You should talk to an employment lawyer before you go to HR or anyone in your company. You also have the right to file a complaint with the EEOC, but I would not do that until you talk to a lawyer.
The reason why you need to talk to a lawyer is that your lawyer is ethically obligated to represent your best interests, not your company's.
You can contact a consumer law attorney to get this fixed. There is an attorney's fees provision in the FCRA which will make it economical to pursue the remedy.
Yes but I'm not sure that's the point. I see that point being, "a subtraction between hashes was used instead of a comparison". "Hash of value "a lot" minus minus-a-lot" overflows.
And a nonsensical behaviour of the other product created a large number of those hashes... Which represent PhoneAccounts objects. The software that triggered the bug created a new PhoneAccounts at every onResume (or similar)...
> We determined that the issue was being caused by unintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating system.
As someone whose organizational policy signs my Teams client out after a couple hours of inactivity, I would love to know how on earth this is possible. I truly am at a loss, and I am furious at the thought that I have been unable to dial 911 for who knows how long.
At least I know the ten digit number for my local emergency services, but the average person probably doesn't. This is unacceptable.
They need to release more technical details on this to restore confidence. How can a sandboxed user installed app with limited permissions cause dialing 911 to fail? How do they know other apps won't cause the same issue?
And they mentioned an Android update, but what about the millions of Android phones that aren't getting regular updates? Does that mean there's potentially millions of phones that can't dial 911?
I like Pixel and Android, but am seriously thinking of switching to iphone because I really need a phone I can trust will dial 911 when I need it.
What's really terrible here is that Google are saying they won't fix this until their regularly scheduled January release.
SERIOUSLY..... They won't rush a fix out for this? Not even for this??? Unbelievable.
Note that Google is no longer providing updates (/maybe/ one more in 22Q1) for the OP's Pixel 3, a 3yo device which is otherwise still a great phone. It's simply not good enough. Google needs to support their own phone past three years and be the example to others that ship Android devices. How long are we going to ignore it and let those who can't afford a new phone every couple of years be left exposed?
Looks like it's only impacting phones from 2019 onwards and in very specific circumstances (still not great at all but a very specific bug):
If you are unsure what Android version you are on, confirm you are running Android 10 or above by following the steps here. If you are not running Android 10 or above, you are not impacted by this issue.
You are also not impacted if you have teams installed and are signed in:
If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, check to see if you are signed in. If you have been signed in, you are not impacted by this issue, and we suggest you remain signed in until you’ve received the Microsoft Teams app update.
If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, but are not signed in, uninstall and reinstall the app. While this will address the problem in the interim, a Microsoft Teams app update is still required to fully resolve the issue.
We advise users to keep an eye out for an update to the Microsoft Teams app, and ensure it is applied as soon as available. We will update this post once the new version of Microsoft Teams is available to 100% of users.
That we know of. If Teams can cause this, surely other apps can also. Moreover, who's to say there isn't a much larger number of people who've been affected by this bug that haven't reach out to Google to file a complaint and bug report. (Or couldn't, possibly because they died while trying to call emergency services.)
The thing is, it's clearly not as simple as "Has MS Teams installed", I mean the bug itself is not due to one specific piece of software, but rather that software advertising itself to the OS in a certain way.
Making a call to emergency services shouldn't be able to fail on hardware with a mobile phone modem. If Android allows apps to provide the capability to do that, then the OS must take responsibility for the app actually being able to do so, if the dialer tries to call an emergency services number, and whatever app is prioritised to take care of that fails, then the next one in line needs to be called upon, until we hit Android core functionality which they have verified beforehand can actually perform the task (given that there is a mobile phone modem on the platform in question, but perhaps this could be done over the internet as well, in which case that isn't even a requirement).
Blaming this on shitty code by a third party is not acceptable.
> Google needs to support their own phone past three years
It's not really Google's choice. Qualcomm gives up on their SOCs pretty quickly and unlike on Linux Android's license doesn't force them to publish driver sources.
And what if there is another app that causes the same bug? Teams doesn’t have any special permissions so one has to assume there are more apps out there that could be a problem.
Scrolling through the permission list on teams, there's a whole bunch I don't usually expect on most apps, ie. "Route calls through the system" (id imagine this is the one needed to implement voip service on top of android).
And it gets even worse for apps that can create corporate profiles so they can be administratively controlled remotely by the corp. That's next level of permission bs one has to give up to.
I do get your point that they’re uncommon requirements but my point was Teams doesn’t any uniquely granted permissions that Google have backdoored for Microsoft. So it is entirely possible that another app / VoIP client (or even malicious actor) could prevent emergency calls.
