In today’s reality of distance learning, educators around the world are rapidly modifying their lessons for use in digital classrooms. At Microsoft, we want to support you as you’re making this transition to inclusive, online learning. What practices and solutions are working best for you? How are you making it all happen? What keeps your students engaged? How do you provide a socially and emotionally supportive environment for everyone involved?

For this month’s special-edition TweetMeet, we’ve invited 200 former hosts back to guide the conversation in many different languages. We look forward to welcoming you to a 75-minute discussion on Tuesday, April 21 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time about the topic Remote Learning.

We have five discussion questions lined up this month, allowing 14 minutes of discussion time each:

Even if you’re conducting a class at the time of the event, busy doing other things, or asleep—no problem! All educators are welcome to participate any time after the event. Simply look at the questions and respond to them at a day and time that suits you best.

You can also schedule your tweets in advance. In that case, be sure to include the entire question in your tweet and the hashtag #MSFTEduChat, so that everyone knows how your responses align to the event questions and conversations.

Your Remote Learning Stories – a new, special-edition Wakelet

We’ve invited this month’s hosts to send us their personal stories about their transition to remote learning. We proudly present these in our new Your Remote Learning Stories Wakelet, live-embedded here:

Introducing our hosts – Twitter List

We’re very grateful to all the former hosts who have accepted our invitation to lead the conversation on April 21. Check out their profiles, consider following them, and engage with their tweets through this month’s Twitter List.

Language tracks offered this month

We offer this month’s TweetMeet in 14 language tracks: English, Arabic, Croatian, Finnish, French, Italian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh.

Want to help promote the TweetMeet?

Our PowerPoint Templates provide three easy ways for you to announce the TweetMeet to your friends and followers:

Each of our templates contains the step-by-step instructions on how to create these for yourself. If you need help, just reach out to us via @TweetMeet Twitter DM.

Here’s an example of a TweetMeet Friend Card:

Welcoming TweetMeet newcomers

Do you know someone who’s new to TweetMeets? Our TweetMeet Ultimate Wakelet collection is created especially for newcomers, so please share it with friends and colleagues who might be interested in joining.

Why join the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet?

TweetMeets are monthly recurring Twitter conversations about themes relevant to educators, facilitated by Microsoft Education. The purpose of these events is to help professionals in education learn from each other and inspire their students while they are preparing for their future. TweetMeets also nurture personal learning networks among educators from across the globe.

When and how can I join?

Join us on Tuesday, April 21 from 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM Pacific Time on Twitter using the hashtags #RemoteLearning, #MSFTEduChat, #TweetMeetEN and #MicrosoftEDU.

Be sure to double-check your own local event time. You can find the event time for 215 countries with this time zone announcer.

Our next recommendation for you is to set up Twitter dashboard TweetDeck and add columns for the hashtags and for your favorite hosts. When a tweet appears that you want to respond to, press the retweet button and type your comments. Additional tips are offered in this animated GIF that you’re welcome to share with newcomers:

Got questions about the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet?

Please connect with TweetMeet organizer Marjolein Hoekstra @TweetMeet on Twitter if you have any questions about the TweetMeet or about what it takes to be a host on a future event!

We’ve seen plenty of fantastic Animal Crossing: New Horizons creations from fans and players around the world – like a full recreation of Zelda’s Hyrule and the most delicious-looking Tom Nook cake we’ve ever seen – but we didn’t expect to come across something quite like this.

Popular YouTube user ClayClaim has gone ahead and recreated his entire in-game island on a revolving empty toilet roll – you just don’t expect to be writing sentences like these when you go for the job interview, you know?

It’s a seriously impressive effort, with buildings, trees, the Dodo Airlines plane and more all represented. Each little part is painstakingly made out of polymer clay and stuck on to the toilet roll, allowing the island to roll around like it does in the actual game. You can see it being made in the video above – just look at how amazing it all is.

We’re pretty nifty at building things out of clay in the game itself, but we doubt we’d manage anything quite like this in real life. Great job, ClayClaim!

Launching next week on Nintendo Switch is SmileBASIC 4, a programming application that lets you play and design your very own games on the console.

Using its very own ‘SmileBASIC’ programming language, the tool is said to be easy to understand even for beginners. It includes various materials and tools to help you jump into development and, once you’re done, you can upload your finished games to the server for others to check out.

