Everyone Agrees That Contact Tracing Apps Are Key To Bringing COVID-19 Under Control; Iceland Has Tried Them, And Isn't So Sure

from the solution-or-solutionism? dept

Given the massive impact that the coronavirus is having on life and the economy around the world, it's no wonder that governments are desperately searching for ways to bring the disease under control. One popular option is to use Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps on smartphones to find out who might be at risk from people nearby who are already infected. Dozens of countries are taking this route. Such is the evident utility of this approach, that even rivals like Apple and Google are willing to work together on a contact tracing app framework to help the battle against the disease. Although it's great to see all this public-spirited activity in the tech world, there's a slight problem with this approach: nobody knows whether it will actually help.

That makes the early experience of Iceland in using contact tracing apps invaluable. An article in the MIT Technology Review notes that Iceland released its Rakning C-19 app in early April, and persuaded 38% of Iceland's population of 364,000 population to download it. Here's what this nation found in its pioneering use of a tracing app:

despite this early deployment and widespread use, one senior figure in the country's covid-19 response says the real impact of Rakning C-19 has been small, compared with manual tracing techniques like phone calls.

"The technology is more or less … I wouldn’t say useless," says Gestur Pàlmason, a detective inspector with the Icelandic Police Service who is overseeing contact tracing efforts. "But it's the integration of the two that gives you results. I would say it [Rakning] has proven useful in a few cases, but it wasn’t a game changer for us."

It's only one data point, of course, but it's an important one. Iceland was not only early in tackling the coronavirus, it has done so with great success. And yet it seems that the contact tracing app played a relatively small part in that. Manual tracing techniques, by contrast, were absolutely key.

That's not to say other countries may not have more success with their apps. It's interesting to note, for example, that Iceland's Rakning C-19 tracks users' GPS data in order to establish where they have been, and who they met with. It's generally agreed that GPS information is too coarse for this, and that a Bluetooth approach should, in theory, provide better insights. It will be interesting to hear how apps based on Bluetooth interactions work in practice. Maybe they will provide the hoped-for means to bring the COVID-19 virus under control. Let's hope so, and that the eager embrace by governments of contact tracing apps is not just another example of "solutionism" -- the idea that any problem can be solved simply by throwing technology at it.

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Filed Under: contact tracing, covid-19, gps, iceland, rakning

Ohio Government Asks Companies To Snitch On Employees, Gets Hit With Auto-Generated Bogus 'Tips' Instead

from the defeating-a-fraud-portal-with-fraudulent-submissions dept

Asking citizens to snitch on other citizens never seems to work out very well. The federal government has been doing it for years, maintaining "See Something, Say Something" hotlines that have mostly collected tips from people concerned about what their browner neighbors are doing. The same thing happens in the private sector. Ring's proprietary app -- Neighbors -- collects the same sort of garbage, empowering bigots to feel like they're acting on behalf of the common good.

With lockdown orders in effect and social distancing rules in place in several cities and states around the country, local governments are asking residents to pitch in with enforcement efforts by reporting those who are breaking the rules. New York City opened a tip line for reports of social distancing violators and collected a bunch of Hitler-related memes, videos of the mayor going to the gym, extended middle fingers, and dick pics instead.

The state of Ohio is asking for the same trouble. Its unemployment fraud portal is supposed to collect reports from businesses about employees of theirs that are collecting unemployment rather than coming into work. Some employees are opting out of potential infection when employers haven't shown the willingness to protect them by enforcing social distancing rules and/or providing them with personal protective equipment.

The state is now going to have to sift through a whole lot of algorithmically-generated crap to find genuine reports of work shirkers, thanks to the efforts of one anonymous coder.

The script, which began circulating on social media earlier this week, automatically fills out a “fraud reporting” form on the state of Ohio’s unemployment insurance website. State officials created the form to encourage companies to snitch on workers who are refusing to work under unsafe conditions, drawing outrage from workers and labor rights advocates. The script’s creator says the goal is to overwhelm the site with a flood of fake submissions, making it harder to process claims and thus deny people their benefits.

Flooding government websites with garbage data isn't the ideal solution but this will possibly make it more difficult for businesses to punish employees they're putting in harm's way by refusing to protect them from potential infection. The downside is this may also delay processing of legitimate claims from people who've been laid off. But if claims continue to be paid while investigations are still ongoing, it's probably a net win for employees who'd rather not roll the dice on dying while the pandemic runs its course.

