Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#131

Post by salakotolu » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

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.

It has fallen off because most states have decided not to use an app. The exposure notification itself can only be leveraged by government/health officials.

I released a blog post (10min read) this past weekend breaking down digital contact tracing in the U.S. I also discussed why Google and Apple's solution isn't sufficient.

https://tolusnotes.com/state-of-digital-contact-tracing-in-t...

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#132

Post by salakotolu » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

onionjake wrote: post #130

donohoe wrote: post #36

Is there an actual contact tracing app for the US or any US states yet?

Utah released one pretty early on (maybe April or May IIRC)? I think I heard recently they might be shuttering it because of lack of downloads.

The app failed to gain significant adoption. I believe it no longer trace's contacts.

Re: Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation

#133

Post by Polylactic_acid » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

stirlo wrote: post #118

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has had an app for a few months now that has not provided any useful information since its creation.

The Australian app (COVIDsafe) does not use the Apple/Google API becuase the Goverment wanted location tracking which is banned under their terms. This means the COVIDsafe app chews up battery life and is vulnerable to power saving features which shut down its communication after a short amount of time on iOS in particular. It would have been far better to use the API and obtain the location data from elsewhere (Goog…

They didn't even build the app. They just skinned an open source one which was made before the APIs came out. I doubt the government has the talent available to update it to use the new apis.