An earlier edition of the app actually made its way to 3DS a few years back – we were pretty impressed with it at the time – and this new release seems to expand upon that quite significantly. Check out this lengthy feature list if you’re interested:

• High speed and powerful programming language “SmileBASIC 4” is installed
• Supports high-resolution display of up to 1280×720 and 16.77 million colours
• 2048×2048 huge graphic screen
• Drawing commands such as lines, circles and fills
• Compose with a full range of sound commands
• Make full use of Joy-Con features
• Supports various Toy-Con
• USB keyboard and mouse can be used
• Useful trace function for debugging Extensive materials, tools, and samples that support programming
• Guide for program beginners
• Equipped with keyword completion function in the command help and the editor
• Lots of characters and background images that can be used in various scenes
• More than 100 sound effects and more than 40 background music
• Smile Tool (SE and character number can be confirmed)
• Paint Tool (drawing characters and backgrounds, creating animations)
• Simple sample programs to learn BASIC
• Technical samples for checking execution results for each command
• Game samples that show the actual game structure Share your works with users around the world
• Publish your works to the server with icons and descriptions
• Easily download works published by other users
• Evaluation function that allows you to send “Like” to your favorite works
• Favorite works can be registered in the top menu and started immediately
• Download “SmileBASIC” Nintendo 3DS version of public programs

Here’s a closer look at some of the screens you’ll be working with:

It’ll be available to download from the Switch eShop from 23rd April for £19.99 / $24.99. It may well be worth a look just to play other user’s creations, never mind making your own games.

What do you think? Are you intrigued by this one? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Inskscape, the open source cross platform vector graphics application, just released the first release candidate on the way to a full 1.0 release.  Along side the RC1 release, they also released version 0.92.5 of the stable branch.

Details of the two releases from the Inkscape news pages:

Inkscape 0.92.5

While we are working to release Inkscape 1.0 in the very near future, we have addressed some bugs in the stable 0.92 series. Most notably, an issue for Windows 10 users that prevented Inkscape from discovering fonts that have not been installed system-wide has now been fixed. Inkscape extensions written in Python will now also run with Python 3, while compatibility with the (deprecated) Python 2 is maintained.

Read all about the changes in the latest stable Inkscape version and download it from our website.

Call for Testing the 1.0 Release Candidate

Inkscape 1.0 will mark a major milestone for the project. This upcoming release is loaded with features and polish! You can find a draft of the release notes that lists all the goodies in our Wiki.

For macOS, the 1.0 will feature the easiest installation and best macOS integration that Inkscape has ever offered. There are, however, unique issues that will require additional testing and improvement for our Apple fans.

Please get involved by downloading and testing the Release Candidate for Linux, Windows and macOS.

Report Bugs

If you run into any bugs, especially with the Release Candidate, please help us by reporting them promptly, so we can try to fix them before we release the final 1.0 version.

You can learn more about Inkscape RC 1.0 in the video below.  The car SVG graphic used in the demo is available here if you want to compare performance results.

Art GameDev News 2D Applications

Daniel

A new preview update of Blazor WebAssembly is now available! Here’s what’s new in this release:

• Access host environment during startup
• Logging improvements
• Brotli precompression
• Load assemblies and runtime in parallel
• Simplify IL linker config for apps
• Localization support
• API docs in IntelliSense

Get started

To get started with Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 4 install the latest .NET Core 3.1 SDK.

NOTE: Version 3.1.201 or later of the .NET Core SDK is required to use this Blazor WebAssembly release! Make sure you have the correct .NET Core SDK version by running dotnet --version from a command prompt.

Once you have the appropriate .NET Core SDK installed, run the following command to install the updated Blazor WebAssembly template:

dotnet new -i Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.Templates::3.2.0-preview4.20210.8

If you’re on Windows using Visual Studio, we recommend installing the latest preview of Visual Studio 2019 16.6. For this preview you should still install the template from the command-line as described above to ensure that the Blazor WebAssembly template shows up correctly in Visual Studio and on the command-line.

That’s it! You can find additional docs and samples on https://blazor.net.

Upgrade an existing project

To upgrade an existing Blazor WebAssembly app from 3.2.0 Preview 3 to 3.2.0 Preview 4:

• Update all Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.* package references to version 3.2.0-preview4.20210.8.
• Update any Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.Runtime package references to version 3.2.0-preview5.20210.1
• Replace package references to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.HttpClient with System.Net.Http.Json and update all existing System.Net.Http.Json package references to 3.2.0-preview5.20210.3.

