
I know this is kind of an unconventional advice, but I feel like his current down is more about his life falling appart, so fixing this is the first priority, then comes takkling the depression.
With a huge mortage and no job its hard to make him view the world more optimistically.
Just my 2 cents.
PS: Is somebody here from B.C, Canada and in need of a Web-dev?
I don't know where you are from, but in germany basic statistic knowledge (like what you described: mean, median, standard deviation, confidence intervalls) is taught in high school. It's pretty common knowledge.
Edit: I know perfectly well that sattelites carry small amaounts of fuel, but this is just too... hmmm