The state is now aware of the scripted submissions and has deployed a new CAPTCHA that's a bit more difficult to defeat with a script. But the coder is already working on a way to bypass it so the flooding should resume momentarily. Unfortunately, there's no way to personalize submissions with dick pics or Hitler memes, but it should at least slow the roll of vindictive employers who'd rather see their employees punished than protected.

Filed Under: covid-19, lockdown, ohio, pandemic, safety, snitching, tipline, unemployment, workers

Jeffrey Katzenberg's Ego Decides That COVID-19 Must Be Why Quibi Totally Sucks And No One Wants It

from the yeah,-sure,-jeff,-that's-it dept

A few weeks back, we went into detail on why Quibi was such a total disaster from Day 1, which can pretty much be summed up by the fact that Hollywood thinks the way you build something people want is to throw tons of money at it (and fudge the books on the back end), while refusing to understand that getting people to actually like what you want -- by making it convenient and building community -- matters. Hollywood overvalues throwing money at big name content makers, and completely ignores the tech, community, and social side of things. And Quibi just makes that whole thing abundantly clear.

However, as Quibi sinks further and further away from relevance, and gets closer and closer to a footnote in a future "whatever happened to....?" story, the mastermind behind the clusterfuck, Jeffrey Katzenberg (formerly of Disney and Dreamworks), has decided that, no, no, the blame belongs entirely with the COVID-19 pandemic, and not with anything that he or his team did wrong:

“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Mr. Katzenberg said in a video interview. “Everything. But we own it.”

If you attribute everything to the pandemic then no, Jeff, you don't own it. And, things do not look good at all:

Quibi fell out of the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States a week after it went live on April 6. It is now ranked No. 125, behind the game app Knock’em All and the language-learning app Duolingo, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower.

Either way, the idea that pandemic lockdown would reduce demand for Quibi seems like a convenient excuse -- given that plenty of people have more time on their hands, and basically every other streaming service saw traffic go up, often significantly since the pandemic began.

Katzenberg's nonsense excuse is that he and his Hollywood pals designed Quibi to be used for the "downtime" between life -- like for standing in line or during commutes, and there's less commuting and standing in line right now. But... that seems like pure wishful thinking, especially since other types of "quick bite" content have seen their numbers go up. The NY Times reporter asks Katzenberg about TikTok, which also focuses on very short "quick bites" of video content, and whose usage has also continued to increase during lockdown, and Katzenberg seems to explode at her:

“That’s like comparing apples to submarines,” he said. “I don’t know what people are expecting from us. What did Netflix look like 30 days after it launched? To tell me about a company that has a billion users and is doing great in the past six weeks, I’m happy for them, but what the hell does it have to do with me?”

Hey, look, if the submarines and the apples are targeting the same market -- viewer attention for video content in quick bites -- then, uh, it seems to matter quite a bit. But, I guess when you don't want to admit that you're completely flopping, denying the competition is the competition is one strategy. Not a good one, mind you, but it is one strategy.

Katzenberg does note that Quibi will finally start to do the kinds of things that it should have done from the beginning, like not forcing you to only watch from your phone and (gasp) letting people make screenshots and share them:

Mr. Katzenberg and Ms. Whitman have backpedaled on their original commitment to a smartphone-only app. This week, Quibi subscribers who have iPhones will be able to watch movies-in-chapters like “Most Dangerous Game” and shows like “Chrissy’s Court” on TV screens. (Android users will have to wait a few more weeks.)

Also coming soon, Mr. Katzenberg said: Quibi will be less walled off from the internet, and users will be able to share its content on social media platforms.

But, of course, even there, Katzenberg plays down the importance of these kinds of things, suggesting that Quibi got this all "mostly right" and they're just fixing a few small issues, ignoring that these few small issues were the kinds of things that make or break an internet product.

“There are a whole bunch of things we have now seen in the product that we thought we got mostly right,” he said, “but now that there are hundreds of people on there using it, you go, ‘Uh-oh, we didn’t see that.’”