This is what I am reading also. Couple that with another similar and recent bug discussed in the reddit thread this links to (https://www.androidpolice.com/notifications-feeling-sluggish...) and I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a whole host of unnoticed side effects in peoples Android devices.
These are failures on the Android level, apps users can download from the store shouldn't have the capability to break things like calling emergency services, or notifications for other apps.
And that's not a standard permission, have to go to All Permissions to see it, and I don't see a way to remove that permission, or find all apps that have it
trying to avoid the trap you speak of: I've submitted a case to my corporate technology department with the permalink to Google's Reddit reply partly so the enterprise can't say they knew nothing about this defect (and I cc: my manager).
If that's the only solution/workaround, I guess Teams should be banned from Play Store and existing Teams app automatically disabled or uninstalled next time a user pings Play Store.
In any case, it's Google that is responsible to fix the mess caused by broken sandboxing of their OS.
I’d now be worried that 911 won’t work with other dialers either. Calls to 911 should probably always be handled by some first-party dialer since it’s not reasonable for everyone to test if their specific installation will be able to call 911.
It sounds like the issue is that Google didn't specifically exclude the emergency number for {user's country/province} from being sent to third-party calling apps. These apps can register to handle calls for legitimate reasons.
Ah, so MS Teams is a phone app and Android couldn't decide which of the installed phone apps has precedence. Are there similar issues around WhatsApp, Signal,...?
Android use the default "Calling app" when the user wants to make a call. MS Teams is one such "Calling app": the first time you install any other than the default shipped with your phone, you (the user) are presented a choice to choose which one you want to use. After that, Android remembers your choice.
This means in this case, MS Teams was configured as the default "Calling app" and the issue could have been prevented at 2 level:
- at the Android level, if the user dials an emergency number, don't use the default "Calling app" and use a special "safe" calling app to ensure the call succeed even if a user-installed app is misbehaving.
- at the MS Teams level, allow emergency calls to succeed even if the user isn't logged in (or any other reason that could prevent an emergency call to be made, really).
As for WhatsApp, at least on my device, it's not a "Calling app", and as such cannot override the default calling app. I don't have Signal installed to check.
How exactly do you check your "calling apps"? I'm on Android 12 and have a list of "Phone apps". However, the only other app listed there (besides "Phone") is a VOIP app I specifically installed to make alternative phone calls with. Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and not listed, even though I've used all of them to call other users on the respective apps.
First: I used "Calling apps" because that's how it's displayed on my Android 8 phone. The actual naming isn't consistent across Android versions, so yours is probably named "Phone apps". That's located in the settings, and again the exact way to access it varies according Android versions, manufacturer and whatnot (which is an endless source of pain to guide end-users by the way).
To appear there, apps have to declare they are phone apps and handle the proper calls (an "Intent" in Android jargon) when the system receive a request to make a phone call. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram do not do that: you are only able to initiate a call when already inside the app.
I don't know about Android 12, but on Android 11 it's in Settings > Apps an notifications > Defaults Apps.
This is where you choose which app you want as default for phone, browser, messages, etc
> at the Android level, if the user dials an emergency number, don't use the default "Calling app" and use a special "safe" calling app to ensure the call succeed even if a user-installed app is misbehaving.
That doesn't make sense, the user has to pick the app to dial with before they have an interface to enter the number.
Assuming that your hypothesis is correct: No. Signal doesn't have that permission and I think whatsapp doesn't either, and neither signal nor whatsapp can be signed out in the first place.
I wouldn't go so far as calling my post a hypothesis, it was like a guess. Another guess, wouldn't the fact that neither WhatsApp nor Signal are causing the same issues hint at MS Teams being the culprint?
Teams does the wrong thing, there's no question about that. But it's not clear to me that the Android core is unable to check that the phone app does the job, and has to trust it blindly.
> Why on earth would you want apps to be able to intercept calls on a phone?
Because there are housands of users even on HN that WANT apps like Signal to be able to manage secure encrypted calls like a first-party app with the same rights. Basic software freedom and all that.
I want Signal, Slack, Teams, my apartment buildings intercom system, etc, to be able to present their own native incoming calls through the same dialogs that regular calls come through. But not at the cost of potentially not being able to call emergency services...
> I want Signal, Slack, Teams, my apartment buildings intercom system, etc, to be able to present their own native incoming calls through the same dialogs that regular calls come through. But not at the cost of potentially not being able to call emergency services...
Understand that calling emergency services on VoLTE is essentialy VoIP as well - noone here disagrees that this is a horrifying bug. But the issue with this bug is not the APIs that allows VoIP apps to integrate into call system (after all, those APIs also make Signal/WhatsApp/Skype/Teams calls work over systems like smartwatches, Android Auto and Bluetooth car integrations) but the fact that Android somehow missed the fact that a buggy app can stop a call.
