Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

This article, dating back to January, lays it out pretty clearly: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-fixes-nightma...

> If you're logged out, launching Microsoft Teams 10 times will result in 10 duplicate PhoneAccounts from Teams clogging your phone. Teams shouldn't do this, and Microsoft's update stopped Teams from doing this, but a bunch of duplicate PhoneAccounts also shouldn't be enough to bring Android's phone system to its knees.

> Next bug: when picking a PhoneAccount to run the emergency call through, [...] it's possible for this to result in an integer overflow or underflow, and now the phone subsystem is going to crash.

> A third bug in this mess is that Microsoft Teams does not even register itself as an emergency call handler.

> An update is not arriving for the Pixel 6 yet. Google's newest flagship is going though a bit of an update crisis at the moment. The December 2021 update was pulled due to unrelated "mobile connectivity issues" (phone calls don't work). While Google scrambles to fix everything, the next Pixel 6 update with this 911 fix is due in "late January." Until then, it's normal to be on the November patch. Both of Google's "early January" and "late January" patch timelines seem incredibly slow for a bug that could cause users to literally die.

If the OP article is correct, then apparently this still hasn't actually been fixed yet.

And why the hell does Google/Android allow 3rd party emergency phone service handlers at all?

Something critical like 911 should have one handler. Heck, I’d argue the phone system shouldn’t be allowed to be overloaded by a 3rd party at all. That just sounds like a bowl of buggy spaghetti.

>And why the hell does Google/Android allow 3rd party emergency phone service handlers at all?

It doesn't, but the interaction of registering a bunch of 3rd party voip services interacts with the emergency call system in interesting ways, as explained in detail in the links Ars Technica article.

Probably related to [1]:

"The FCC requires that providers of interconnected VoIP telephone services using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) meet Enhanced 911 (E911) obligations. E911 systems automatically provide emergency service personnel with a 911 caller's call-back number and, in most cases, location information.

To reduce possible risks to public safety, the FCC requires interconnected VoIP providers to:

- Automatically provide 911 service to all customers as a standard, mandatory feature. VoIP providers may not allow customers to "opt-out" of 911 service. "

Can Teams make phone calls?

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/voip-and-911-service

From a user perspective, I think I’d expect one of two things on a cell-phone… - Teams (or other 3rd party) isn’t allowed to make telephone calls. The phone provides this service. Teams can continue making voice “calls” to other Teams users, it just can’t initiate telephone calls via PSTN.

- Teams (or other 3rd party) is allowed to take over calling duties from base software. But, only one call handling system can be active at a time.

Personally, I’m not sure why I’d want multiple handlers, or even a single alternate handler, so I’d pick the first option. If I’m missing a common use case, I’d like to hear it.

The problem the FCC is solving is:

Person is in an emergency, they pick up the closest device and dial 911.

That needs to go through, complete with location information.

The specific triggers for the rule were old-landline handsets plugged into VoIP boxes routing through carriers that didn't have E911 connections. A child would pick up the phone, dial 911, the other end wouldn't have the address, and the child wouldn't know it either.

This rule would appear to include _anything_ capable of making a call, including things that don't look like phones (tablets).

That is mixed with the desire for carriers (and others) to intercept long-distance and other calls (no signal, cheaper rates, etc).

Microsoft used to sell something which would automatically intercept and redirect calls to other private numbers off of the cell network. This allowed higher quality codecs and lower costs.

If the handset maker only supports 911 when there is a cell signal, then this runs afoul of the FCC rule. The handset could be used in a location with wifi (but no cell signal), and be used to make calls. Someone picks up that handset, tries to dial 911 and is denied.

Microsoft, since they're a VoIP provider, needs to deal with E911. Google, needs to be fault-tolerant in the 911 dialing path and have good fallbacks.

I understand that. But MS shouldn’t have to solve “route E911 on an Android phone”. Google has to solve that for the default dialer/call handler. I don’t understand why a call made from default Android would ever route back to MS Teams. All calling (at least for E911 and similar) should go through the default call handler via API. Or something like that. It sounds like Google has a really convoluted, error-prone implementation. I’m sure they had a good reason at the time, but looking in from the outside today, my first thought is “WTH were they thinking?”

The obvious prevalent use case is adding a business / work line via your company's VoIP provider to your personal handset (or a company one, for that matter). I'm sure this is very common, and I have both done and supported it at multiple employers. Personally I have also in the past used VoIP accounts for cheap long distance, but I maintain a cellular service for reliability with local calls.

Having this functionality integrate with the OS is much handier than the clunkiness of dealing with individual apps, and this idea of replaceable parts is a key advantage of Android in general.

Emergency calls probably warrant special care and maybe more rigid handling, I will grant, but there's no reason not to support this in general.

> Can Teams make phone calls?

Yep: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/voip-voice-o...

If I get this right, we have a $1+ trillion company not being able to build a basic functionality into their phones? (like "phone calls don't work" and the whole calling 911 issue). And, apparently, that was happening because of a shitty app built by another $1+ trillion company? In terms of innovation the US tech scene is toast with these dinosaurs.