• Add @using System.Net.Http.Json to your _Imports.razor file and update your code as follows:

  Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.HttpClient	System.Net.Http.Json
  GetJsonAsync	GetFromJsonAsync
  PostJsonAsync	PostAsJsonAsync
  PutJsonAsync	PutAsJsonAsync

  Calls to PostAsJsonAsync and PutAsJsonAsync return an HttpResponseMessage instead of the deserialized response content. To deserialize the JSON content from the response message, use the ReadFromJsonAsync<T> extension method: response.content.ReadFromJsonAsync<WeatherForecast>().

• Replace calls to AddBaseAddressHttpClient in Program.cs with builder.Services.AddSingleton(new HttpClient { BaseAddress = new Uri(builder.HostEnvironment.BaseAddress) });.

You’re all set!

Access host environment during startup

The WebAssemblyHostBuilder now exposes IWebAssemblyHostEnvironment through the HostEnvironment property, which surfaces details about the app environment (Development, Staging, Production, etc.) during startup. If the app is hosted in an ASP.NET Core app, the environment reflects the ASP.NET Core environment. If the app is a standalone Blazor WebAssembly app, the environment is specified using the blazor-environment HTTP header, which is set to Development when served by the Blazor dev server. Otherwise, the default environment is Production.

New convenience extension methods on IWebAssemblyHostEnvironment make it easy to check the current environment: IsProduction(), IsDevelopment(), IsStaging(). We’ve also added a BaseAddress property to IWebAssemblyHostEnvironment for getting the app base address during startup when the NavigationManager service isn’t yet readily available.

Logging improvements

The WebAssemblyHostBuilder now exposes a Logging property of type ILoggingBuilder that can be used to configure logging for the app, similar to how you would configure Logging in an ASP.NET Core app on the server. You can use the ILoggingBuilder to set the minimum logging level and configure custom logging providers using extension methods in the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging namespace.

Brotli precompression

When you publish a Blazor WebAssembly app, the published and linked output is now precompressed using Brotli at the highest level to further reduce the app size and remove the need for runtime compression. ASP.NET Core hosted apps seamlessly take advantage of these precompressed files. For standalone apps, you can configure the host server to redirect requests to the precompressed files. Using the precompressed files, a published Blazor WebAssembly is now 1.8MB, down from 2MB in the previous preview. A minimal app without Bootstrap CSS reduces to 1.6MB.

Load assemblies and runtime in parallel

Blazor WebAssembly apps now load the assemblies and runtime in parallel saving some precious milliseconds off the app load time.

Simplify .NET IL linker config for apps

You can optionally provide a .NET IL linker config file for a Blazor WebAssembly app to customize the behavior of the linker. Previously, specifying a linker config file for your app would override the customizations built into Blazor that are necessary for apps to function property. App specific linker configuration is now treated as additive to the linker configuration provided by Blazor.

Localization support

Blazor WebAssembly apps now support localization using .NET resource files (.resx) and satellite assemblies. Blazor WebAssembly apps set the current culture using the user’s language preference. The appropriate satellite assemblies are then loaded from the server. Components can then be localized using the ASP.NET Core localization APIs, like IStringLocalizer<TResource> and friends. For more details on localizing Blazor WebAssembly apps, see Globalization and localization.

API docs in IntelliSense

The API docs for the various Blazor WebAssembly APIs are now available through IntelliSense:

Known issues

Debugging limitations

Thank you everyone who has been trying out the new Blazor WebAssembly debugging support and sending us your feedback! We’ve made some progress in this release, but there are still a number of limitations with the current debugging experience in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. The following debugging features are still not yet fully implemented:

• Inspecting arrays
• Hovering to inspect members
• Step debugging into or out of managed code
• Full support for inspecting value types
• Breaking on unhandled exceptions
• Hitting breakpoints during app startup

We expect to continue to improve the debugging experience in future releases.

Help improve the Blazor docs!

We’ve received a some feedback from the in-product Blazor survey that the Blazor docs could use some improvement. Thank you for this feedback! We know that docs are a critical part of any software development framework, and we are committed to making the Blazor docs as helpful as we can.

