Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
I don't think so. More that the transfer of patients without them being tested might have transferred COVID into a lot of care homes, where the residents were pretty much sitting ducks.
To put the tweet in context, it's worth remembering that Sam Freedman was Michael Gove's SPAD-who-wasn't-Dominic-Cummings. He's smart and not reflexively anti-Government.
Just looked at flight radar and not a plane crossing the Irish sea at this moment
We're in a good crossroads location (far from unique in the UK) some Manchester arrivals, plenty of LBA arrivals in both runaway directions, northbound on the arc from LHR to west coast USA, and the M62 track from USA, Dublin and Liverpool to northern Europe and arcing down to the middle East.
The odd planes I see now all seem to be intercontinental paths
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
Password oddity: logging into Paypal I get a message purportedly from Norton (who I don't subscribe to) telling my password has been compromised, why not let it change the password and store it in my vault? I did, briefly, then change my mind and change the PayPal password to one I've never used before. Logging out and going back into Paypal, I get the Norton message again that the password has been compromised (not possible as not used before).
This looks like a classic scam. But googling "Norton password manager scam" doesn't show up anything of interest. Any suggestions?
Well, you could use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to check if your email address was leaked in a publicised hack.
still with for the moment but I live in hope of a c**k up by Khan. Plus with Jezza gone people won't feel the necessity to register a Lab anti-Corbyn vote via Khan.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
Just looked at flight radar and not a plane crossing the Irish sea at this moment
We're in a good crossroads location (far from unique in the UK) some Manchester arrivals, plenty of LBA arrivals in both runaway directions, northbound on the arc from LHR to west coast USA, and the M62 track from USA, Dublin and Liverpool to northern Europe and arcing down to the middle East.
The odd planes I see now all seem to be intercontinental paths on the M62 track: Amsterdam-Mexico, Dallas-Frankfurt, Dublin-Beijing and the like.
Apologies my editing on Android is very limited atm.
There is a league table for how democratically-elected leaders have coped with the pandemic so far. At this stage, Jacinda Arden is the clear leader. There is an unholy dogfight between Trump and Bolsonaro for bottom place, and I'm afraid Johnson is hovering just above the relegation zone. But most of the crucial loosening the lockdown fixtures are still to come.
To be fair New Zealand is only 200th by population density, the UK 49th
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
Just looked at flight radar and not a plane crossing the Irish sea at this moment
We're in a good crossroads location (far from unique in the UK) some Manchester arrivals, plenty of LBA arrivals in both runaway directions, northbound on the arc from LHR to west coast USA, and the M62 track from USA, Dublin and Liverpool to northern Europe and arcing down to the middle East.
The odd planes I see now all seem to be intercontinental paths
It amazes us when we look up into a clear blue sky with no planes flying high above.
We normally have many flights most of the day over us here in Llandudno and indeed when we flew to New York from Manchester some years ago we passed directly over our house
Dell is throwing all those items into vmware as like HP they are splitting the less interesting hardware business from the (in theory) rapidly expanding cloud / consultancy / software businesses.
Except 'the cloud' just means a data centre you don't own filled with hardware you don't manage.
Dell are still very interested in supplying that hardware. I heard recently they are building a 'cloud' data centre for one of the major ISPs
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Just a thought - to any enterprising UK resident journalist reading this - put in an FOI request for the signed-off spec tender document for the Coronavirus tracking system.
Also work on getting a copy from sources at the vendor - some of whom are probably looking at getting fired next week.
I'm willing to bet that the spec contains 100 pages of backend web and database requirements, 100 pages of reporting requirements and 10 pages of consumer app requirements - half of which concern how the NHS logo is to be used.
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
Question - how does the UK government not know these things? Answer - we've had enough of experts with your opinions. Why do you the experts think that your opinions are of more value than the opinions of Matt Hancock?
I know. Its facile. Its stupid. Yet its what we have had throughout over Brexit.
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
A lengthy list just in hospitality, and don't forget all of the supply and support businesses below them who have no customers. Unless you extend the scheme to the wholesalers and the cleaners and the service companies and the suppliers then you'll not be able to reopen restaurants as they won't be able to get food to cook.
So thats hospitality. As the guidance remains WFH unless you cannot, that means public transport not running fully as you cannot social distance people on trains buses and planes. Which is all their staff, their support staff, the businesses who sell stuff to the people who use public transport.
Schools and nurseries? Can't reopen as you can't socially distance kids. A possible limited part time reopening is in the offing. I'd already covered wholesalers who supply school meals in the first paragraph, but as kids aren't going back their parents can't go back regardless of the sector they work in. Nor can you say "get the grandparents to look after them whilst you work" as they are in the protected group.
Etc etc. Its not as simple as "end the furlough scheme" when so many people will be unable to return to work. And thats to say nothing of businesses who will be thrown under the bus by "restaurants can reopen for takeaway only" which means no support which means they fail. With March rents barely paid it seems unlikely that June rents will be paid, so expect an avalanche of insolvencies from mid-June onwards...