Bugs happen everywhere, to everyone. The fact that it happened is not a surprise - the lack of an immediate fix is what is concerning

But you have to agree the state of MS Teams is an absolute shitshow. The quality is like it's put together by a bunch of guys coding on their spare time if they feel like it.

That would be a passion project. I find it hard to conceive of Teams as a passion project, except possibly by people who have a passion for hating the world.

If Microsoft has a penchant for hiring people passionate about hating the world that would explain a lot of their software over the years.

or if something about working at MS instills in people a passion for hating the world...

If MS software is the worst software you’ve used, you’re living a pretty good life.

There are businesses running on software that makes Teams look like a paragon of performance, stability and user-focused UI/UX.

> There are businesses running on software that makes Teams look like a paragon of performance, stability and user-focused UI/UX.

Those (probably) aren’t trillion dollar businesses.

SAP has a market cap of $135B, not a trillion dollar business but in the top 100 largest companies in the world.

> If MS software is the worst software you’ve used, you’re living a pretty good life.

I've used much worse, almost always enterprise software.

That doesn't excuse Microsoft, but ultimately I just make sure my personal life and my jobs stay as far away from their software as I can.

When it’s a matter of life and death, like in this case, bugs shouldn’t just happen. If your sw product gets too complex so that you’re not able to control anymore of life-threatening bugs then you should make sure that said product gets rid of its complexity so that the engineers can have a better grasp of it.

If that still doesn’t happen then it’s a job for the regulators to step again because, again, this is a life and death situation.

How could the regulators possibly improve this situation?

Banning the product and forcing the manufacturer to pay damages to every single person they sold that garbage to, for example.

I would love this, though there's very few entities in the world that seem to have this level of sovereign power - most regulatory agencies / governments don't seem to have the political will, drive, ambition, or simply ability to do something like this.

Let's say for the USA, the chair of the FCC (hahahahahahahahaahah) decided to do this, could they even? Isn't power dispersed enough to make this impossible? (immediately challenged by courts, or, unable to determine which regulatory agency in USA actually has authority to do this, etc?) Or say an American state, perhaps Texas, decides to protect its citizens by threatening to ban sales of google phones if they don't fix this bug tomorrow, and force a recall, would that be possible? I mean... via what mechanism could that even happen? A governor executive order immediately challenged by a local court or even the USA federal government? A state law, that gets vetoed? Etc.

This leaving aside the fact that Google can just do fat campaign donations to whoever can throw a monkeywrench into this kind of consumer protection action.

You are probably overthinking this.

As much as the deregulatory agenda is ascendant, the FCC does have authority to regulate … wireless carriers and interstate commerce.

In particular, 47 USC 618(a)(6) provides an explicit right of mandamus if the FCC fails to act (I suppose this is mainly for venue). I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure you could compel the FCC to, however indirectly, compel Google to act.

You can't do much about the stuff out there now, but you can make punishments so painful companies simply regulate themselves. It's all math to them - if the punishment is more expensive than doing it right the first time, it gets done right the first time, usually.

Suppose that the penalty for this was that you were forced to halt sales and offer a full refund to all purchasers the original price until your phones’ emergency function worked. I’d bet that Google would magically be able to repurpose some of their billions in profits to hiring some QA testers.

Why people keep saying 1B+, 1T+ compagny, if you don't want bugs don't use software, the size of the compagny does not matter.

Of course it matters, why such a black and white statement? The assumption is that a well funded company should be able to finance a quality assurance team which fixes bugs the developers create

Market cap is not revenue. While Google and Microsoft do have a lot of revenue, saying "trillion dollar company" is a tacit suggestion they're sitting on a trillion dollar dragon hoard.

Their profitability compared to profits is a more logically consistent comparison. If they recognize a billion dollars in profit while shipping brain dead bugs it goes to demonstrate their lack of respect for customers.

And in another thread people talk how "real programmers don't need unit tests", oh the irony.

“With thousands of people using your phones, it'll be clear pretty quickly when something as crucial as 911 stops working. You shouldn't need tests for that.”

Normally failures like this would be addressed through legislation. Perhaps a $10,000 fine per 911 call failure incident. With regulatory capture and half the voting population against regulation, this is unlikely to happen though.

Short of that, boycotts could be organized. Maybe a senior executive at T-Mobile loses their kid in a car accident because the 911 call didn't go through. So they decide to drop Google for 2 years or something.

Soon this sort of B2B boycott could be illegal:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/11/alec-anti-po...

More and more avenues that help common working people stand up to monopoly/duopoly, wealth inequality and other forms of power imbalance are being deemed political.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted - I think your comment is fair. As said in the OP article "911 is not a favor to us. It’s required".

Jesus, Teams really is the worst software in existence. Microsoft keep outdoing themslves.

> If the OP article is correct, then apparently this still hasn't actually been fixed yet.

Or there are two completely different 911-related issues.

Bugs like these can arise from using unsigned values as intermediate results in a computation. Just because the source and dest values are positive integers doesn't mean that results don't go briefly negative.

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