It's one thing not to see a unique product feature that might be nice, but not realizing that community and sharing would be important is not a small miss. That's pretty much the ballgame for a new consumer service these days. Katzenberg, though, has that traditional Hollywood broadcast mind of "we, the rich and powerful, make the content, and you the lowly public consumes the content." But that's not what people want and it's not want people have wanted in ages -- and it's why Hollywood keeps getting this wrong over and over again.

Filed Under: blame, covid-19, hollywood, jeffrey katzenberg, streaming
Companies: quibi

Finnish Hockey League Championship Decided Via Stand-In Esports Playoff

from the it's-all-esports-now dept

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been discussing for some time that esports is having itself a moment. The reason for that is obvious: there is an enormous vacuum that has been left by IRL leagues shutting down throughout the world. That vacuum is easily filled by esports that don't rely on sweaty people rubbing up against each other in order to pull off the same style of competition. It's all gotten big enough that the gamblers are now involved, along with most of the major sports leagues.

So what more indication can there be that esports is filling the IRL sports void during this nightmare? Well, how about at least one national sports league deciding its championship via esports standins while the league is shut down?

This time last month, the Finnish Hockey League (Liiga) became the world’s first major sports organization to announce it would unofficially settle its championship through esports. After canvassing the opinion of thousands of hockey fans after the season was cut short by COVID-19, the Liiga decided to replicate its playoffs using EA’s NHL 20. Finally, the season has been settled.

After attracting 160,000 viewers across Finland’s streaming sites and national TV–a sizeable crowd, considering the country boasts a population of just 5.5 million–the playoffs were decided in a battle between two of the nation’s most promising gamers. In the end, regular-season winners Oulun Kärpät went on to take home virtual playoff gold, courtesy of local fan Miikka Kolehmainen.

It's an interesting little experiment. Not only did the league manage to give fans closure for the season, but it also got fans somewhat involved as the ones playing some of esports versions of their favorite teams. And, while Finland is a country where hockey is quite popular, 160k viewers in a country that small is a very impressive number. This says as much about the pent up demand for sports and competition, whatever the medium, as it does anything else. Still, there is something affirming about an IRL sports league being able to bring its season to a virtual close in this way.

While everyone around the world lives in hope that sports will resume their traditional format in the coming months, this experiment by Telia Esports has highlighted how successful the esports platform could be, especially with younger generations. Aija Saha, the marketing manager of the Liiga, explained: “We were surprised with the positive feedback and how many tuned in for the games! This is something that could be re-created in other countries and sports leagues as well.”

Kati Savolainen, the marketing and communications manager for HPK, agreed. “The ePlayoffs were fun and entertaining. Especially for the younger crowd, this must have been a fun way to take part in something that they find important.”

It's also a great way for the league to keep up a very real connection with its fans. That's an underrated aspect of what Liiga pulled off here. By including league fans in the fun, it built the very connection that might otherwise have been lost with fans not being able to see real life sports stars in action.

Some day IRL sports will come back. That day may well be sooner than later, in fact. Still, it's beginning to look like the sporting world will in at least some small ways be forever changed by this crisis, with esports having a firm foothold in the public eye.

Filed Under: covid-19, esports, finland, hocky

Why Is The US Trying To Keep COVID-19 Vaccine Data Locked Up? Share It With The Whole Damn World

from the lock-up-culture dept

The NY Times had a report over the weekend about how the US government was gearing up to accuse China of using cyberattacks to get at COVID-19 vaccine data:

The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to issue a warning that China’s most skilled hackers and spies are working to steal American research in the crash effort to develop vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus. The efforts are part of a surge in cybertheft and attacks by nations seeking advantage in the pandemic.

[....]

A draft of the forthcoming public warning, which officials say is likely to be issued in the days to come, says China is seeking “valuable intellectual property and public health data through illicit means related to vaccines, treatments and testing.” It focuses on cybertheft and action by “nontraditional actors,” a euphemism for researchers and students the Trump administration says are being activated to steal data from inside academic and private laboratories.

I am sure this might be happening, but rather than fretting about cyber attacks and hacks, shouldn't we be asking why this data is locked up in the first place? This is a massive global health crisis, and the best way to get to a real vaccine or treatment is by sharing as much data as possible and being as open as possible. It truly should not matter if the US develops a treatment first or if someone else does. I recognize that there are ridiculous leaders around the globe who are more focused on "owning" any eventual treatment, and perhaps even using it only for their own citizens, but this is insanely short-sighted on both sides of the equation.