Surely public transport needs to open as fully as possible to enable those who have to travel to work to do so as safely as possible. One of the things that caused overcrowding on the Tube at the beginning of lockdown was the reduction in serviced
Transport is going to be the biggest problem to solve, especially in the larger cities. White-collar staff in London are going to be WFH for probably the rest of the year, and an awful lot of companies will be looking at the whole business model of having thousands of people spend several hours a day and a lot of their income to all congregate together in the most expensive offices in the country.
The Tube, even running a full service (which the Unions and their Mayor don't want to do) barely provides enough capacity for the blue-collar and key workers, without serious overcrowding.
Maybe it will encourage the arses to look at diversifying the UK rather than previous policy of concentrating all the resources and expenditure in London, they are reaping what they sowed,
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Just a thought - to any enterprising UK resident journalist reading this - put in an FOI request for the signed-off spec tender document for the Coronavirus tracking system.
Also work on getting a copy from sources at the vendor - some of whom are probably looking at getting fired next week.
I'm willing to bet that the spec contains 100 pages of backend web and database requirements, 100 pages of reporting requirements and 10 pages of consumer app requirements - half of which concern how the NHS logo is to be used.
You expect the spec to actually be that detailed - I suspect it will be far less detailed than that.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
I don't think so. More that the transfer of patients without them being tested might have transferred COVID into a lot of care homes, where the residents were pretty much sitting ducks.
To put the tweet in context, it's worth remembering that Sam Freedman was Michael Gove's SPAD-who-wasn't-Dominic-Cummings. He's smart and not reflexively anti-Government.
I think the answer is there was no where else to put them. The Nightingale hospitals should have been partly fitted out as fever hospitals and "infectious" care homes for those discharged from hospital.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
Lol - you don't have to be the Chancellor to be able to do adding. You don't have to be the minister talking up the app to know how coding works. "This app will do x,y and z which are impossible" doesn't require someone to wait for it to be rolled out and tested. Its either possible or it isn't.
Again, its the "we've had enough of experts who say things that contradict politicians" mentality.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
Maybe not, but I've spent six of the past nine months doing business analysis and quality assurance for a startup mobile app company - a fair amount of which was spent annoying the hell out of the senior management by giving them bad news about fundamental design aspects of their system.
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
Question - how does the UK government not know these things? Answer - we've had enough of experts with your opinions. Why do you the experts think that your opinions are of more value than the opinions of Matt Hancock?
I know. Its facile. Its stupid. Yet its what we have had throughout over Brexit.
The Government see it as a data collection and reporting exercise so they literally just treat it as that.
And I have seen a reason why the NHS and Government do not wish to use Apple / Googles approach but it's impossible to tell if that reason was an original reason or part of the forthcoming excuse plan and as it's on a facebook message I won't publish it here.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
I’m sorry Brom, but if users will have to keep relaunching the app, it’s not going to work. Whoever signed that off was clearly high as a kite.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A couple of observations on these figures. The UK added approximately 12 000 excess deaths to its reported figures yesterday, giving an excess recorded to April 24 of about 40 000. The excess for Italy for March was 25 000. The period was earlier but so was their epidemic curve. So we don't have the end figures right now, but unless something unexpected happens the UK will end up with more excess death than Italy for the initial phase of the epidemics in each country. The percentages are heavily dependent on where you are measuring the curve and don't really tell us anything right now.
While the UK will probably end up with a greater death toll than Italy overall, it was spread out more whereas Italy was very localised to Lombardy. Arguably that's a better situation to be in. We have been a bit luckier than Italy.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
What GCHQ security hole? that just appears to be a unsubstantiated, inaccurate rumour. There is no evidence based on the screenshot I saw that one exists.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
What GCHQ security hole? that just appears to be a unsubstantiated, inaccurate rumour. There is no evidence based on the screenshot I saw that one exists.
It is based on answers at a select committee hearing.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
I’m sorry Brom, but if users will have to keep relaunching the app, it’s not going to work. Whoever signed that off was clearly high as a kite.
Perhaps it's worth waiting for it to be ready for a national rollout before folk dismiss it. My friends who build apps say the tech is there for a centralised NHS app and it's just the privacy issues that remain. I don't see any valid reasons for why it won't be in my hand and working this time next month.
It seems like the government didn't want to transfer people from care homes to hospitals because they thought they might be filled with younger patients with Covid-19. But that was always very unlikely given the fact that younger people are hardly affected by it, (apart from a small number with serious health conditions).
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
What GCHQ security hole? that just appears to be a unsubstantiated, inaccurate rumour. There is no evidence based on the screenshot I saw that one exists.
It is all rumour unless you've examined a copy of the app, I suppose. Has anyone who knows what they are doing done so?
