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> 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 seem

> 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.
- philipov 3y ago
  If Google, of all companies, can't afford the necessary testing equipment for a critical function, who can? If they thought that emergency services would make them money, they could have a lab in every office. But it won't, and so they don't care.
- evilduck 3y ago
  Building a Faraday cage is an afternoon woodworking project. You can build them in your garage or bedroom with hand tools if you wanted. You don’t even need a huge room, a portable phone booth sized space could be mass produced and delivered on site. A Faraday Booth might take a few dozen square meters of copper mesh and some basic lumber, drywall and finishing efforts. If it took more than $10k per office I’d be shocked. This is something simple and cheap enough it could be something a local director or manager could charge to their company card and assembled themselves if they really cared.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    It shouldn't be too expensive, but before you put in equipment and pretend to be the phone network, you need to make sure that you're hitting regulatory limits on the amount of RF leaking out. Doing a good enough job to hit that above a gigahertz--- including things like conducted RF, and validating with measurements-- is gonna cost a bit more than you describe.
    - evilduck 3y ago
      Fine, for permitting and regulations and inspections, let’s 100x the cost and say it’s an annual expense too. This is still well within Google’s budgets to provide to their Android teams.
      - taway1237 3y ago
        This discussion is moot btw. Google already has faraday cage and bts equipment, at least in the London office (6ps) where a large part of the Android team is located. And obviously so - the costs involved are a rounding error for Google. The problem must be somewhere else.
    - numpad0 3y ago
      [1]. $1k, -95dB to 3GHz, in stock, manufacturer standard I/O plates sold separately. I think there's zero room for hypotheticals and challenges to talk about setting these up if you ask not webdevs but actual phone people. 1: https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/ https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/
- 4RealFreedom 3y ago
  Arguing an expensive price tag for Google just doesn't resonate. They are building a phone - it should be able to do the one thing that it should, as others have said. Anything outside of contacting someone in an emergency should be secondary.
oh_sigh 3y ago
Even the dimmest view of management should expect them to care about extremely bad PR.
- philipov 3y ago
  So how do you explain Unity and Reddit and Twitter and Wizards of the Coast all belly flopping their PR this year? I'm sure they care, in some abstract sense, about PR (well, not Musk). I just think they're out of touch and incompetent at dealing with it. Some of them are even on the record saying it will blow over and the benefits of not caring are worth the cost, like the Reddit CEO. Clearly the costs of bad PR aren't high enough.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    They care if bad PR results in less money. Wizards +Unity realized they pushed too hard and will ultimately cost them. Reddit thinks their decision still makes financial sense.
    - philipov 3y ago
      And Google is making exactly the same calculation. Maybe they'll do something to fix it after a hundred people die because they can't call 911 and it blows up nationally.

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.
philipov 3y ago
If Google, of all companies, can't afford the necessary testing equipment for a critical function, who can? If they thought that emergency services would make them money, they could have a lab in every office. But it won't, and so they don't care.
evilduck 3y ago
Building a Faraday cage is an afternoon woodworking project. You can build them in your garage or bedroom with hand tools if you wanted. You don’t even need a huge room, a portable phone booth sized space could be mass produced and delivered on site. A Faraday Booth might take a few dozen square meters of copper mesh and some basic lumber, drywall and finishing efforts. If it took more than $10k per office I’d be shocked. This is something simple and cheap enough it could be something a local director or manager could charge to their company card and assembled themselves if they really cared.
- mlyle 3y ago
  It shouldn't be too expensive, but before you put in equipment and pretend to be the phone network, you need to make sure that you're hitting regulatory limits on the amount of RF leaking out. Doing a good enough job to hit that above a gigahertz--- including things like conducted RF, and validating with measurements-- is gonna cost a bit more than you describe.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    Fine, for permitting and regulations and inspections, let’s 100x the cost and say it’s an annual expense too. This is still well within Google’s budgets to provide to their Android teams.
    - taway1237 3y ago
      This discussion is moot btw. Google already has faraday cage and bts equipment, at least in the London office (6ps) where a large part of the Android team is located. And obviously so - the costs involved are a rounding error for Google. The problem must be somewhere else.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    [1]. $1k, -95dB to 3GHz, in stock, manufacturer standard I/O plates sold separately. I think there's zero room for hypotheticals and challenges to talk about setting these up if you ask not webdevs but actual phone people. 1: https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/ https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/
4RealFreedom 3y ago
Arguing an expensive price tag for Google just doesn't resonate. They are building a phone - it should be able to do the one thing that it should, as others have said. Anything outside of contacting someone in an emergency should be secondary.

oh_sigh 3y ago

Even the dimmest view of management should expect them to care about extremely bad PR.

philipov 3y ago
So how do you explain Unity and Reddit and Twitter and Wizards of the Coast all belly flopping their PR this year? I'm sure they care, in some abstract sense, about PR (well, not Musk). I just think they're out of touch and incompetent at dealing with it. Some of them are even on the record saying it will blow over and the benefits of not caring are worth the cost, like the Reddit CEO. Clearly the costs of bad PR aren't high enough.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  They care if bad PR results in less money. Wizards +Unity realized they pushed too hard and will ultimately cost them. Reddit thinks their decision still makes financial sense.
  - philipov 3y ago
    And Google is making exactly the same calculation. Maybe they'll do something to fix it after a hundred people die because they can't call 911 and it blows up nationally.