6 ms·

Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911. I don't understand why these devices can't even do the most core feature of a phone properly. This will sound crass

Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911. I don't understand why these devices can't even do the most core feature of a phone properly. This will sound crass but the development teams (right up to CEO's) should be dragged out to the gallows and flogged. If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping, and not rested for a minute until any bugs were solidly quashed - up to and including recalling all sold units and overhauling the flakey architecture if needed. This is life safety we're talking about, not only for their users but also everyone else impacted by their blatent abuse of the emergency services system. Would we tolerate bridges that collapsed with equally ambivalent consequences for those who engineered them?

numpad0 3y ago
I can hallucinate couple different explanations for that: - Modern software is way too overcomplicated to take seriously. - 911 is handled too specially, leading to oversights by implementers. - Feature importance to you has nothing to do with implementation difficulties. etc.
- denysvitali 3y ago
  Yes, I think the real problem is #2. The only reliable way to test 911 features is a test lab, to which the average engineer doesn't have access to. On top of that, calling 911 isn't exactly as placing a normal call - so the only way to test is... to call 911. Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. Plus, they most likely don't have a way to automatically test these changes - or they might happen as part of other "features" (remember the Microsoft Teams bug that caused similar issues?). In the end, the smarter our smartphones become - the dumber they are at doing the one single thing they were initially meant to do - get help in case of an emergency.
  - philipov 3y ago
    > Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. And why not? It seems like the real real problem is #4: Management doesn't take seriously people's need to reach emergency services because it's not a profit center.
    - denysvitali 3y ago
      A test lab is a room that is completely isolated from the outside (and in a way that the RF doesn't leak outside of the premises) where you can do these kind of experiments. Considering the amount of teams working on the Google Dialer, and the fact that they might be distributed across multiple cities / countries - this sounds very expensive.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        Society spends a few billion dollars a year on E911 and related infrastructure. To have faith in it eroded because of a little bit of slipshod validation by phone vendors is a false economy.
      - bleachedsleet 3y ago
        Linus Tech Tips has one complete with an isolated private 5G network inside. I’m sure Google could manage.
        numpad0 3y ago
        Intrigued, looked up... hm. and am still wondering what they plan to do with that. 1: https://firecell.io/product/labkit/ https://firecell.io/product/labkit/
        pests 3y ago
        They are building their "Labs" which aims to offer high quality testing. They also have purchased a professional power supply tester as well. They noticed cell phone reviews over time have dropped signal or quality testing. Which makes sense since each reviewer is just testing in their local environment with no standards or baseline so they were pretty meaningless anyways. Are they going to be able to test enough phones and wifi/radio equipment to make it worth while? Not too sure.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    You don't need a full concert hall to test 911, the simplest LTE test equipment can be just couple sandwiches big. They're also not expensive at Google scale. It does concern me that there were anecdotal posts that read to me like that, developing firmwares and not blatantly violating basic assumptions and principles and core premises of Google MDM cannot occur simultaneously. If I somehow had to, I would bet that that to be on the path to the root cause. I mean, a lot of software jockeys have to be explained that IP address isn't assigned to a CPU socket.
    - denysvitali 3y ago
      You need a special room as well - you can't accept that someone near your building might end up having his 911 call routed through your test infrastructure. Alternatively, I think you can somehow connect the device antenna to your equipment, so that the signal doesn't even have to be transmitted over the air (or at the scale of a femtocell). Still, rather "expensive" to setup in multiple locations for just a team that develops a dialer. Additionally, you'd have to test this across multiple OS versions, and devices. Still doable, but most likely not incentivized by the managers at Google
      - numpad0 3y ago
        I don't see why it would be expensive, for no other than Google, to set up a microwave oven with a factory rooted phone and a femtocell inside on ~dozen locations worldwide. There's no special legal or financial complexities in doing that. And selling phones that can't pass certification is just irresponsible. If you can't make a product work, you're free to be responsible and cancel a product. It's on Google to do businesses legally.
        db48x 3y ago
        The faraday cage in a microwave is good for its purpose, but not good enough at blocking cell phone bands. They would need something slightly more expensive, anywhere from $1000 to $50k depending on how fancy they wanted to be. Of course Google should have no problem affording any of that, but these details do matter. I suspect that the problem must be more complex than a bug in just the phone or the OS; for one thing, the problem is intermittent and doesn’t affect every phone. Still, the lack of action from the FCC is disturbing.