First, we will develop any successful treatment much faster (and likely much better) by getting more smart people considering all the options and making suggestions on better approaches. That will save a huge number of lives. Second, it's a global pandemic, and the only way to really make sure it's not a problem in any particular region is to make sure it's not a problem anywhere. Solving for it in one country would then require constant vigilance to make sure it doesn't re-enter.

This really should be a moment of global cooperation to deal with the pandemic on a truly global basis. And yet, so many countries -- including the US -- are retreating into nonsense nationalistic stances that focus on locking up ideas and keeping things for "ourselves," rather than opening things up to the world and sharing broadly. What a shame.

Filed Under: china, covid-19, cyberattacks, hackers, innovation, research, sharing, vaccines

Twitter Making It Easier To Study The Public Discussions Around COVID-19

from the good-to-see dept

There has been a lot of talk about how this moment in history is going to be remembered -- and as Professor Jay Rosen has been saying, a key part is going to be an effort by the many people who failed to respond properly to rewrite the history of everything that happened:

There is going to be a campaign to prevent Americans from understanding what happened within the Trump government during the critical months of January to April, 2020. Many times Donald Trump told the nation that it has nothing to worry about because he and his people have the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus well in hand. They did not. He misled the country about that.

“It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he told CNBC on January 22. “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” he told Sean Hannity on February 2. On February 24, Trump tweeted that “the Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

He misled the country. This basic fact is so damning, the evidence for it so mountainous, and the mountain of evidence so public — and so personally attached to Donald Trump — that the only option is to create confusion about these events, and about the pandemic generally, in hopes that people give up and conclude that the public record does not speak clearly and everything is propaganda.

The battle over rewriting history is going to take many forms in many different ways -- and so it's good to see a company like Twitter making it easier for researchers to look at the actual history of the public conversation during these months.

To further support Twitter’s ongoing efforts to protect the public conversation, and help people find authoritative health information around COVID-19, we’re releasing a new endpoint into Twitter Developer Labs to enable approved developers and researchers to study the public conversation about COVID-19 in real-time.

This is a unique dataset that covers many tens of millions of Tweets daily and offers insight into the evolving global public conversation surrounding an unprecedented crisis. Making this access available for free is one of the most unique and valuable things Twitter can do as the world comes together to protect our communities and seek answers to pressing challenges. 

It would be interesting to see if others (cough Facebook cough) would do the same thing as well. How the history of these times is written is going to be important in seeing how we deal with the next such crisis.

Filed Under: conversation, covid-19, history, pandemic, truth
Companies: twitter

It's Not Even Clear If Remdesivir Stops COVID-19, And Already We're Debating How Much It Can Price Gouge

from the pharma-madness dept

You may recall in the early days of the pandemic, that pharma giant Gilead Sciences -- which has been accused of price gouging and (just last year!) charging exorbitant prices on drug breakthroughs developed with US taxpayer funds -- was able to sneak through an orphan works designation for its drug remdesevir for COVID-19 treatment. As we pointed out, everything about this was insane, given that orphan works designations, which give extra monopoly rights to the holders (beyond patent exclusivity), are meant for diseases that don't impact a large population. Gilead used a loophole: since the ceiling for infected people to qualify for orphan drug status is 200,000, Gilead got in its application bright and early, before there were 200,000 confirmed cases (we currently have over 1.3 million). After the story went, er... viral, Gilead agreed to drop the orphan status, realizing the bad publicity it was receiving.

After a brief dalliance with chloroquine, remdesivir has suddenly been back in demand as the new hotness of possible COVID-19 treatments. Still, a close reading of the research might give one pause. There have been multiple conflicting studies, and Gilead's own messaging has been a mess.

On April 23, 2020, news of the study’s failure began to circulate. It seems that the World Health Organization (WHO) had posted a draft report about the trial on their clinical trials database, which indicated that the scientists terminated the study prematurely due to high levels of adverse side effects.

The WHO withdrew the report, and the researchers published their results in The Lancet on April 29, 2020.

