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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

#101

Post by przyrostek »

tpush wrote: post #65
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…

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

Have you tried using http://switchr.imagility.io/ ?

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#102

Post by ericlewis »

Kinrany wrote: post #89
IncRnd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounded like the opposite of what you wrote.

Yes, but given the previous phrase: > I am not sure how much I can talk about that it genuinely seemed like it might be a way to list the problems without saying that there were problems. I'm sorry that it seemed like I'm attacking the GP. I did not intend to, but I also knowingly ignored this interpretation, because wording is hard

I didn’t mean it that way, I’m just not sure how much I could talk about it. For one, because I was involved but only so much. And two, because it’s not really my thing to talk about per se.

As for problems, not really any problems. It was quite straight forward. I’m just not sure my company would appreciate me speaking on their behalf about details.

Edit: but I can answer like, general technical details and things like that.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#103

Post by ericlewis »

donaltroddyn wrote: post #82
ericlewis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on this project a bit and have a deep understanding of how it went about, though, I am not sure how much I can talk about that. edit: I guess what can be said was it was a highly efficient project, and there weren't so many fingers in the development pot so to say.

Thanks for working on this.

Appreciated, I did very small bits.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#104

Post by tester756 »

rsynnott wrote: post #25
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.

Large-scale deployments in Ireland (1.4 million out of 4.9 million people) and Germany (12 million out of 80 million people), anyway. In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases, which is positive; if they'd been discovered at all through conventional means that would have taken longer and the people concerned could have been spreading it for longer. There has also been successful deployment…

> In Ireland it has lead to the discovery of a number of positive cases,

How many?

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#105

Post by ericlewis »

ericlewis wrote: post #100
a_paddy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add on, these core 3 people really were the folks who did majority of the work.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#106

Post by quonn »

tester756 wrote: post #99
markdown wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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

If you would look at what the app actually has to do to „handle the pandemic“ you‘d find most apps would be more complex.

Same for what you call concurrent users. Those users have no identity at all and essentially need to anonymously download a bunch of static files which are the same for everyone from a bucket periodically. Put a CDN in front. Done.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#108

Post by skwb »

denzil_correa wrote: post #46
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…

> In Germany the app was developed by research institutes. Then canceled. Why was it canceled?

I cannot speak for Germany, but I have a bit of experience in how public health projects are funded in the US. Usually, the set of incentives are misaligned for maintaining products.

Research institutes are typically funded through contract grants, where you as a principle investigator are supposed to be using the money for a research project. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you want to make a large name for yourself in academia, doing maintenance projects isn't the way to get yourself promoted; all the flashy rewards are in publishing novel cutting edge ideas in high ranking journal.

I am not an expert on how things are in Germany, but if they're anything similar to the US experience, I'm not surprised at all that they would fail due to the misaligned incentives.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#109

Post by justinclift »

adrianmonk wrote: post #23
justinclift wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the percentage of people who install the country’s contact tracing app is driven much more by the quality of the people That sounds strange. Explain more?

So far it seems like a given country/jurisdiction standardizes on one app for everyone to use. (In theory, apps could be interoperable, but I don't know of this having happened.) So, the citizens' choice isn't between one app and another app. It is only whether or not to use the app that has been chosen for them. Therefore, their choice doesn't tell you much about the quality of the app. The primary driver of the dec…

> The primary driver of the decision is whether or not they're willing to take steps to fight the disease.

Here in Australia, our gov is extremely incompetent at delivering successful IT projects. They also have a terrible track record with securing data, scaling services (eg national-level IT outages), don't admit to mistakes, etc. :(

> It's more of a reflection of whether you were hungry.

No. To go with your example, if you know the people preparing the meal are incompetent, don't follow anything like reasonable hygiene standards, have previously caused significant outbreaks of disease themselves, and each time they're caught they promise to do better (but actually don't do so)... would you eat something they've prepared for you? Especially prepared at short notice where corner-cutting is expected? ;)

Trying to say that only idiots (etc) wouldn't install such an application is seriously wrong. ;)

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#110

Post by oezi »

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.

I honestly think this will be a net loss financially for SAP and Telekom. To get it done so quickly in parallel to the contact tracing API being just developed will have required a team of their best developers. The lost opportunity cost for this alone will be huge. Then it is not just development, but also QA, community management (git hub issues are in the hundreds), legal, project management, etc. I think the primary reason SAP and Telekom even offered to participated at all was political pressure.

The loss in public reputation if they had failed was not worth even participating.

Also, having worked in a corporate setting would have told you that you can't launch anything for less than 1m EUR/USD, can't launch two things for less than 5m and 3 for less than 20m.

20m really is a laughable sum.

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