Incoming calls or manually dialling a number directly through the respective app is a different matter, but when you click a stored number in your contacts list, or a phone link in your browser or another app, or anything like that, that app just hands the number to the OS and basically says "please call this number for me".
If you want to allow alternative VOIP apps and things like that to exist, at that point the OS must allow routing that number to any app that claims it can handle (outgoing) phone calls.
Yeah sure, and for most things it's fine if things break, irritating and bad press, but fine. Things like calling emergency services can never be allowed to break. It must have fallbacks, if it even needs to be allowed to be overridden in the first place.
According to this old bit of documentation (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2013/05/handling-p...), the usual way of intercepting call requests should already handle emergency calls ("Note that the system broadcasts NEW_OUTGOING_CALL only for numbers that are not associated with core dialing capabilities such as emergency numbers."), so it'd be interesting to know what went wrong in this case (and why only on Android 10 and newer), but until then it's hard to say more and it's all just speculation…
There are many reasons why an app would want to be notified of a call taking place - e.g., a music app could use this event to auto-pause playback, Teams might set the availability status to "busy", etc.
The question is what should happen if such an app takes an excessively long time handling the event. In this case, the OS should not wait for the app and should directly go on making the call. The bug seems to be that the OS did wait, so a misbehaving app can effectively block phone calls by e.g. going into an infinite loop.
> Why on earth would you want apps to be able to intercept calls on a phone?
My daughter enlightened me to this recently.
Android devices are not phones. They are computers that come preinstalled with some apps, one of which is a phone app. Importantly: They are not marketed as PHONES. They are marked as "Smartphones". Just search for the word "phone" on the websites of any major Android device manufacturers.
The distinction is important.
Be careful when punishing children from "using the phone". Today, this means that they cannot use the app called "phone". This incident is a stark reminder that "phone" is an app today, not a physical device.
You are right that many younger people (and not only younger people) primarly think of those little black rectangles as computers with several apps. As you say, in their minds, making voice calls in the classical way just happens to be one of those apps rather than the device's primary function.
But you are dead wrong about the word "phone". It still means those little black rectangles. If you primarily think of those little black rectangles as computers (or social media machines) then the word "phone" has shifted meaning to match that. If you punish a child by banning them from "using the phone" you will absolutely get the horrified reaction you'd expect.
Of course words vary in meaning throughout the world and maybe "phone" really does mean the classical phone app in your area, or in your daughter's social group. But that's exceptional, regardless of age.
I'm basing the definition on the usage of words by the companies which manufacture and market the devices. See the usage of the words "phone" and "smartphone" on the LG, Samsung, and Xiaomi websites.
Apparently, the "phone" in "smartphone" is about as relevant as is the "fun" in "funeral".
The evolution of the meaning is even more obvious in at least one other language: Japanese borrows the English word "smartphone" for those, but uses "denwa" (with its own kanji) for non-smartphones.
Sure, I agree with that. (But also, what marketer would miss an easy opportunity to include "smart" in their product's description.) I was just talking about your last paragraph.
Sure, I'll accept that. But the point isn't that the devices _are_ something specific, rather, the point was that the device _isn't_ considered a phone by the manufacturers. "Phone" is one function of the device, but no even its major selling point.
There is a fallback call flow for emergency calls in cases where the phone cannot register properly but it would be nice to be able to overlook missing bureaucratic elements and just save lives, and that’s what “Emergency Calls Only” signifies, but it probably only activates when normal flow fails.
> How can a sandboxed user installed app with limited permissions cause dialing 911 to fail?
No idea about this particular problem, but my takeaway was that Android apps are more similar to web extensions with service workers than to traditional executables.
An app can register itself for all kinds of OS hooks during install. When a hook is triggered, the OS will send an event to the appropriate process of that app. If no process is running, the OS will launch one.
This means there is not a lot of meaningful distinction between "running" and "not running" on Android: As long as the app is installed, the OS may run code from that app at any time.
(This is why you can have half a dozen messenger apps running "in the background" without draining your battery: There is no actual background process for each messenger, just entries in a database somewhere. When a new message comes in, the OS receives a push notification, displays a message to the user styled according to the app's configuration - and might eventually launch a process for the app if the user interacts with the message.)
So it's quite possible that the Teams app registers itself for some kind of "outgoing phone call" hook, and there was a bug in Teams' handling of that.
Not an Android expert, but this is how it seems to me.
It's Google's responsibility to implement the hooks in a secure way, so that an app that is registered e.g. for the "call" hook cannot prevent the call from taking place.
