Morning roundup

The browser tabs... there are so many. 

• Auckland University's Prof Tim Dare argues for a better contact tracing app. I use the Rippl app whenever I find a QR that it can handle, and I keep Google Location tracking on all the time, hoping that both would make things easier if it ever were necessary. I had, early on, installed MIT's app that logged bluetooth contact with other folks running the app, but nobody in NZ runs it so it's a bit useless. The government always finds reasons not to do things that would work. The MIT app seemed fine to me, but presumably the data goes back to their head offices, and the government seems more worried about rights violations when data goes overseas than about the rights violations involved in lockdowns prevented by using those kinds of apps. 
• The Petroleum Exploration & Production Association wonders what happens when existing natural gas supplies run out and new production is not allowed. This is another of those areas where the ETS could have done the job on its own. The emissions associated with exploration and production are captured in the ETS. The emissions created when natural gas is burned are captured in the ETS. Banning new exploration then forces New Zealand into more expensive ways of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
• Cheap and fast tests, as part of a broader testing regime with lots and lots of use of those cheap fast tests, can be better than slower and expensive ones. The basic argument: the simple $5 tests won't catch all infections, but are very likely to catch those who are infectious - they'll read false negatives before viral load is high enough to be as infectious. And if you take the $5 test every day with immediate results, that can be more effective than a $35 dollar test if it takes a long time to get the results back. One for the epidemiologists to consider. 
• Houston scaled back minimum lot sizes and enjoyed a lot of intensification in middle income neighbourhoods; wealthier suburbs blocked it through deed restrictions. I know a lot of new subdivisions in NZ have covenants; I wonder any of the inner suburbs' neighbourhood associations will start trying to get residents to agree to covenants if they expect the NPS to result in upzoning in their neighbourhoods. The article on Houston suggests that allowing that pressure valve mattered in allowing more intensification in the broad. The NPS does allow developers to sue Councils for being too restrictive, so that might help in discouraging councils from finding other ways of blocking development. 
• New Zealand suspends its extradition agreement with Hong Kong. It's justified, but it probably kills any chances of a travel bubble with Taiwan.