  - zja 3y ago
    > the only way to test is... to call 911 You should be able to use 933 to test emergency services. https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291778-The-933-service https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291778-Th...
    - snazz 3y ago
      Is that only a service that Bandwidth.com offers or would it work on a regular cell network?
      - zja 3y ago
        I think it depends on the carrier you use, but a lot of other carriers support it.
        mlyle 3y ago
        I'm guessing pretty much all are carriers that are using Bandwidth.com for 911 service.
    - waveBidder 3y ago
      I've been wondering how to test this, thank you
    - bisby 3y ago
      Completely tangential to testing that the service connects: I have a young child and we've done practice "what do you do in an emergency" things, but are there any "fake 911" type services where a young child can call to practice a 911 call, so they can experience how the operator will talk to them, so in a real emergency it would be a bit less jarring?
    - denysvitali 3y ago
      Okay, but that's not going through the same paths of a 911 call, is it? And by that I mean the emergency mode of the modems
  - yardstick 3y ago
    I believe some places you provide emergency services the number you will be calling from to test, so they can handle it appropriately. Ultimately with a system like 911, you will always have to do final testing on the real deal. Because this is just too serious to get wrong.
  - radicaldreamer 3y ago
    How does every other phone manufacturer do it then?
- rkagerer 3y ago
  One more I'd throw on the list is a growing trend in our field of shipping buggy products with the expectation we'll fix them later via updates. It's a terrible drug the internet enabled. The ironic thing is personally I only upgrade my phone every 5+ years and would be totally happy with longer development cycles.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Also possible that bug is due to poor handling of mobile network error so no functionality is lost, just a UI issue. Or there is a bug, but the frequency is much lower than mobile network failure rate so low priority.
- amelius 3y ago
  Yeah, 911 calls should be implemented in an entirely different hardware subsystem, just like the flight control system of an airplane doesn't run on the same hardware as the entertainment systems.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Szpadel 3y ago
  > 911 is handled too specially AFAIK there is some special functionality to report location directly to emergency services when calling to speed up emergency handling but if that would be my implementation I would track call in some very simple way and if that's second or third try to call 911 within hour then handle it as ordinary call without that extra functionality as a safeguard
LinuxBender 3y ago
If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping For what it's worth, every telco switch upgrade I performed ages ago, early days of GSM the first number I tested was 911. I made sure the dispatcher could hear me. I don't know whats going on with the phone development side of things. That seems like a QA and customer feedback review problem. It probably also does not help that wireless vendors are slow/hesitant to update phones. There is a fear of bricking phones and customer support nightmares their words, not mine. I could flash update a phone over the air but this was in the 90's. No idea what that process looks like now. I assume they stage an update on a CDN after hopefully testing it extensively. Do all cell phones have two boot partitions in the event the upgrade process is sub-optimal(c)?
formerly_proven 3y ago
> Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911. There's enough 911 calls for everyone, they're just not distributed equally.
pohuing 3y ago
My bet is on Google doesn't give a shit. The pixel 4a is a second tier device with constant ui crashes, glitches and design obviously not made for it.
guraf 3y ago
In any other field, engineers would be held responsible and after so many "mistakes" they would lose their license. Software engineers will fight tooth and nails to keep their privilege is being called engineers whilst having none of the responsibility when it comes to the harm they're causing.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Really? Who lost their engineering license from Firestone tires? Toyota gas pedals? Hasbro easy-bake oven? Graco high chairs? Stop trotting out the same baseless comment over and over.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    In my country, engineers are legally responsible for their work to the point where insurance is required to do engineering. And yes, engineers that are negligent are held responsible. Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      Certainly liability insurance exists. Let me know if find answers to my questions.
      - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
        You know any software engineers with liability insurance? Also, you would have learned of many examples had you gone to engineering school, we have whole courses dedicated to laws and ethics.
        paulddraper 3y ago
        Yes many software engineering firms hold liability insurance. And many software engineering contracts contain liability clauses.
- 3y ago
dvngnt_ 3y ago
> If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping not absolving Google, but this is easier said than done

numpad0 3y ago

I can hallucinate couple different explanations for that: - Modern software is way too overcomplicated to take seriously. - 911 is handled too specially, leading to oversights by implementers. - Feature importance to you has nothing to do with implementation difficulties. etc.