The issue is that you might have a device where emergency calls have to be routed through a VoIP app, per legal requirements, e.g. if no cellular emergency calling is available (e.g. on voip-enabled wifi-only devices, or on voip-enabled devices in locations without cellular signal))
> And they mentioned an Android update, but what about the millions of Android phones that aren't getting regular updates?
That's my concern as well. My phone stopped getting updates from the manufacturer after getting Android 10, which is affected by this bug according to the linked comment. How are they going to get this update out to phones that the manufacturers has abandoned after the usual two years of updates?
I have always had Pixels which get monthly updates, but this is a crucial point. Even if Google says "hey guys, we fixed it in AOSP, aren't you proud of us?"
No Google, we're not. This AOSP fix won't come to millions and millions of users.
From what I understood, there will be two updates, one to Android and one to Teams. Either of these updates will be enough to fix this issue. So even if Android is no longer being updated for your phone, updating Teams will be enough to fix it.
I mean if it will never be updated again how could you fix any issue ever? Like yeah this one is particularly severe but any resolution will be an update of some kind to the software.
My iPhone 6s runs Teams just fine. Granted notifications continue to display on my phone, even when I'm on the desktop or using Teams directly - but nonetheless it still works when I need it to (on iOS, can't say the same for the Android fellows rn)
Google wants you to blame Microsoft Teams for this, and judging from some other comments that’s nearly working. But, the blame is entirely on Android. It doesn’t matter how badly Teams screwed up - it should not have the ability to mess up a core system function like this.
Let’s not forget - someone very nearly could have died thanks to this glitch. Thankfully, a landline was available.
> "I am furious at the thought that I have been unable to dial 911 for who knows how long."
Initially I thought the above comment was unreasonable. But when I put myself in the same shoes, I have the EXACT same feeling.
It is like the person who was coming at the intersection at blaring speed, but missed me. The fact that he COULD have hit me, and if that happened, I would likely have died, is a very frustrating thought. But when conveying it to a 3rd party, I feel the 3rd party might think "hey, its ok. nothing happened. you are safe. he did not hit you, so why are you upset?"
This might be related: https://blog.enablingtechcorp.com/planning-emergency-calling...
"Routing emergency calls to the appropriate 911 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is a legal requirement in the United States [...] Teams can determine an Emergency Caller’s current location and automatically pass the call and the current location information to the appropriate PSAP"
Agreed. As a Pixel/Android user who has never used Microsoft Teams this is still incredibly concerning.
A third-party app causing this issue on accident means a third-party app could cause this issue maliciously and any app not part of the base operating system should not be capable of causing an issue interfering with emergency calling.
I assume/hope their January 4th fix addresses whatever the issue is at a more fundamental level, but this seems like the sort of thing that should be addressed a lot sooner than a month out.
I think the issue is that Teams even tries to do this in the first place. If I want to call someone via Teams, I'll fire up Teams. Or maybe add a button in the address book when I search for someone (I've got this on iOS, don't know if it's a thing on Android).
But on the dialler? When I'm there, I expect to be using the phone app to actually call the number I'm dialling.
So yes, this does seem to me like legitimate MS bashing. Even if the platform allows for this, they shouldn't be using it. Especially if the app is signed-out or otherwise out of order. Of course "it's for the customer experience" somehow, but come on.
Teams is VOIP. Legally they HAVE to allow for and setup 911 calling.*
Yes they royally screwed up. But its not like they could have just ignored Ray Baum Act/ Kari's Law.
*I think for non static location devices like cellphones or softphones the law does not kick in for a bit. For deskphones or say a voip phone you take home from work it has been in effect for a while now.
> Teams is VOIP. Legally they HAVE to allow for and setup 911 calling.*
No-one's saying they shouldn't allow for it. The issue here is they're hijacking an external app, effectively going out of its way to prevent the user from calling 911.
So I guess they're in the wrong twice.
For the record, no, I don't think this was done on purpose. But it just shows why it's an issue they screw around with things they shouldn't.
How else can they do it? As I understand with android they have to list themselves as a dialer to make and receive calls.
Not trying to defend the programming screwup. Just the idea that they can magically send and receive 911 calls without being interfaced somehow with the dialer.
And its not like they can always pass to the native dialer in all cases. There are plenty of no signal zones with wifi. (And before you say that 911 can use any network when I say no signal I mean exactly that.)
> they have to list themselves as a dialer to make and receive calls
Why would they have to do that? All they need to do is show a keypad and capture the microphone and speakers just like any voice chat application does. Why does any dialer API have to be involved for that?
Presumably they want to take advantage of other functionality in the native dialer, and faking out the whole dialer interface will probably produce a huge number of other bugs. It's not unreasonable to integrate with native functions and in most cases we complain about apps that don't do that.