We need your help to understand how to best improve the Blazor docs! If you’d like to help make the Blazor docs better, please do the following:

• As you read the Blazor docs, let us know where we should focus our efforts by telling us if you find a topic helpful or not using the helpfulness widget at the top of each doc page:

  

• Use the Feedback section at the bottom of each doc page to let us know when a particular topic is unclear, inaccurate, or incomplete.

  

• Comment on our Improve the Blazor docs GitHub issue with your suggestions for new content and ways to improve the existing content.

Feedback

We hope you enjoy the new features in this preview release of Blazor WebAssembly! Please let us know what you think by filing issues on GitHub.

Thanks for trying out Blazor!

Apple and Google are working on a Bluetooth contact tracing system that could help track and possibly reduce the spread of COVID-19. But security experts that AppleInsider have spoken to express concerns about privacy and execution, which could undermine its effectiveness.

Security experts and cryptographers have lingering concerns about the privacy and security of COVID-19 contact tracing. Credit: Brian McGowan

Both Apple and Google have made it clear that they are focused on coronavirus-tracking technology with privacy and security in mind. But, there are inherent limitations to Bluetooth which Apple and Google can’t mitigate, compounded by concerns about the third parties that would be handling data collected through the systems.

For users relatively unconcerned about data privacy, or for those willing to sacrifice some of theirs to help stop a pandemic, that’s not a problem. On the other hand, trust in the privacy and security protocols of mobile contact tracing, particularly voluntary ones, is going to be absolutely critical in convincing people to use it. Even though it’s not going to be a cure-all, the system has some major hurdles to overcome and questions to answer before it can help.

Privacy and security issues

A slide deck explaining how the Apple and Google system work.

The system is actually an API that unlocks certain Bluetooth-related functionality for apps using it, including the ability to run Bluetooth tracing in the background. When it comes to privacy, Apple and Google have taken steps to anonymize users and avoid the mass collection of location and other data, such as changing the unique Bluetooth identifier every 10 to 15 minutes. But even then, the system isn’t necessarily designed to be completely anonymous.

For example, these rolling proximity identifiers are only private until someone tests positive for COVID-19. After that, a device identifier becomes linkable and the system will send a copy of its cryptographic keys to all of the devices which came into close proximity with it.

As an example of how this can be leveraged by a bad actor, former Federal Trade Commission technologist Ashkan Soltani gave an example of a so-called “linkage attack” which could reveal the identity of someone who is COVID-19 positive.

“By design, your smartphone will broadcast a rotating unique identifier (via Bluetooth) every few minutes (the rolling proximity identifier) to anyone within range,” Soltani told AppleInsider. That means there aren’t any granular controls for users to avoid this, beyond not using the system.

Someone with a Bluetooth sniffer and a video camera could collect pairs of photos and rolling identifiers in a public place, Soltani explains. If one of those people tests positive for COVID-19, the attacker could pair their diagnosis keys with the pictures and rolling identifiers.

Soltani adds that a well-resourced attacker, like a retail location tracking company, could expand this tactic to a wider scale —potentially allowing them to track a person’s wider movement patterns. The researcher previously wrote about the privacy considerations of retail tracking for the FTC.

The ability for advertising technology (adtech) and retail tracking companies to identify people with COVID-19 was echoed by cryptographer and Signal app creator Moxie Marlinspike. Because devices with a contract tracing app installed will get a log of daily identifiers, a user’s device could become linkable once they receive a positive diagnosis. Essentially, the system is only private until a positive diagnosis.

“At that point adtech (at minimum) probably knows who you are, where you’ve been, and that you are (COVID positive),” Marlinspike wrote. He says it takes Bluetooth privacy a “step back.”

Another important point is that the Apple and Google API, as it stands, is not necessarily the end implementation. Instead, it’s a framework for use by developers. In this case, those developers are going to be public health organizations.

Because of that, the privacy and security of the system really comes down to trust in the developers of mobile contact tracing apps, according to Sergio Caltagirone, vice president of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Dragos. Caltagirone told AppleInsider that the cryptographic specification provided by Apple and Google “simply states that the implementation must not store or correlate data but provides no additional controls — a lot of trust when it comes to public health data and the potential for misuse.”

In his security experience, he said a common exercise is to take any specification and search for the words “must” or “may” and then ask “what if it didn’t?” Caltagirone calls it “faith-based” privacy, rather than cryptographically guaranteed privacy.

There are already signs that some public health groups aren’t fond of the Apple and Google restrictions. The UK’s National Health Service, for example, is reportedly in a “standoff” with the two companies because it wants to create a centralized database of identifiers. That’s something that Apple and Google are barring organizations from doing.