It wouldn't be a surprise that there might be a security hole - after all, anyone rooting their phone is using one that could conceivably used to bypass the restrictions.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A couple of observations on these figures. The UK added approximately 12 000 excess deaths to its reported figures yesterday, giving an excess recorded to April 24 of about 40 000. The excess for Italy for March was 25 000. The period was earlier but so was their epidemic curve. So we don't have the end figures right now, but unless something unexpected happens the UK will end up with more excess death than Italy for the initial phase of the epidemics in each country. The percentages are heavily dependent on where you are measuring the curve and don't really tell us anything right now.
While the UK will probably end up with a greater death toll than Italy overall, it was spread out more whereas Italy was very localised to Lombardy. Arguably that's a better situation to be in. We have been a bit luckier than Italy.
Down to idiots arguing that 1 death less than Italy is a great success for the Government, why no comparison with a success like Germany , ie we are at least 6 times the deaths, who the fcuk cares how we compare with worst or second worst. That just about sums up the level of the UK under these tossers , as long as we are only second last it is a success. Third rate Government leading a third rate country, Hurrah.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
They looked at Italy and panicked. Do you remember the Italian Doctors telling the UK that the Health System in the north of Italy was so much better than ours and there was no way that the NHS would cope. Thats why they cleared the hospitals and cancelled all operations. It was a pefectly rational thing to do but as it turned out it was not required and led to loads of empty hospitals.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
They looked at Italy and panicked. Do you remember the Italian Doctors telling the UK that the Health System in th north of Italy was so much better than ours and there was no way that the NHS would cope. Thats why they cleared the hospitals and cancelled all operations. It was a pefectly rational thing to do but as it turned out it was not required and led to loads of empty hospitals.
Italy was also reporting a much younger demographic presenting at hospitals, and that was something that was totally unexpected. Now I don't know if the actual data showed this was in the end true, but it was certainly what front line medics were anecdotally reporting.
Remember there were hospitals that started to deny treatment based on age, because they had become overrun with 50-60 year olds.
Now this might be due to coronavirus having been widespread without detection. The hypothesis was that youngsters had been spreading among themselves in Milan where they commute to work, and travelling back home, giving it to family.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's any basis to the claim that they were using a GCHQ-supplied 0day. This would be quite stupid if true, because the vendor would almost certainly quickly patch it. I think someone just mentioned that they'd got some advice from GCHQ (which could mean anything - maybe just running the crypto scheme past one of their boffins to ask if they'd missed anything) and the rest came out of somebody's imagination.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
I’m sorry Brom, but if users will have to keep relaunching the app, it’s not going to work. Whoever signed that off was clearly high as a kite.
Perhaps it's worth waiting for it to be ready for a national rollout before folk dismiss it. My friends who build apps say the tech is there for a centralised NHS app and it's just the privacy issues that remain. I don't see any valid reasons for why it won't be in my hand and working this time next month.
My mate down the pub :rolling: But thanks for confirming you aren't an expert and happy to talk about things as if you were.
Now I will be very blunt here - I really hope that the app actually works - everything I've wasted my morning posting is based on the fact that
1) my hope is probably very different from reality. 2) I do this type of thing for a living and used to make my living fixing screw ups exactly like the one we are about to see. To me I'm currently watching a slow motion car crash in which I can see exactly what is about to happen and everything that occurred up to this point that makes it inevitable.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
No, but unless you've been involved in testing the app you're only guessing it won't work. it doesn't even roll out to the general public until Thursday on the Isle of Wight alone.
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
I’m sorry Brom, but if users will have to keep relaunching the app, it’s not going to work. Whoever signed that off was clearly high as a kite.
Perhaps it's worth waiting for it to be ready for a national rollout before folk dismiss it. My friends who build apps say the tech is there for a centralised NHS app and it's just the privacy issues that remain. I don't see any valid reasons for why it won't be in my hand and working this time next month.
If only it were that simple.
The app, as currently designed, simply doesn't work unless you have the app open and visible, with the phone unlocked, at all times. It works in a lab but not in the real world. The reason this is the case is that it's impossible for it to use the Bluetooth hardware otherwise.
The only chance you have of an app on your phone in the next month, is if NHSX abandon everything they've done to date and start again using the Apple/Google protocol that explicitly doesn't support location tracking by governments.
Password oddity: logging into Paypal I get a message purportedly from Norton (who I don't subscribe to) telling my password has been compromised, why not let it change the password and store it in my vault? I did, briefly, then change my mind and change the PayPal password to one I've never used before. Logging out and going back into Paypal, I get the Norton message again that the password has been compromised (not possible as not used before).
This looks like a classic scam. But googling "Norton password manager scam" doesn't show up anything of interest. Any suggestions?
Well, you could use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to check if your email address was leaked in a publicised hack.
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
I can only assume that the govt thinks Apple and Google will let them get around it. It will be an interesting moment if the government chooses to push them on this.
"Scotland refuses to join NHS contact tracing app: Nicola Sturgeon says she will wait to see if it works before committing as experts warn Matt Hancock he will 'almost inevitably' face a legal challenge over privacy concerns"
"Scotland refuses to join NHS contact tracing app: Nicola Sturgeon says she will wait to see if it works before committing as experts warn Matt Hancock he will 'almost inevitably' face a legal challenge over privacy concerns"
It seems like the government didn't want to transfer people from care homes to hospitals because they thought they might be filled with younger patients with Covid-19. But that was always very unlikely given the fact that younger people are hardly affected by it, (apart from a small number with serious health conditions).