The number of people who experienced adverse side effects was roughly similar between those receiving remdesivir and those receiving a placebo. In 18 participants, the researchers stopped the drug treatment due to adverse reactions.

But then...

However, also on April 29, 2020, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced that their NIH trial showed that remdesivir treatment led to faster recovery in hospital patients with COVID-19, compared with placebo treatment.

“Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo,” according to the press release. “Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo.”

The mortality rate in the remdesivir treatment group was 8%, compared with 11.6% in the placebo group, indicating that the drug could improve a person’s chances of survival. These data were close to achieving statistical significance.

And then...

“In addition, there is another Chinese trial, also stopped because the numbers of new patients with COVID-19 had fallen in China so they were unable to recruit, which has not yet published its data,” Prof. Evans continues. “There are other trials where remdesivir is compared with non-remdesivir treatments currently [being] done and results from some of these should appear soon.”

Gilead also put out its own press release about another clinical trial, which seems more focused on determining the optimal length of remdesivir treatment. Suffice it to say, there's still a lot of conflicting data and no clear information on whether or not remdesevir actually helps.

Still, that hasn't stopped people from trying to figure out just how much Gilead will price gouge going forward:

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices, suggested a maximum price of $4,500 per 10-day treatment course based on the preliminary evidence of how much patients benefited in a clinical trial. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday said remdesivir should be priced at $1 per day of treatment, since “that is more than the cost of manufacturing at scale with a reasonable profit to Gilead.”

Some Wall Street investors expect Gilead to come in at $4,000 per patient or higher to make a profit above remdesivir’s development cost, which Gilead estimates at about $1 billion.

So... we've got a range of $10 to $4,500 on a treatment that we don't yet know works, and which may or may not save lives. But, given that we're in the midst of a giant debate concerning things like "reopening the economy" -- something that can really only be done if the public is not afraid of dying (or at least becoming deathly ill) -- the value to the overall economy seems much greater than whatever amount Gilead wants to charge. It seems the right thing to do -- again, if it's shown that remdesevir actually helps -- is to just hand over a bunch of money to Gilead, say "thank you very much" and get the drug distributed as widely as possible. Though, again, it should be noted that a decent chunk of the research around remdesevir was not done or paid for by Gilead, but (yet again) via public funds to public universities, which did the necessary research. The idea that it's Gilead that should get to reap massive rewards for that seems sketchy at best. But the absolute worst outcome is one in which Gilead sticks to its standard operating procedure and prices the drug in a way that millions of Americans can't afford it, and it leads to a prolonging/expanding of the pandemic.

Filed Under: covid-19, drug pricing, monopoly rents, patents, pricing, remdesevir
Companies: gilead sciences

COVID-19 Is Exposing A Virulent Strain Of Broadband Market Failure Denialism

from the ill-communication dept

A few weeks ago, the US telecom industry began pushing a bullshit narrative through its usual allies. In short, the claim revolves around the argument that the only reason the US internet still works during a pandemic was because the Trump FCC ignored the public, ignored most objective experts, and gutted itself at the behest of telecom industry lobbyists. The argument first popped up over at AEI, then the Trump FCC, then the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and has since been seen in numerous op-eds nationwide. I'd wager that's not a coincidence, and I'd also wager we'll be seeing a lot more of them.

All of the pieces try to argue that the only reason the US internet works during a pandemic is because the FCC gutted its authority over telecom as part of its "restoring internet freedom" net neutrality repeal. This repeal, the story goes, drove significant investment in US broadband networks (not remotely true), resulting in telecom Utopia (also not true). The argument also posits that in Europe, where regulators have generally taken a more active role in policing things like industry consolidation and telecom monopolies, the internet all but fell apart (guess what: not true).

Usually, like in this op-ed, there's ample insistence that the US broadband sector is largely wonderful while the EU has gone to hell:

"Unlike here, European networks are more heavily regulated. This has led to less investment and worse performance for consumers for years. American consumers are being generally well served by the private sector."

Anybody who has spent five minutes talking to Comcast customer support -- or tried to get scandal-plagued ISP like Frontier Communications to upgrade rotten DSL lines -- knows this is bullshit. Still, we penned a lengthy post exploring just how full of shit this argument is, and how there's absolutely zero supporting evidence for the claims. The entire house of cards is built on fluff and nonsense, and it's just ethically grotesque to use a disaster to help justify regulatory capture and market failure.

