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Remarkable how the designers did not conceive that cell coverage doesn't actually cover every inch of the planet or is 100% reliable. What will we have next? A
by Santosh83 7y ago
Remarkable how the designers did not conceive that cell coverage doesn't actually cover every inch of the planet or is 100% reliable. What will we have next? A heart-lung machine that depends on 24x7 internet access?
- rasikjain 7y agoLooks like a case of great app developed without testing the usecase scenarios.
- mettamage 7y agoIf I'd be the creator of Black Mirror this would be a fun idea to bounce around in the writers room.
- megous 7y agoMake it happen in Death Valley, for increased drama.
- joshuahughes 7y agoSlightly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_(film)
- justanotherc 7y agoExactly what I was thinking! This had black mirror written all over it
- Tade0 7y agoWe already have a ton of apps which assume that everyone has a decent internet connection at all times. I frequently land in places where my connection is but a trickle(with an absurd ping of 20s at that), and because of that a large part of apps simply refuse to work. One notable exception is Facebook Messenger - if it doesn't work then you really don't have internet.
- ForHackernews 7y agoFacebook Messenger was (is still?) based on the MQTT protocol https://mqtt.org/2011/08/mqtt-used-by-facebook-messenger https://mqtt.org/2011/08/mqtt-used-by-facebook-messenger that is specifically designed to be forgiving of low bandwidth or intermittent connectivity. It's a great example of a company picking the right tool for the job instead of falling victim to not-invented-here syndrome.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoAnd this is infuriating. I would expect mobile apps to be able to deal better with complete/spotty loss of Internet connection than PC programs, not worse !
- hasbot 7y agoI roadtrip and camp alot. It's amusing how many campground/boondocking locator apps require cell service. They often have a ton of other features, but downloading a dataset is not one of them. They want people to add, rate, and comment on campsites and yet, again, have no offline abilities. Doh!
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoI found that the slack desktop application works WORSE than the browser app in limited connection scenarios. The browser will attempt to slowly load while the application outright refuses to attempt, and claims it has no connection, even the the browser is loading
- dreamcompiler 7y agoMy experience is the Slack website works better than the app in all circumstances.
- frandroid 7y agoI love Twitter this way, which is built "offline first". Twitter will let you read everything in your timeline that you have previously downloaded, let you reply to and like as many tweets as you want, and never complain about lack of connectivity. It'll just dutifully queue your requests and act on them once you're back online. It's one of the only connected apps properly usable on the subway.
- blackandblue 7y agoah come on, don't give anyone ideas :) btw, testing is very important and i think most companies don't exhaust enough test cases. had google maps gone bonkers in the country especially during very bad weather. i don't think there is a map app out there that takes the weather into account...
- BlueTemplar 7y agoHow would weather affect a map ??
- hibbelig 7y agoGoogle maps needs internet connectivity. Bad weather could affect internet connectivity.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoIt hopefully doesn't - at least for the mobile app ! I'm pretty sur it can download maps and work offline ?
- VBprogrammer 7y agoAt a guess I suspect they mean more the route finding than the map part e.g. maybe don't send me on that nice shortcut across a mountain range if there is a blizzard up there. Part of me suspects google maps would figure this out by proxy in the same way it magically knows about traffic jams before you get to them but there are probably pathological cases where because no one is stupid enough to try it google don't have enough information to not recommend it.
- joezydeco 7y agoAre there any nav/driving apps that show current weather overlaid on the map? Seems like a useful thing but I don’t see it in Waze, gMaps, or aMaps. Why is that?
- simion314 7y agoThey probably used too much YAGNI,TDD,MVP and similar fancy named cool techniques and less good old thinking.
- LadyCailin 7y agoHow agile of them!
- brazzy 7y agoI mean in principle TDD could actually prevent this kind of thing because it actually encourages you to think of failure scenarios.
- simion314 7y agoThere are many benefits to TDD but sometimes actual QA is replaced with basic/trivial unit tests.
- mc32 7y agoLet’s hope they don’t do Ambulances and fireengines. That would be absolutely frustrating. I have no idea how they can keep the confidence of their customers. It’s such an egregious non-starter.
