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Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

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Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#91

Post by Tainnor »

quonn wrote: post #24

In Germany the app was developed by research institutes. Then canceled. Then SAP picked it up and charged 10 million Euros for what is essentially a few 1000 lines of UI code. The German Telekom got the same amount, just „because“ and will additionally charge 2-3 million per month mostly for the hotline (with limited capacity). So the total cost will be 50-100 millions. Despite the fact that most technical work was a…

You can follow this request for comment: https://fragdenstaat.de/anfrage/zusammensetzung-der-kosten-f...

Legally I believe the government is required to answer that, even though it already seems they're trying to weasel themselves out of it.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#92

Post by markdown »

dividuum wrote: post #54
quonn wrote: post #24

In Germany the app was developed by research institutes. Then canceled. Then SAP picked it up and charged 10 million Euros for what is essentially a few 1000 lines of UI code. The German Telekom got the same amount, just „because“ and will additionally charge 2-3 million per month mostly for the hotline (with limited capacity). So the total cost will be 50-100 millions. Despite the fact that most technical work was a…

Not sure where you get the 1000 lines from. That's ridiculous. `cloc` counts 16k lines of Kotlin for the Android app and 22k lines of Swift for the iOS app. That does not even include other aspects like the server side code or support documentation. Also it's not only the app that had to be build: It required all the notification infrastructure and coordination to deliver test result to the app. This is really one of…

$10M for two mobile apps, some server side code, and docs? And you're defending this as if it's reasonable?

One could build 100 apps with server code and docs with that money, and still have a few million left over for hookers and blow.

Stop defending corruption.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#94

Post by rootusrootus »

cj wrote: post #22

Where has a contact tracing app been successfully deployed at a large scale? Have those places seen any positive effect? Apple/Google's APIs were widely discussed a couple months ago, but (at least in the US) it seems to have fallen off everyone's radar.

Most iPhones now have the API available, but for some reason it has fallen to the states to provide apps that work with those APIs, and (no surprise) 90% have elected not to. I expect the feature to be quietly dropped in a future release since it's clear nobody really wants it.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#95

Post by manquer »

newscracker wrote: post #71
tpush wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the app were available on the US App Store. Can't use it here in Germany because of my US Apple ID.

I really can’t understand this for a COVID-19 contact tracing app. You should find out how to give feedback on this to make them change availability to global. It boggles my mind that I have to remind many app publishers that we live in a globalized world and that it’s a natter of a few minutes work to just select the countries to make the app available in. More so for free apps where the publisher doesn’t have to wo…

Many times it has happens due legal restrictions that developer has in place in his org . It is worse when the publisher is a government body or contracted by one

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#96

Post by unholiness »

dividuum wrote: post #69
tpush wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the app were available on the US App Store. Can't use it here in Germany because of my US Apple ID.

My guess is that this is being worked on. See here: https://www.coronawarn.app/en/faq/#international

Sadly, no. It's been left to the states, and almost none of the states are planning on using apps[0].

This boggles my mind. Sure, it will take a reasonable effort to get widespread use of these apps. But the impact would be huge. Even low rates of app use have a real chance of lowering the reproduction rate significantly, and reasonably broad usage bring it less than 1.0.

The technology is designed in the right way, where anonymous data is being collected with no app required. People can download the app right after they get a positive test and report themselves positive retroactively. Same on the other side, you can download the app and know how much contact you've had with positive cases retroactively.

I'm no longer surprised the US federal government is doing nothing to push this. But I expected more out of the states.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/13/covid-19-exposure-notificatio...

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#97

Post by Someone »

rootusrootus wrote: post #94
cj wrote: post #22

Where has a contact tracing app been successfully deployed at a large scale? Have those places seen any positive effect? Apple/Google's APIs were widely discussed a couple months ago, but (at least in the US) it seems to have fallen off everyone's radar.

Most iPhones now have the API available, but for some reason it has fallen to the states to provide apps that work with those APIs, and (no surprise) 90% have elected not to. I expect the feature to be quietly dropped in a future release since it's clear nobody really wants it.

“but for some reason it has fallen to the states to provide apps that work with those APIs”

https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/Exposur... gives you that reason:

“In order to use the Exposure Notification APIs, You must be a government entity, such as a government health services organization, or a developer who has been endorsed and approved by a government entity to develop an Application on behalf of a government for COVID-19 response efforts. Entitlement Profile(s) are limited to one (1) Application per country unless the country has a regional approach, or as otherwise agreed by Apple.”

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#98

Post by _Wintermute »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #40
quonn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said a few 1000 and I actually browsed the code on Github when it came out. There were just six weeks to develop it. And the concepts where developed before by public research institutes for a tiny fraction of that price (not included). (If you insist, here is a small calculation. Let‘s say we charge a whopping 500 Euros per hour per engineer. In other words an engineer that costs 1 million per year. And we have 6…

20M for the boost of Germany's worldwide status is a drop in the ocean. The money was well spent, Germany did not embarrass themselves by penny pinching. It needed to work, and it appears to. Compare this to the UK who is still flapping around.

I think the UK's decision to switch to Google and Apple's framework was actually the right decision, although it's all rather moot and a waste of money as I can't see any contact tracing app work if nobody downloads it (see France).

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#99

Post by tester756 »

markdown wrote: post #92
dividuum wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you get the 1000 lines from. That's ridiculous. `cloc` counts 16k lines of Kotlin for the Android app and 22k lines of Swift for the iOS app. That does not even include other aspects like the server side code or support documentation. Also it's not only the app that had to be build: It required all the notification infrastructure and coordination to deliver test result to the app. This is really one of…

$10M for two mobile apps, some server side code, and docs? And you're defending this as if it's reasonable? One could build 100 apps with server code and docs with that money, and still have a few million left over for hookers and blow. Stop defending corruption.

>One could build 100 apps with server code and docs with that money, and still have a few million left over for hookers and blow.

100 random apps or app that have to handle pandemic in country?

Also what about support and infrastructure to handle those milions of concurrent users

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#100

Post by ericlewis »

a_paddy wrote: post #86
Kinrany wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this HN-speak for "it was a clusterfuck and there were too many stakeholders with incompatible requirements"?

You can check the GitHub but it looks like there were only a max of 3 devs involved https://github.com/hseireland/

That isn’t exactly accurate but yeah- it was the work of just a few. Some of us were brought in to help with certain details.

Edit: the github history here is what probably happened after they cleaned it up and open sourced it. Which isn’t uncommon I think.

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