> in most cases we complain about apps that don't do that.
In this case I don't think that thinking applies. As I understand those APIs are there so that you can create replacements for the stock dialer app, which is not what Teams is. If that's how it's been designed then I believe it is trying to take on too much responsibility.
How else can they do it? As I understand with android they have to list themselves as a dialer to make and receive calls.
Not trying to defend the programming screwup. Just the idea that they can magically send and receive 911 calls without being interfaced somehow with the dialer.
Can't the app have an internal dialler? They have their own iOS. I seem to remember Whatsapp on Android had this, but it was a long time ago, and I may be mistaken.
Under the hood I would expect it to still be hooked into the dialer system api that google exposes. Likely this was where the undefined behavior showed up.
Android allows VOIP apps to register as a dialer. They have allowed this for YEARS. One company I worked with some years back was looking at working with phone vendors who based their phones on Android about replacing the default dialer. It didn't happen, but it was an option even a decade ago.
The programming screwup? Yes, that is a Teams thing.
I personally wonder if this situation gets even goofier with Work/Personal profiles on Android. It's not something I have looked into. I have a Pixel 5 as my "work" phone and it has the profiles. But I rarely use it for anything but messsaging/Teams meetings/etc.
> Based on our investigation we have been able to reproduce the issue under a limited set of circumstances. We believe the issue is only present on a small number of devices with the Microsoft Teams app installed when the user is not logged in, and we are currently only aware of one user report related to the occurrence of this bug. We determined that the issue was being caused by unintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating system. Because this issue impacts emergency calling, both Google and Microsoft are heavily prioritizing the issue, and we expect a Microsoft Teams app update to be rolled out soon
Let me zoom in...
> we expect a Microsoft Teams app update to be rolled out soon
It's a Google issue no matter what. No matter what Microsoft did in their Teams app, the fact that it was (and still is!) possible is a critical flaw in Google code which Google has the duty to fix ASAP. The problem is not fixed until it is impossible for 911 calling to break even if the old Microsoft Teams app is used, and until emergency calling is certain to work even if someone else intentionally made a malicious app trying to hijack 911 in a similar manner.
I mean, that's literally a top priority without compromise - if it turns out that for some reason they can't implement third party dialing in a way that ensures proper handling of emergency calls even in the presence of buggy or even actively malicious third party apps, then an acceptable solution would be to kill all third party dialing; there is no permissible tradeoff whatsoever between features and emergency calling.
Amazed that you managed to draw this conclusion! It doesn't matter what apps I have installed and what they do, NOTHING should prevent me from getting a 911 call out if I have battery and coverage.
False. Microsoft is not responsible for ensuring that 911 is available - Google is, as they are the phone hardware and OS manufacturer. Teams can only use the APIs exposed to it by Android - if use of those APIs allows 911 calling to be disabled, that's a bug in Android, not Teams.
Similarly, if an application using the standard Linux kernel APIs is improperly elevated to root because of a bug in the kernel, that's the fault of the kernel, not the application. The kernel is responsible for ensuring that even misuse of its API or a buggy application doesn't violate certain constraints that the user expects to be upheld.
This is kind of like saying if an app crashes an operating system it is the app's fault.
The app's code may have caused the crash but the fact that a modern OS would allow an app to take down the entire system is a flaw in the operating system, and the significantly more important problem to have fixed than whatever is wrong with that one specific app that highlighted the issue.
Likewise Microsoft's code may be what is causing this issue to surface, but Android should have better protection against this happening in the first place.
Consider that if the Microsoft Teams app is doing this on accident other apps could do this on purpose, and that failure lies squarely with Google/Android.
So it can make VoIP calls from your work phone number. Now that nobody has a desk phone, such a thing is needed, especially if you don't want to pay for cell phones for your employees but do want them to get calls.
The issue here is that Android has failed to exclude emergency calls from being routed to a VoIP provider. If it wasn't MS Teams causing this issue it could well have been another registered VoIP provider on that phone.
It's simple. Force it to go through the regular cellular network first, and if it doesn't exist (e.g. because you're on a WiFi-only tablet) or is unreachable then try to fall back to another app.
Why would you have one device for work and another for private life? I use dual SIMs on my work phone. I used to use two phones but that was just very, very, very inconvenient.
Why try to cram in two lifes into the one life you have?
I don't want to have anything personal on a device someone else has full control over.
I don't want any work-related notifications after I clock out. If I'm being paid to work 8h/day, company has my attention for 8h/day. Overtimes can be arranged, but doing so on my own will and not being paid for it will never happen.