- Robotbeat 7y agoWe’re much closer to 100% cell coverage than you might think... https://lynk.world/ https://lynk.world/ developed a way to connect to totally unmodified phones (using LTE) using LEO satellites. Some very clever scheme for dealing the assumed latency.
- JohnClark1337 7y agoAre you trying to tell me that there are places outside of Silicon Valley?
- rwmj 7y agoOr in my case, a bank that assumes I have mobile phone coverage at home. When I try to order anything on the internet these days it wants to send me a 6 digit SMS code, so now I can't order anything on the internet (although Amazon and Paypal still work, touch wood).
- dreamcompiler 7y agoGet a Google Voice account and use that number for SMS. Works great over wifi.
- rwmj 7y agoI'm trying to reduce any dependence on Google. Nevertheless I just tried it out and it says it's not available in my country.
- njacobs5074 7y agoSkype numbers support this (in some countries), too. I live outside the US but have a US Skype number for this very purpose.
- paranoidrobot 7y agoWhile I like the spirit of this thread of work-around suggestions, I can't help but think that using $RandomService to verify access to someone's bank account is a terrible idea. It's bad enough having banks rely on a phone system where most carriers are perfectly happy to let anyone who knows your Address, DOB and Mother's Maiden name to port your phone number to a new SIM. It probably requires less effort (and certainly less risk of discovery) to take over a Skype, Google Voice or other VOIP/SMS service.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoIt's a terrible idea, but until banks and other websites quit weaponizing 2FA in the name of security theater, workarounds like this are sometimes the only option.
- mihaaly 7y agoIn fact California has perhaps more blind spots than live. Ok, it is an overstatement, but we had several days of no cell service on our last roadtrip. We had only cell based navigation because the 'GPS' they suggested at the car rental was just a smartphone, so why not using ours instead. We had quite a bit of a challenge finding room in the night when firefighters took all rooms in a perhaps 100 mi radius in the period of wildfires, we had to rearrange plans in the dark without local knowledge on a remote hilly road leading who knows where and how long with tank getting empty and with no light or people in sight for almost 60 minutes except some shady figures started to follow us after passing them standing in a parking lot discussing something over their car. Yeah, cell service is not something to rely upon in California!
- cptskippy 7y agoThat sounds like incredibly poor planning on your part and a series of bad decisions. Vacationing in wildfire regions during wildfire season. You let your fuel tank get low without knowing when or where your next fillup would be. You didn't have hotel reservations in advance. You waited until nightfall to find a room. You're relying on a smartphone for navigation. You didn't make offline maps of the whole region on everyone's devices. All of California is only around 2gb in Google Maps. That functionality has existied for a decade.
- genocidicbunny 7y agoAlong with all of the above, AAA still has free paper maps. If you're traveling anywhere outside the major cities, always bring a paper map with you. It doesn't need to be your primary method of navigation, but when your phone battery is dying, or your navigation app refuses to load because of spotty signal, the paper map will still work.
- cptskippy 7y agoThat's an excellent suggestion, especially if you're trying to disconnect and go electronics free. Sadly a lot of people can't even read a map anymore.
- dwild 7y agoDoes everything has to be 100% reliable though? That has a cost and it may be not be worth it to pay that cost. A heart-lung machine does need to be 100% reliable though, which is as a matter of fact, is actually quite expensive, to be 100% reliable.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoSure, each reliability nine increases the cost 10x. However, this doesn't even look like 90%...
- dwild 7y ago> However, this doesn't even look like 90%... Are you saying that 90% of rental through phone are made in area without data service? I'm a big user of Communauto in Quebec, which is a similar car sharing service but does have a key inside (I'm pretty sure they do have the same issue of unlocking the car though, but you take and release the car at the same spot, so the unlock will work at first for sure, and afterward you should keep the key). 99% of my usage with them has been done with data coverage. I only used it once without cell coverage and funnily enough I may have stressed them a bit because I was close to the border and it lasted 48 hours ;).
- Piskvorrr 7y agoFair point.
- hinkley 7y agoSolar powered. After all, the sun has been shining for billions of years.
- closetohome 7y agoI guarantee on the first day, at the first meeting, someone said "well what happens if they drive a car out of cell range?" and they were immediately shut down.