While it's true that the US internet, in general, has held up relatively well during a pandemic, the same can't be said of the so called "last mile," or the link from your ISP's network to your home. Yes, the core internet and most primary transit routes, designed to handle massive capacity spikes during events like the Superbowl, has handled the load relatively well. The problem, as Sascha Meinrath correctly notes here, is sluggish speeds on consumer and business lines that, for many, haven't been upgraded in years:

"Right now, an international consortium of network scientists is collecting 750,000 U.S. broadband speed tests from internet service provider (ISP) customers each day, and we’ve been tracking a stunning loss of connectivity speeds to people’s homes. According to most ISPs, the core network is handling the extra load. But our data show that the last-mile network infrastructure appears to be falling down on the job."

Again, your 5 Mbps DSL line might be ok during normal times, but it's not going to serve you well during a pandemic when your entire family is streaming 4K videos, gaming, and Zooming. And your DSL line isn't upgraded because there's (1) very little competition forcing your ISP to do so, and (2) the US government is filled to the brim with sycophants who prioritize campaign contributions and ISP revenues over the health of the market and consumer welfare. And while there's a contingency of industry-linked folks who try very hard to pretend otherwise, this is a policy failure that's directly tied to mindless deregulation, a lack of competition, and, more importantly, corruption. In short, the complete opposite of the industry's latest talking point.

For years we've been noting how US telcos have refused to repair or upgrade aging DSL lines because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. Facing no competition and no regulatory oversight, there's zero incentive for a giant US broadband provider to try very hard. Similarly, because our lawmakers and regulators are largely of the captured, revolving door variety, they rubber stamp shitty mergers, turn a blind eye to very obvious industry problems, routinely throwing billions in taxpayer money at monopolies in exchange for fiber networks that are usually only partially deployed -- if they're deployed at all.

Meanwhile, US telcos that have all but given up on upgrading aging DSL lines have helped cement an even bigger Comcast monopoly across vast swaths of America. It's a problem that the telecom sector, Trump FCC, and various industry apologists will ignore to almost comical effect. Also ignored is the fact that this results in US broadband subscribers paying some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world:

"Numerous studies, including those conducted by the FCC itself, show that broadband pricing is the second-largest barrier to broadband adoption (availability is the first). It’s obvious that if people are being charged a lot for a service, they’re less likely to purchase it. And independent researchers have already documented that poor areas often pay more than rich communities for connectivity. Redlining of minority and rural areas appears to be widespread, and we need accurate pricing data from the FCC to meaningfully address these disparities."

Try to find any instance where Ajit Pai, or anybody in this chorus of telecom monopoly apologists, actually admits that the US broadband market isn't competitive and, as a result, is hugely expensive for businesses and consumers alike. You simply won't find it. What you will find are a lot of excuses and straw men arguments like this latest one, designed to distract the press, public, and policymakers from very obvious market failure. Market failure that was a major problem in normal times, and exponentially more so during a pandemic where broadband is an essential lifeline.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, congestion, covid-19, eu, failures, fcc, market failure, regulation, us

Tales From The Quarantine: People Are Selling 'Animal Crossing' Bells For Real Cash After Layoffs

from the 2020-is-deeply-strange dept

This seems to be something of a thing. Our last "Tales From the Quarantine" post focused on how television celebrities had taken to offering people help on Twitter with their virtual home decor in the latest Animal Crossing game. This post also involves Animal Crossing, but in a much more direct way. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are enormous numbers of people who have suddenly found themselves without jobs or regular income. And, so, they've turned to irregular sources of income instead.

Ars Technica has an interesting interview with one of many people who have taken to the internet to indirectly sell Animal Crossing's "bells", the currency of the game.

In the midst of COVID-19, some New Horizons players are turning to World of Warcraft-style gold farming methods to make ends meet. In early April, Lexy, a 23-year-old recent college grad, created a Twitter account offering up bells (Animal Crossing’s in-game currency) for real-world cash (she requested we refer to her by a nickname to avoid potential reprisal from Nintendo). “I got laid off due to COVID so I'm farming bells in ACNH,” she wrote. “I really need to make rent this month so I'm selling 2 mil bells per $5, please message me if interested, I'll give you a discount the more you buy.”