denysvitali 3y ago
Yes, I think the real problem is #2. The only reliable way to test 911 features is a test lab, to which the average engineer doesn't have access to. On top of that, calling 911 isn't exactly as placing a normal call - so the only way to test is... to call 911. Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. Plus, they most likely don't have a way to automatically test these changes - or they might happen as part of other "features" (remember the Microsoft Teams bug that caused similar issues?). In the end, the smarter our smartphones become - the dumber they are at doing the one single thing they were initially meant to do - get help in case of an emergency.
- philipov 3y ago
  > Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. And why not? It seems like the real real problem is #4: Management doesn't take seriously people's need to reach emergency services because it's not a profit center.
  - denysvitali 3y ago
    A test lab is a room that is completely isolated from the outside (and in a way that the RF doesn't leak outside of the premises) where you can do these kind of experiments. Considering the amount of teams working on the Google Dialer, and the fact that they might be distributed across multiple cities / countries - this sounds very expensive.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Society spends a few billion dollars a year on E911 and related infrastructure. To have faith in it eroded because of a little bit of slipshod validation by phone vendors is a false economy.
    - bleachedsleet 3y ago
      Linus Tech Tips has one complete with an isolated private 5G network inside. I’m sure Google could manage.
      - numpad0 3y ago
        Intrigued, looked up... hm. and am still wondering what they plan to do with that. 1: https://firecell.io/product/labkit/ https://firecell.io/product/labkit/
        pests 3y ago
        They are building their "Labs" which aims to offer high quality testing. They also have purchased a professional power supply tester as well. They noticed cell phone reviews over time have dropped signal or quality testing. Which makes sense since each reviewer is just testing in their local environment with no standards or baseline so they were pretty meaningless anyways. Are they going to be able to test enough phones and wifi/radio equipment to make it worth while? Not too sure.
- numpad0 3y ago
  You don't need a full concert hall to test 911, the simplest LTE test equipment can be just couple sandwiches big. They're also not expensive at Google scale. It does concern me that there were anecdotal posts that read to me like that, developing firmwares and not blatantly violating basic assumptions and principles and core premises of Google MDM cannot occur simultaneously. If I somehow had to, I would bet that that to be on the path to the root cause. I mean, a lot of software jockeys have to be explained that IP address isn't assigned to a CPU socket.
  - denysvitali 3y ago
    You need a special room as well - you can't accept that someone near your building might end up having his 911 call routed through your test infrastructure. Alternatively, I think you can somehow connect the device antenna to your equipment, so that the signal doesn't even have to be transmitted over the air (or at the scale of a femtocell). Still, rather "expensive" to setup in multiple locations for just a team that develops a dialer. Additionally, you'd have to test this across multiple OS versions, and devices. Still doable, but most likely not incentivized by the managers at Google
    - numpad0 3y ago
      I don't see why it would be expensive, for no other than Google, to set up a microwave oven with a factory rooted phone and a femtocell inside on ~dozen locations worldwide. There's no special legal or financial complexities in doing that. And selling phones that can't pass certification is just irresponsible. If you can't make a product work, you're free to be responsible and cancel a product. It's on Google to do businesses legally.
      - db48x 3y ago
        The faraday cage in a microwave is good for its purpose, but not good enough at blocking cell phone bands. They would need something slightly more expensive, anywhere from $1000 to $50k depending on how fancy they wanted to be. Of course Google should have no problem affording any of that, but these details do matter. I suspect that the problem must be more complex than a bug in just the phone or the OS; for one thing, the problem is intermittent and doesn’t affect every phone. Still, the lack of action from the FCC is disturbing.
- zja 3y ago
  > the only way to test is... to call 911 You should be able to use 933 to test emergency services. https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291778-The-933-service https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291778-Th...
  - snazz 3y ago
    Is that only a service that Bandwidth.com offers or would it work on a regular cell network?
    - zja 3y ago
      I think it depends on the carrier you use, but a lot of other carriers support it.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        I'm guessing pretty much all are carriers that are using Bandwidth.com for 911 service.
  - waveBidder 3y ago
    I've been wondering how to test this, thank you
  - bisby 3y ago
    Completely tangential to testing that the service connects: I have a young child and we've done practice "what do you do in an emergency" things, but are there any "fake 911" type services where a young child can call to practice a 911 call, so they can experience how the operator will talk to them, so in a real emergency it would be a bit less jarring?
  - denysvitali 3y ago
    Okay, but that's not going through the same paths of a 911 call, is it? And by that I mean the emergency mode of the modems
- yardstick 3y ago
  I believe some places you provide emergency services the number you will be calling from to test, so they can handle it appropriately. Ultimately with a system like 911, you will always have to do final testing on the real deal. Because this is just too serious to get wrong.
- radicaldreamer 3y ago
  How does every other phone manufacturer do it then?
rkagerer 3y ago
One more I'd throw on the list is a growing trend in our field of shipping buggy products with the expectation we'll fix them later via updates. It's a terrible drug the internet enabled. The ironic thing is personally I only upgrade my phone every 5+ years and would be totally happy with longer development cycles.
fallingknife 3y ago
Also possible that bug is due to poor handling of mobile network error so no functionality is lost, just a UI issue. Or there is a bug, but the frequency is much lower than mobile network failure rate so low priority.
amelius 3y ago
Yeah, 911 calls should be implemented in an entirely different hardware subsystem, just like the flight control system of an airplane doesn't run on the same hardware as the entertainment systems.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Szpadel 3y ago
> 911 is handled too specially AFAIK there is some special functionality to report location directly to emergency services when calling to speed up emergency handling but if that would be my implementation I would track call in some very simple way and if that's second or third try to call 911 within hour then handle it as ordinary call without that extra functionality as a safeguard