Additionally, Soltani added that organizations can “design (their) app to collect any added info they think” people will consent to.

Practically, that means that although the Apple and Google API is “privacy-preserving,” the actual contact tracing apps that health organizations develop may collect data in a way that isn’t.

“Bluetooth contact tracing is a vast improvement over location tracking with GPS or cell site information, but it still needs strong privacy and security safeguards,” Electronic Frontier Foundation General Counsel Kurt Opsahl said in a statement to AppleInsider. Echoing Soltani, Opsahl said that the Apple and Google framework is just “one part of the equation” and that “we also need privacy safeguards with the public health proximity apps that interact with this API.”

Since these safeguards need to be implemented at the app and health organization level, they’re not necessarily something that Apple and Google can guarantee.

Effectiveness of Bluetooth contact tracing

An illustration of Bluetooth contact tracing. Credit: MIT

The inherent risks of Bluetooth and unanswered questions about health data collection could undermine what is ultimately the most important part of mobile contract tracing: adoption.

For this type of contact tracing to be effective, it needs to be widely adopted by a population. Some experts, like contact tracing research group Covid Watch, float a 60% statistic for its efficacy to be worthwhile.

Apple and Google have barred third parties from making the app mandatory, which means that users will need to voluntarily download it. Whether they will may really come down to how the tech giants and health organization set up their app, as well as the privacy and security promises they make.

Some lawmakers and regulators are already raising questions about whether they can get the public’s trustin the U.S. and Europe.

With disparate figures and organizations ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to President Donald Trump casting doubt about the system, there’s a real concern whether enough users will trust it to actually download and install it on their devices.

Ben Adida, a cryptography and information security researcher, is much more optimistic about the protocol than others. In a Twitter thread, he says it solves a lot of problems with other tracing surveillance and proposals, and that some kind of “properly tuned incentives” may be enough to see the right adoption rate.

Of course, there are also some real concerns about the efficacy of mobile contract tracing in its current forms. Jason Day, the product lead for Singapore’s TraceTogether contact tracing app, said that it isn’t going to be a replacement for manual contact tracing.

“If you ask me whether any Bluetooth contact tracing system deployed or under development, anywhere in the world, is ready to replace manual contact tracing, I will say without qualification that the answer is, No,” he wrote in a Medium post.

There are unanswered questions about the effectiveness of Singapore’s contact tracing methods. It’s important to note that TraceTogether deployed without the Apple and Google API, meaning it could only work when the app was running in the foreground.

Even with that problem solved by the new Bluetooth framework, there are other issues without easy solutions. Mobile contact tracing also isn’t going to cover those who don’t have smartphones, such as children and the elderly, Soltani added in a tweet. Because it’s proximity-based, it could also create false contact positives in dense living spaces like apartments.

And in certain countries, like the U.S., the primary hurdle beyond adoption is likely to be availability of testing. The Apple and Google API seems dependent on whether a person can receive a diagnosis from a public health official. While that cuts down on the risk of trolling, it raises a big question about whether enough testing is available for it to even work.

As cryptographer and ZCash Foundation engineer Deidre Connolly points out, the U.S. is simply not currently prepared to ramp up to the kind of testing that the Apple and Google API would require to be effective.

Of course, despite these privacy and effectiveness concerns, the Apple and Google system could still be part of a broader solution to stop COVID-19, along with sufficient testing and measures like social distancing.

Whether that turns out to be the case will hinge on whether Apple, Google and public health groups are able to convince enough people to download and use it. Ultimately, that job may not be Apple’s and Google’s.

Without a concentrated, transparent, and trustworthy effort from all of those involved —including the public —mobile contract tracing will just end up being wishful thinking.

Following in the footsteps of other major gaming events like E3 2020 and GDC, gamescom 2020 has now been officially cancelled.

In a statement issued online, event organisers say that the event will “under no circumstances take place on site” this year as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic remains a serious threat. Instead, a digital gamescom is currently in the works which hopes to celebrate the biggest games of the year in a new way. Here’s the full statement:

More details on this new digital event are expected in the coming weeks. We’ll make sure to keep an eye out for more news as and when it arrives.

Are you sad to see the physical gamescom event go? Would you usually attend, or are you more than happy to watch from home? Share your thoughts below.