Before setting up this unorthodox income stream, Lexy had been working at a supermarket while developing her animation portfolio. She began exploring the idea of turning bells into cash after showing friends just how much in-game income she’d been making. “One of them asked to legitimately buy some for me,” she recalled in a Twitter interview. “I did some research and found some people selling bells on sites such as eBay, but for pretty ridiculous prices.” (Current prices on eBay seem more competitive, with some sellers offering rare gold tools and gold nuggets to sweeten the deal).

The threat from Nintendo is probably real. After all, unlike some other games where people do this sort of thing, Nintendo's game doesn't include any method for selling in-game resources for real currency. Nintendo is also notoriously prudish about things like this. And, finally, to make an effective go at this sort of thing, it takes some manipulation of the console in a way that is somewhat controversial with gamers generally.

Understandably, Lexy adjusts the clock on her Nintendo Switch to speed up the game’s slow, “natural” money-making cycle of harvesting daily fruit, digging up bells from the ground, and planting a daily “money tree” that can yield big profits. This kind of in-game “time traveling” is controversial practice among casual Animal Crossing players, but it's a practical necessity to maximize real-world bell-farming profits.

As for how much money people like Lexy are bringing in, it's in the four figures, but she wasn't any more specific than that. Payments are made through digital apps like PayPal, after which she visits the game islands of others and deposits the bells.

That all of this is going on during a global pandemic that has some folks farming bells to make ends meet and others with apparently enough disposable income to be buyers is all, of course, deeply strange. But it's also just yet another way technology is having an impact on our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Filed Under: animal crossing, bells, covid-19, currency, gold famring, markets, tales from quaranitne
Companies: nintendo

As More Students Sit Online Exams Under Lockdown Conditions, Remote Proctoring Services Carry Out Intrusive Surveillance

from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept

The coronavirus pandemic and its associated lockdown in most countries has forced major changes in the way people live, work and study. Online learning is now routine for many, and is largely unproblematic, not least because it has been used for many years. However, online testing is more tricky, since there is a concern by many teachers that students might use their isolated situation to cheat during exams. One person's problem is another person's opportunity, and there are a number of proctoring services that claim to stop or at least minimize cheating during online tests. One thing they have in common is that they tend to be intrusive, and show little respect for the privacy of the people they monitor.

As an article in The Verge explains, some employ humans to watch over students using Zoom video calls. That's reasonably close to a traditional setup, where a teacher or proctor watches students in an exam hall. But there are also webcam-based automated approaches, as explored by Vox:

For instance, Examity also uses AI to verify students' identities, analyze their keystrokes, and, of course, ensure they're not cheating. Proctorio uses artificial intelligence to conduct gaze detection, which tracks whether a student is looking away from their screens.

It's not just in the US that these extreme surveillance methods are being adopted. In France, the University of Rennes 1 is using a system called Managexam, which adds a few extra features: the ability to detect "inappropriate" Internet searches by the student, the use of a second screen, or the presence of another person in the room (original in French). The Vox articles notes that even when these systems are deployed, students still try to cheat using new tricks, and the anti-cheating services try to stop them doing so:

it's easy to find online tips and tricks for duping remote proctoring services. Some suggest hiding notes underneath the view of the camera or setting up a secret laptop. It's also easy for these remote proctoring services to find out about these cheating methods, so they're constantly coming up with countermeasures. On its website, Proctorio even has a job listing for a "professional cheater" to test its system. The contract position pays between $10,000 and $20,000 a year.

As the arms race between students and proctoring services escalates, it's surely time to ask whether the problem isn't people cheating, but the use of old-style, analog testing formats in a world that has been forced by the coronavirus pandemic to move to a completely digital approach. Rather than spending so much time, effort and money on trying to stop students from cheating, maybe we need to come up with new ways of measuring what they have learnt and understood -- ones that are not immune to cheating, but where cheating has no meaning. Obvious options include "open book" exams, where students can use whatever resources they like, or even abolishing formal exams completely, and opting for continuous assessment. Since the lockdown has forced educational establishments to re-invent teaching, isn't it time they re-invented exams too?

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Filed Under: cheating, covid-19, education, surveillance, testing