I don't want to be held liable for leaking company secrets in case I lose my personal device.
"I don't want to have anything personal on a device someone else has full control over."
You don't want a smartphone then. From the ground up these things are closed source with smatterings of OSS in highly visible places which can be negated utterly by lower level software.
At some point we all have to realise that anything we posess electronically is only a copy of the version the three letter guys have in our files.
If the choice is between sharing my data with a three letter agency thousands of kilometres away and sharing my data with a three letter agency and my employer, you're damn right I'm choosing the former.
I even refused an otherwise sensible request from my former employer to install WhatsApp on my phone because I was not interested in using it personally, and they were not interested in providing me a work phone for it.
Weren't emergency services numbers supposed to be available, not matter whether the phone is locked or not, and does not even require a SIM card?
Then how come an user mode app can block calling numbers that were supposed to be available where is there is cellular coverage?
Yes. There are lots of specific technical requirements from the FCC on this. First, even if the phone is locked, calls to 911 have to work. If there's no SIM card, calls to 911 have to work. For 911 calls, the phone's transmitter goes to full power and the receive side will attempt to connect even if the signal is too weak. If you're subscribed to one carrier and they're down, the phone has to try other carriers in range. If no talk channel is available, the cell site has to free one up, kicking off a non-emergency call if necessary. If the billing system is down in the cellular system, the call has to go through anyway. For newer technologies, VOIP has to support 911, with location info.
"Oh, we decided to divert all calls to Teams first" is just not going to fly.
Then this seems to mean that the 'Dialer' function in a lot of Android phones separates functionality at the wrong point, is that right? Having 'Dialer' as selectable should not include the ability to select what ought to be a hardware requirement to be able to dial 911. If this is true the whole pachanga falls firmly in Google's court.
that's one of my biggest reasons for not using android - i appreciate the risk that comes with "options", "choice" and "customisation".
I want my phone to work - especially during a time-critical emergency. An app crashing or bugging out is not an acceptable trade-off. That said, i have my gripes with iOS but at least Apple's thought process towards these issues is similar.
An android app isn't modal in that way. There is no "user mode". There are permissions instead, and the closest thing to "user mode" would be an app that has the 2-3 most common permissions, and no others.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.... lists what Teams does or can do, and it's a long list that includes "directly call phone numbers". That means to call phone numbers without the usual indirection through the phone app, ie. Teams can replace the phone app.
I can't answer that but I run Teams on Android and it's just a terrible app. Its problems have affected my entire phone before. Like for example when it wouldn't stop blinking and each blink reset whatever I was doing so I had to quickly switch out of it between blinks and then force kill it from Settings.
Teams is the absolute worst piece of software I have ever used. Simply logging in only works about 50% of the time. This wouldn't be a big deal if I wasn't randomly forced to the login screen every few days. I experience a different bug every other day. I can't be signed into multiple orgs at once (on desktop) meaning I have to fully sign out/sign in when I want to switch and it takes forever. Notifications are unreliable. I miss Slack so much.
I only installed the teams app on my phone, because their web app only works in selected invasive browsers on the desktop, but not in Firefox, which I found already infuriating.
Why can't we have open standards for communication in 2021, where everyone can just use the software that they trust? I would never use teams if I had a choice, besides looking for another job.
I also know the number for local emergency, but needing to wait for my phone to reboot during a stroke (and my phone takes a looong time to sounds really scary.
How is this relevant? The bug was in this instance triggered by teams, but it could have been any other calling app. And I know at least a few organizations that use teams to communicate with people engaging in a private capacity - our childcare for example uses it to communicate with parents, schools to teach remote, our kids hockey team,…
Work is not the only reason reason someone may use Microsoft Teams. People in school or university use it too, and they sure as hell won't provide you a "school phone".
While I agree it is mainly the fault of Google here with not properly sandboxing, it would not surprise me if mobile management software has the ability to block phone calls to other countries and with that accidentally banning emergency numbers. I get all kinds of big (bit less serious) issues with my phone after installing corporate mobile management software and the incorrect configuration of it.
I don't have a written source, but I think it's safe to say that the majority of elected offices in the United States are local/municipal, and many (most?) of those are unpaid. And if they're not unpaid, they usually only pay a few thousand a year, if that.
That's a bit like saying there's less incentive to work on (for example) Elasticsearch, because you can't deploy your fork on Elastic Co's official managed service. It's nonsense.
Just going to point out - ending single family zoning doesn't mean building a single family house is prohibited, it just means that you can build things other than a single family home on a particular plot of land.
Right. A better term would be Apartment Prohibition, which swept the country in the 1970s after the Supreme Court said you can't just directly exclude people by race.