It is also possible that people in care homes are generally too frail to be ventilated, so admission to hospital is pointless. The other assumption might be that once one resident of a home has Covid, they all do. My conclusion is that the care home system is a not capable of dealing with a major epidemic and certainly has not done so.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
They looked at Italy and panicked. Do you remember the Italian Doctors telling the UK that the Health System in th north of Italy was so much better than ours and there was no way that the NHS would cope. Thats why they cleared the hospitals and cancelled all operations. It was a pefectly rational thing to do but as it turned out it was not required and led to loads of empty hospitals.
Italy was also reporting a much younger demographic presenting at hospitals, and that was something that was totally unexpected. Now I don't know if the actual data showed this was in the end true, but it was certainly what front line medics were anecdotally reporting.
Remember there were hospitals that started to deny treatment based on age, because they had become overrun with 50-60 year olds.
Now this might be due to coronavirus having been widespread without detection. The hypothesis was that youngsters had been spreading among themselves in Milan where they commute to work, and travelling back home, giving it to family.
This is why relying on anecdotes is not a good idea. The anecdotes from northern Italy turned out to be a very bad guide to the UK situation.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I’m sorry Brom, but if users will have to keep relaunching the app, it’s not going to work. Whoever signed that off was clearly high as a kite.
They can't mandate that you have to have the app to be allowed out as not everyone has a modern smart phone. Those of us who do won't have the thing running all the time nor can they enforce it.
"Excuse me sir can I examine your phone to check your app is running in the background" "Sure" "It isn't running in the background" "I'm sorry officer it must have stopped - my phone is on battery save" "Not good enough. You're under arrest until a team of police tech officers can examine your phone and prove that it was running"
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
I can only assume that the govt thinks Apple and Google will let them get around it. It will be an interesting moment if the government chooses to push them on this.
I believe they did.
Apple / Google know, however, that if they did allow a Government to ride roughshod over privacy settings Microsoft or Someone else (Amazon say) will be back in the mobile phone industry and rapidly the No 1 part of it.
So the odds of Apple / Google allowing it to be broken was
1) unlikely and commercial insanity 2) required Apple / Google to do work and they aren't going to do work that isn't of benefit to them.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
They looked at Italy and panicked. Do you remember the Italian Doctors telling the UK that the Health System in th north of Italy was so much better than ours and there was no way that the NHS would cope. Thats why they cleared the hospitals and cancelled all operations. It was a pefectly rational thing to do but as it turned out it was not required and led to loads of empty hospitals.
Italy was also reporting a much younger demographic presenting at hospitals, and that was something that was totally unexpected. Now I don't know if the actual data showed this was in the end true, but it was certainly what front line medics were anecdotally reporting.
Remember there were hospitals that started to deny treatment based on age, because they had become overrun with 50-60 year olds.
Now this might be due to coronavirus having been widespread without detection. The hypothesis was that youngsters had been spreading among themselves in Milan where they commute to work, and travelling back home, giving it to family.
This is why relying on anecdotes is not a good idea. The anecdotes from northern Italy turned out to be a very bad guide to the UK situation.
Problem is the UK government knew the Chinese data was dodgy. What do you go on?
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
And if we're talking behavioural psychology, imagine being told that you have to self-isolate for two weeks because a friend of your great aunt has reported symptoms.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
I think that is what we need to look at. We wanted all the "bed blockers" who were cluttering up NHS wards, principally because appropriate care packages were not proving possible, cleared out so those wards were available for the arriving CV patients. That was achieved but at what cost? And was it simply incompetence or a more cold hearted computation that some lives are just worth more than others? At the moment the speed with which the NHS was able to increase capacity is a good news story. How they did it may prove more complex.
They looked at Italy and panicked. Do you remember the Italian Doctors telling the UK that the Health System in th north of Italy was so much better than ours and there was no way that the NHS would cope. Thats why they cleared the hospitals and cancelled all operations. It was a pefectly rational thing to do but as it turned out it was not required and led to loads of empty hospitals.
Italy was also reporting a much younger demographic presenting at hospitals, and that was something that was totally unexpected. Now I don't know if the actual data showed this was in the end true, but it was certainly what front line medics were anecdotally reporting.
Remember there were hospitals that started to deny treatment based on age, because they had become overrun with 50-60 year olds.
Now this might be due to coronavirus having been widespread without detection. The hypothesis was that youngsters had been spreading among themselves in Milan where they commute to work, and travelling back home, giving it to family.
They had tents outside the hospitals and those that were too old were denied treatment. Our Government saw that was happening and did what they did with our hospitals. Those images are why I doubt the Italian death figures.