LinuxBender 3y ago

If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping For what it's worth, every telco switch upgrade I performed ages ago, early days of GSM the first number I tested was 911. I made sure the dispatcher could hear me. I don't know whats going on with the phone development side of things. That seems like a QA and customer feedback review problem. It probably also does not help that wireless vendors are slow/hesitant to update phones. There is a fear of bricking phones and customer support nightmares their words, not mine. I could flash update a phone over the air but this was in the 90's. No idea what that process looks like now. I assume they stage an update on a CDN after hopefully testing it extensively. Do all cell phones have two boot partitions in the event the upgrade process is sub-optimal(c)?

formerly_proven 3y ago

> Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911. There's enough 911 calls for everyone, they're just not distributed equally.

pohuing 3y ago

My bet is on Google doesn't give a shit. The pixel 4a is a second tier device with constant ui crashes, glitches and design obviously not made for it.

guraf 3y ago

In any other field, engineers would be held responsible and after so many "mistakes" they would lose their license. Software engineers will fight tooth and nails to keep their privilege is being called engineers whilst having none of the responsibility when it comes to the harm they're causing.

paulddraper 3y ago
Really? Who lost their engineering license from Firestone tires? Toyota gas pedals? Hasbro easy-bake oven? Graco high chairs? Stop trotting out the same baseless comment over and over.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  In my country, engineers are legally responsible for their work to the point where insurance is required to do engineering. And yes, engineers that are negligent are held responsible. Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Certainly liability insurance exists. Let me know if find answers to my questions.
    - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      You know any software engineers with liability insurance? Also, you would have learned of many examples had you gone to engineering school, we have whole courses dedicated to laws and ethics.
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        Yes many software engineering firms hold liability insurance. And many software engineering contracts contain liability clauses.
3y ago

dvngnt_ 3y ago

> If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping not absolving Google, but this is easier said than done