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Comment by rkagerer

2 years ago

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?

63 comments

rkagerer

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guraf  2 years 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  2 years 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  2 years 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.

      3 replies →

  • stock_toaster  2 years ago

    In most fields with “real engineers” do they also get told by management to ship things broken and/or with arbitrary deadlines, or do they have the ability to push back on things, with some legal recourse or means to avoid the threat of losing their jobs if they say no to something, that software engineers lack?

    I don’t think things will change until corporate management changes (via being forced to, or otherwise).

LinuxBender  2 years 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)?

numpad0  2 years 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.

  • rkagerer  2 years 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.

  • denysvitali  2 years 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  2 years 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.

      27 replies →

    • numpad0  2 years 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.

      7 replies →

    • yardstick  2 years 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.

  • Szpadel  2 years 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

  • fallingknife  2 years 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  2 years 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.

pohuing  2 years 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.

dvngnt_  2 years 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

formerly_proven  2 years ago

> Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911.

There's enough 911 calls for everyone, they're just not distributed equally.