Anyway Prof Ferguson has been found and swiftly tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion for breaking the rules just as the Scottish Chief Medical Officer was. He's yesterday's news. Today's news is still the lack of restrictions on flights and the looming app disaster.
His modelling isn't yesterday's news though. It is still being used to guide our lockdown strategy. Swedish experts say it is effectively nonsense.
His own breaking of the rules/hypocrisy has nothing to do with how good or not his model is, that's another discussion entirely.
It shows he doesn't really, really, really think that lockdown is a sensible (or effective) measure.
And he has shown this quite elegantly.
The lockdown has definitely been effective at lowering the transmission rate.
Of course it has. But what was the cost/benefit?
As the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown then surely the pre lockdown advice had the bigger impact.
Ah, so when you said you wanted us to pay attention to and debate that graph what you actually meant was you wanted us to uncritically accept it as true as it backed up your dogmatic preconceived view.
Did you even read and process any of the criticism of that chart? Did you read and process any of the criticism of the person who produced the chart?
Its based on the hospital admissions data which showed that these peaked on the 2nd April 2020. So working back from that date gives a peak of infections around the 20th March. Its quite simple really. Its not a dogmatic preconceived view, its based on facts. Of course you may argue that the hospital admissions data has nothing to do with the rate of infection.
No one would have believed in the first years of the 2020s that app development was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Matt Hancock
And talking of great aunts, my 85-yr old aunt was first booted out of hospital as soon as possible after a fall to a rehab care home four months ago and then booted out of her care home as soon as possible to home last month.
The system can't tolerate bottlenecks and I get that.
(Aunt is fine, so long as she has a constant supply of Sauvignon Blanc.)
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
And if we're talking behavioural psychology, imagine being told that you have to self-isolate for two weeks because a friend of your great aunt has reported symptoms.
I'm going to have to be careful here as I have reason to believe the self reporting issue is why NHSX didn't want to use the standard App - they were going to restrict announcements until after a test had been return positive.
How you identify a positive test without linking it to the user is a question I will leave to minds with great knowledge over privacy rules than me.
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
Question - how does the UK government not know these things? Answer - we've had enough of experts with your opinions. Why do you the experts think that your opinions are of more value than the opinions of Matt Hancock?
I know. Its facile. Its stupid. Yet its what we have had throughout over Brexit.
The Government see it as a data collection and reporting exercise so they literally just treat it as that.
And I have seen a reason why the NHS and Government do not wish to use Apple / Googles approach but it's impossible to tell if that reason was an original reason or part of the forthcoming excuse plan and as it's on a facebook message I won't publish it here.
Contact tracing seems to be largely a manual process whether you have an app or not. It's quite possible the government aren't all that interested in whether everyone downloads it because they aren't going to use it for comprehensive contact monitoring.
This is a very interesting article on the Korean approach. One thing that caught my attention is that given there are major privacy concerns with contact tracing, the best thing is to get the use of that data out into the open so people have more trust in what is going on.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
An interesting pattern has developed in the health field where everything good, positive and weekly-applause worthy is attributed to the 'NHS' and everything malign, ridiculous and unsuccessful is attributed to 'Government'. While this is understandable it does not aid understanding.
As we observed early on, pre-Boris illness, the strategy of outsourcing government to Chris Witty was never destined to be a success in anything other than arse-covering for the politicians. Although, thanks to the journalists, both the medics and the politicians might yet have a day of reckoning.
I'm quite surprised we aren't saying our doctors and nurses are inferior to other parts of Europe. It's a perfectly logical conclusion but obviously the left have a much easier target in the government.
To the left problems in the NHS are a result of chronic underfunding by the Conservative government; to the right the problem with the NHS is that it is an intrinsically inefficient and self-sustaining left-wing leaning bureaucracy.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
I'm not saying an app is a bad idea, it's clearly going to be a major part of the toolbox for exiting lockdown. What I'm suggesting is that the government approach is a disaster and we're going to need to remake it to include the Apple/Google recommendations. The people who make the OS definitely know how to use it better than any public sector tech worker.
"Scotland refuses to join NHS contact tracing app: Nicola Sturgeon says she will wait to see if it works before committing as experts warn Matt Hancock he will 'almost inevitably' face a legal challenge over privacy concerns"
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
"Guido claim" ----------- Self-reporting: The app will work from self-reported symptoms, rather than based on a test result. This opens it to misuse by people who don’t want to go to work or kids who want to skip class.
"Government Response" -------------------- This is more than a bit far-fetched. Firstly, our current systems are based on self-reporting, including our online referral system and our online sick note system. The latest science suggests a proportion of infections are transmitted by people who are not yet showing any symptoms (pre-symptomatic), which is why the app uses self-reporting.
The app will spot patterns of unusual behaviour in order to stop malicious activity but people’s identity will be protected. Our risk-based model means not everyone that has been in contact with an individual with symptoms receives an alert. This model will be continually updated to handle potential misuse.
I know it's Guido, but yesterday he published ten well-informed questions about the app and asked for responses from NHSX. He got the responses this morning and has followed up with a group of people who appear from their replies to be competent in their fields of IT, security and privacy.