This is category error, at a minimum. 'highly progressive people' is an abstraction and cannot take action. It's imagine it's also inductive reasoning and out group bias.
This was my experience working at Google. Very liberal until you start talking about upzoning, then suddenly "some neighborhoods should keep their character".
It wasn't until the late 60's / early 70's that explicit racial discrimination was finally outlawed, and it's not a coincidence that exclusionary zoning took off immediately thereafter as a prima facie race-neutral way to achieve the same outcome.
No, you have the timeline wrong. Exclusionary zoning took off almost immediately after Buchanan. Some of the original designers specifically cited that Supreme Court case as their motivation for passing such laws. Redlining and racial covenants were also used around that time for similar purposes.
As the threat of litigation became a new constant, the San Francisco Planning Department slowly began to craft a new approach to development. The city’s 1971 Urban Design Plan was the first to codify the shift in values from the Modernist freeway-and-tower model toward a greater respect for San Francisco’s unique neighborhoods and their human-scale features. The plan focused on preserving and expanding existing neighborhood character
...
But the largest legislative achievement of this emerging anti-growth coalition would be the Residential Rezoning of 1978, a project to implement stricter controls across all of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. In addition to creating 40-foot building-height limits for most residential areas, the legislation included new setback rules (regulating how far a building could be from the public right-of-way), low-density requirements (limiting the number of housing units in a given building), and overall design guidelines aimed at preserving entire neighborhoods in amber.
That proves that exclusionary zoning was around in 1971, but not that it wasn't used earlier. Massachusetts amended its constitution in 1918, literally one year after Buchanan, to enable cities to impose zoning. And the idea of using it to create racial segregation was specifically discussed at the time [0]:
Of particular concern was the fear that zoning would bring about racial and socioeconomic segregation in Massachusetts, which need not take the form of racial tests, as zoning could just as easily bring about segregation by regulating who could afford certain neighborhoods by income. Pro-zoning advocates... [went ahead anyways]
wow this got long, but I'm in Denver and we have like 4 ballot measures to vote on that revolve around this issue of race, class, development. Specifically Apartment Prohibition!! If anyone is interested.
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denver is going to vote on a ballot measure soon to repeal the repeal of apartment prohibition and I feel it is similarly driven by race & class bias, driven by largely white home owners who literally say they want to protect their wealth (below).
Our city council only recently changed zoning to allow an increase from only 2!!! non-related adults living in the same place to 5. It's crazy to me that was ever a limit in the first place.
No 3 bed apartments for non-blood relatives?!
The old zoning that was fixed also made it harder and limited certain types of group homes, rehabs etc too, especially the number of and locations.
One of the filers of this repeal said the following in a press article - clear intent imho.
“This affects their very wealth. Their very wealth,” said George E. Mayl, one of the five voters who officially filed to create a referendum committee. “And not only that, their children’s, their heirs’ wealth. Someone’s home is their single largest investment of their life.”
also the way they use 'neighborhood' to me is not so veiled language in the context of race and class - just like the many policies and laws in the past. It's used as a rhetorical excuse just like 'protecting the kids' is often used.
Similarly like Trump & Reps in 2020 made 'protect the suburbs from' or 'border invasion' a key message.
There are another 2 housing measures on the ballot that are competing.
A big developer spent like $20 million or something to buy rights for a golf course in the city that they want to develop.
They bought it with a green space park easement... But to be profitable they have to repeal the easement so they can built over the park. They gambled on their power to change the law.
So they filed a measure to allow them to build more (to be fair they still plan on having a park, but less green space than currently protected in an easement).
So now there is a competing measure in response to protect the park.
I'm for it we don't have a ton of open green space in Denver and we can't build more. Let's change laws and remove red tape to build UP.
What happens if they both pass? who in the world will be able to decipher the two when voting?
And what does it say that corporations & white homeowners consistently and so plainly manipulate the law directly for their bottom line (oil and gas is a big one here)?
Another one on the ballot around homelessness. HUGE problem, we have tents in residential neighborhoods and lots of theft.
But it's pretending to address the problem while really making more laws and regulations to criminalize homelessness and disallow solutions.
They're so brave to invest in allowing homeless to sleep in parking lots lol...
While simultaneously making it harder to create group living and the rehab that a ton of homeless individuals would greatly benefit from.
Thankfully we do have some push by Rep. DeGette and a few others to buy old motels. That's a good investment and would actually help.
California voters approved such a law, 1963 Prop 14, but the supreme court struck it down.
But don't lose hope for direct democracy yet! A few years later Prop 13, which is arguably worse on minorities https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/11/..., passed by a wide margin and continues to see strong support from voting demographics today.