Well worth ten minutes of anyone's time to read it through.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
I'm not saying an app is a bad idea, it's clearly going to be a major part of the toolbox for exiting lockdown. What I'm suggesting is that the government approach is a disaster and we're going to need to remake it to include the Apple/Google recommendations. The people who make the OS definitely know how to use it better than any public sector tech worker who specialise in big centralised databases.
FTFY - to emphasis exactly what the problem will be here.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
"Guido claim" ----------- Self-reporting: The app will work from self-reported symptoms, rather than based on a test result. This opens it to misuse by people who don’t want to go to work or kids who want to skip class.
"Government Response" -------------------- This is more than a bit far-fetched. Firstly, our current systems are based on self-reporting, including our online referral system and our online sick note system. The latest science suggests a proportion of infections are transmitted by people who are not yet showing any symptoms (pre-symptomatic), which is why the app uses self-reporting.
The app will spot patterns of unusual behaviour in order to stop malicious activity but people’s identity will be protected. Our risk-based model means not everyone that has been in contact with an individual with symptoms receives an alert. This model will be continually updated to handle potential misuse.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
"Guido claim" ----------- Self-reporting: The app will work from self-reported symptoms, rather than based on a test result. This opens it to misuse by people who don’t want to go to work or kids who want to skip class.
"Government Response" -------------------- This is more than a bit far-fetched. Firstly, our current systems are based on self-reporting, including our online referral system and our online sick note system. The latest science suggests a proportion of infections are transmitted by people who are not yet showing any symptoms (pre-symptomatic), which is why the app uses self-reporting.
The app will spot patterns of unusual behaviour in order to stop malicious activity but people’s identity will be protected. Our risk-based model means not everyone that has been in contact with an individual with symptoms receives an alert. This model will be continually updated to handle potential misuse.
Yeah, you can stop a twat on the fifth attempt, but not the first. I think the system would be trusted a lot more if it was done via an official test.
This is what should happen. And that once you get confirmation of one person, then the alert of potential infected people, get sent a number for priority testing.
All of these people should be bumped to front of queue for testing, try and get them all through the system in a day or so.
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Not sure what tabloid gossip you've been injected with but there is simply no proof of that. Of course the app can work, the whole point of testing is to see where any faults lie and to get them fixed. A centralised app won't be an issue and I'm sure the UK and France will roll out a working product nationwide soon. The technology is there.
Brom, do you work in IT?
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
I thought GCHQ had 'lent' them a security hole that allowed bluetooth tracking despite the OS restrictions.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's any basis to the claim that they were using a GCHQ-supplied 0day. This would be quite stupid if true, because the vendor would almost certainly quickly patch it. I think someone just mentioned that they'd got some advice from GCHQ (which could mean anything - maybe just running the crypto scheme past one of their boffins to ask if they'd missed anything) and the rest came out of somebody's imagination.
OK, fair enough, someone put 5 and 7 together and made 29.
If they aren't using a 0-day, then it will fail. That much is obvious.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
I said weeks ago, this desire for privacy in the West will cause a huge amount of problems. We are always starting from a position of basically having one hand tired behind our back. Rather than South Korea, who track your phone, your purchases, your travel on public transport, CCTV....and we are surprised they are the Gold Standard for controlling this without crashing your economy.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
The self reporting in his app is as bad as the bluetooth technological issue. Any old twat can spend their day going to a load of high population density locations and then report they feel unwell with coronavirus symptoms.
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
I thought the whole point of having it centralised was that the alert only went out when someone was diagnosed with it.
It's not. The testing data can't simply be uploaded because there's no way to match up an app user ID with their testing information. It's completely stupid.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
Can you do that with the decentralised version? I thought you couldn't, but I am probably not understanding it.
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
Do we know if that comes up every five minutes, or was it an update being pushed?
It will be an automatic once the software discovers its not receiving information from bluetooth. My suspicion would be that it appears every 2-3 hours rather than every 10 minute but it wouldn't surprise me if it stopped receiving data after 10 minutes and ignored it for a bit.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
Yeah, I'm asking if this is the case or not.
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
I know it's Guido, but yesterday he published ten well-informed questions about the app and asked for responses from NHSX. He got the responses this morning and has followed up with a group of people who appear from their replies to be competent in their fields of IT, security and privacy.
Well worth ten minutes of anyone's time to read it through.
Off now, money to earn (ironically, by debugging a mobile app!).
Answer 10 is a humdinger. Let's through a lot of names in who are working on a very different part of the app and pretend they are working on the mobile side of it.
(Hint AWS / Azure will be collecting the information points from the phones, they won't have anything to do with the app itself). Equally I think NHSX are being very clever in not being clear the boundary of the app itself (in some parts they are talking about the solution as a whole, in other the mobile app by itself but not making clear the exact context they are using to answer the question).
More than half the workforce at a US meat processing plant have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials have revealed.
Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.
I think giving good idea of the sort of work situations where this things spreads easily.
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
I know it's Guido, but yesterday he published ten well-informed questions about the app and asked for responses from NHSX. He got the responses this morning and has followed up with a group of people who appear from their replies to be competent in their fields of IT, security and privacy.
Well worth ten minutes of anyone's time to read it through.
Off now, money to earn (ironically, by debugging a mobile app!).
This looks quite concerning.
NHSX:
It currently supports Apple iOS versions 11 and higher, and Android versions 8 and higher.
Google:
For your app to work on a device, the device must be running Android version 5.0 (API version 21) or higher.
Unless NHSX are referring to a particular mode of background operation for devices running 8.0 and above, and that on earlier versions of Android there's less of an issue as they don't implment the background execution limits that were introduced with Android 8.0. The still have Doze and Doze on the Go.
I know it's Guido, but yesterday he published ten well-informed questions about the app and asked for responses from NHSX. He got the responses this morning and has followed up with a group of people who appear from their replies to be competent in their fields of IT, security and privacy.
Well worth ten minutes of anyone's time to read it through.
Off now, money to earn (ironically, by debugging a mobile app!).
This looks quite concerning.
NHSX:
It currently supports Apple iOS versions 11 and higher, and Android versions 8 and higher.
Google:
For your app to work on a device, the device must be running Android version 5.0 (API version 21) or higher.
Unless NHSX are referring to a particular mode of background operation for devices running 8.0 and above, and that on earlier versions of Android there's less of an issue as they don't implment the background execution limits that were introduced with Android 8.0. The still have Doze and Doze on the Go.
Is that a difference between requirements for the app as a whole, and for the coronavirus bit?
Morning all. Iconic presentational change on the John Hopkins monitor. It now shows USA deaths as a single figure rather than split across states. If it were not for this the UK would today have gone top of the global deaths table having just overhauled the previous leader - Italy. The change was made on the very day we passed them. As it is we remain in 2nd place, behind the newly consolidated USA with Italy dropping to 3rd. Now the change makes sense - the USA is indeed one country - but the timing of it does look suspicious. I'm not normally one for this sort of thing but when you put this oddity together with the "co-incidence" of the Telegraph breaking the Ferguson sex scandal also today, well it makes you think. Especially coming hard on the heels of last week's "dodgy data" on daily testing. Cummings? Johnson? One hopes not. PR is important for any government but it should never be the driver.
It was admitted yesterday that the official Italian stats were underestimated by 50%, whereas the UK has been adding additional categories into their daily numbers. It's no wonder the gap has closed.
Maybe it would be a good idea if those making claims about our figures read the BBC fact check and reflected
Comments
To put the tweet in context, it's worth remembering that Sam Freedman was Michael Gove's SPAD-who-wasn't-Dominic-Cummings. He's smart and not reflexively anti-Government.
The odd planes I see now all seem to be intercontinental paths
Complicated? Oh yes.
Guess what Sandpit and I both do but hey what do experts (who earn money fixing screwups exactly like the one about to play out) know.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-density/
In terms of polling Macron and Sanchez doing even worse than Trump and Bolsonaro
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1257385060984074243?s=20
The idea that because you work in IT means you know is ludicrous. Hey I work in finance but I don't know the Chancellor's plans.
We normally have many flights most of the day over us here in Llandudno and indeed when we flew to New York from Manchester some years ago we passed directly over our house
Dell are still very interested in supplying that hardware. I heard recently they are building a 'cloud' data centre for one of the major ISPs
Also work on getting a copy from sources at the vendor - some of whom are probably looking at getting fired next week.
I'm willing to bet that the spec contains 100 pages of backend web and database requirements, 100 pages of reporting requirements and 10 pages of consumer app requirements - half of which concern how the NHS logo is to be used.
Answer - we've had enough of experts with your opinions. Why do you the experts think that your opinions are of more value than the opinions of Matt Hancock?
I know. Its facile. Its stupid. Yet its what we have had throughout over Brexit.
Again, its the "we've had enough of experts who say things that contradict politicians" mentality.
And I have seen a reason why the NHS and Government do not wish to use Apple / Googles approach but it's impossible to tell if that reason was an original reason or part of the forthcoming excuse plan and as it's on a facebook message I won't publish it here.
Whether Apple/Googe will decide to patch this hole is the question.
It is just the kind of thing the MI5 would use to track people already.
I agree that using the normal API there's no way it can work.
While the UK will probably end up with a greater death toll than Italy overall, it was spread out more whereas Italy was very localised to Lombardy. Arguably that's a better situation to be in. We have been a bit luckier than Italy.
It wouldn't be a surprise that there might be a security hole - after all, anyone rooting their phone is using one that could conceivably used to bypass the restrictions.
Both of these charges can be correct.
Remember there were hospitals that started to deny treatment based on age, because they had become overrun with 50-60 year olds.
Now this might be due to coronavirus having been widespread without detection. The hypothesis was that youngsters had been spreading among themselves in Milan where they commute to work, and travelling back home, giving it to family.
Now I will be very blunt here - I really hope that the app actually works - everything I've wasted my morning posting is based on the fact that
1) my hope is probably very different from reality.
2) I do this type of thing for a living and used to make my living fixing screw ups exactly like the one we are about to see. To me I'm currently watching a slow motion car crash in which I can see exactly what is about to happen and everything that occurred up to this point that makes it inevitable.
The app, as currently designed, simply doesn't work unless you have the app open and visible, with the phone unlocked, at all times. It works in a lab but not in the real world. The reason this is the case is that it's impossible for it to use the Bluetooth hardware otherwise.
The only chance you have of an app on your phone in the next month, is if NHSX abandon everything they've done to date and start again using the Apple/Google protocol that explicitly doesn't support location tracking by governments.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8292191/Coronavirus-Scotland-refuses-join-NHS-contact-tracing-app.html
Remember in China, the kids got their home schooling app removed from the app stores by mass reporting it as dodgy app, and the AI banned it.
"Excuse me sir can I examine your phone to check your app is running in the background"
"Sure"
"It isn't running in the background"
"I'm sorry officer it must have stopped - my phone is on battery save"
"Not good enough. You're under arrest until a team of police tech officers can examine your phone and prove that it was running"
Not going to work is it?
Apple / Google know, however, that if they did allow a Government to ride roughshod over privacy settings Microsoft or Someone else (Amazon say) will be back in the mobile phone industry and rapidly the No 1 part of it.
So the odds of Apple / Google allowing it to be broken was
1) unlikely and commercial insanity
2) required Apple / Google to do work and they aren't going to do work that isn't of benefit to them.
We had people posting the official Rt modelling, we had people posting their own estimates, we had people explaining the methodology.
You seem to have ignored it all.
The system can't tolerate bottlenecks and I get that.
(Aunt is fine, so long as she has a constant supply of Sauvignon Blanc.)
How you identify a positive test without linking it to the user is a question I will leave to minds with great knowledge over privacy rules than me.
I wonder if anyone will do a Boris Body Count?
https://twitter.com/ChrisHutber/status/1257794450295853057?s=20
This is a very interesting article on the Korean approach. One thing that caught my attention is that given there are major privacy concerns with contact tracing, the best thing is to get the use of that data out into the open so people have more trust in what is going on.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/seouls-radical-experiment-in-digital-contact-tracing
Nicola said she would wait and see
-----------
Self-reporting: The app will work from self-reported symptoms, rather than based on a test result. This opens it to misuse by people who don’t want to go to work or kids who want to skip class.
"Government Response"
--------------------
This is more than a bit far-fetched. Firstly, our current systems are based on self-reporting, including our online referral system and our online sick note system. The latest science suggests a proportion of infections are transmitted by people who are not yet showing any symptoms (pre-symptomatic), which is why the app uses self-reporting.
The app will spot patterns of unusual behaviour in order to stop malicious activity but people’s identity will be protected. Our risk-based model means not everyone that has been in contact with an individual with symptoms receives an alert. This model will be continually updated to handle potential misuse.
https://order-order.com/2020/05/06/experts-respond-government-nhs-app-rebuttal/
Not buying the bit in bold at all.
Well worth ten minutes of anyone's time to read it through.
https://order-order.com/2020/05/06/experts-respond-government-nhs-app-rebuttal/
Off now, money to earn (ironically, by debugging a mobile app!).
https://mobile.reuters.com/video/watch/live-and-let-die-blares-as-trump-tours-m-idOVCCNU9Y7
All of these people should be bumped to front of queue for testing, try and get them all through the system in a day or so.
I did say previously I've seen TCS and Wipro pull these tricks in the past, didn't I?
If they aren't using a 0-day, then it will fail. That much is obvious.
I think a better way would be for test results to include a linkout to the app which will push a positive test into it and then trigger the alerts and test appointment booking etc...
The Australian one seems to be having issues too, and they are migrating to the other model:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/covidsafe-app-is-not-working-properly-on-iphones-authorities-admit
Hancock confirmed in his Sky interview just now that they have a Plan B.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52555036
(Hint AWS / Azure will be collecting the information points from the phones, they won't have anything to do with the app itself). Equally I think NHSX are being very clever in not being clear the boundary of the app itself (in some parts they are talking about the solution as a whole, in other the mobile app by itself but not making clear the exact context they are using to answer the question).
Some 730 employees at Tyson Foods in Perry, Iowa, representing 58% of staff, have contracted the virus, the Iowa Department of Public Health told a daily news conference.
I think giving good idea of the sort of work situations where this things spreads easily.
NHSX:
Google:
Unless NHSX are referring to a particular mode of background operation for devices running 8.0 and above, and that on earlier versions of Android there's less of an issue as they don't implment the background execution limits that were introduced with Android 8.0. The still have Doze and Doze on the Go.
What I want to know is did nobody on SAGE say woohooo, hold on a sec, this is a terrible idea.