Nothing stopping Blacks or Hispanics from moving to the suburbs except for the laws of supply and demand. It's no secret that Asians (a historically disadvantaged POC) flock to the suburbs.
The laws of supply and demand are being manipulated by the powerful: They're suppressing the ability of supply to rise to meet demand, which has the effect of granting windfall profits to the haves while keeping the have-nots away from areas of opportunity.
Not arguing that, but that is decidedly not racist.
It's why educated Blacks in the US are moving back to red Southern states more so than they're moving to blue Northeast and Western ones. It's much cheaper and easier to build new housing in suburban Dallas or Atlanta versus San Francisco, New York, or LA.
A big thing I've noticed - especially on HN which is mostly white and male - is we perhaps fundamentally disagree on what 'racist' means.
To me I view racism as a larger umbrella. Includes bias, both on the surface but also more broadly what has been cultivated as a society. Context is very important in my definition viewpoint. centuries of historic oppression, which led to unequal wealth, opportunity, and more. ongoing bias which discriminates in hiring and opportunity and more.
I view this context as a kind of 'prior' (to use a ML term I don't fully understand lol) when assessing whether or not something is 'racist.'
While on the other hand it seems like some view racism as solely a person knowingly and vocally treating one ethnicity differently and discriminating openly.
To me I agree with parent and I hold the larger viewpoint.
Because of centuries of oppression BIPOC have less money, less opportunity, own less housing, communities are segregated don't have nearly as much ownership in the 'single family neighborhoods' & that community which drives the policy we are talking about.
I don't think one can ignore that context, and its implicit bias, when looking at why these laws, regulations, zoning were (and are) being passed.
And plus many times it's also explicitly racist like the latter viewpoint; like the language Trump & Republicans use about 'invading' the suburbs.
You don't get to magically redefine what "racist" is because the current definition doesn't match up with your narrative.
Suburbs are de facto and de jure not racist. No one is stopping any race of people from moving to the suburbs, no law is stopping any members of any race from moving to the suburbs, etc.
You can definitely make the claim that suburbs are classist, but racist? No.
I'm pointing out that you for instance, could benefit from some perspective in understanding why there is disagreement between because we fundamentally have different word-views / disagree on the language of this argument.
It's like trying to argue about bikes, if your definition of bike is a self powered two wheel and mine is a motorized machine.
You're straw manning hard. No one is making the claim that laws of the past weren't racist. Now, they're not, and so Asians, Indians, Africans (as in recent African immigrants), etc. all flood to the suburbs because suburbs are decidedly not racist, and are free of the riff raff.
>Saying, "we only like the economic segregation part now" doesn't change the outcome.
Correlation does not imply causation. It's no secret that Asians (a historically disadvantaged POC) flock to the suburbs. They are de facto not barred from suburbs, meaning suburbs are de facto not racist.
"They are de facto not barred from suburbs, meaning suburbs are de facto not racist"
You're pretending that explicit racism is the only form of racism. Modern zoning was invented precisely because the Supreme Court outlawed explicit racial zoning. It was designed to racially segregate and continues to do so.
>You're pretending that explicit racism is the only form of racism.
I'm not pretending, racism is racism, you don't get to redefine what words mean in order to fit your narrative. Suburbs are de facto and de jure not racist.
>Modern zoning was invented precisely because the Supreme Court outlawed explicit racial zoning.
This is not entirely true. Zoning laws in LA and NYC predate explicit racial zoning, and survived past the 1917 Supreme Court ruling.
>It was designed to racially segregate and continues to do so.
Again, not entirely true, and definitely no longer true. Asians, Jews, Indians, Africans, etc. are all more likely to reside in suburban areas now, so they by definition do not "racially segregate and continues to do so".
Poor opinion piece that conflates zoning and segregation laws, which is what many people have been doing because it's politically expedient.
>When the origin
Maybe, but not entirely.
>and outcome
Provably not so. Asians/Indians (a historically disadvantaged POC), Africans, etc. are all flooding to suburbs, which means they are de facto no longer racist, and do not have a racist outcome. QED.
> I'm not pretending, racism is racism, you don't get to redefine what words mean in order to fit your narrative.
I’m done arguing with a throwaway account if you’re going to be intentionally naive. “It’s not racist because it doesn’t specifically talk about race” is logical cowardice.
The rest of your comment is similarly tortured. That some POC succeed despite racism does not mean racism doesn’t exist.
A law can be "not racist", but still be crafted with certain intentions in mind; it's easy to exploit certain correlations to achieve a certain end result. I don't think anyone would argue that there's something innate about one's skin color that would make them predisposed to living in apartments! But if you want to exclude certain people from your neighborhood, and those people happen to often be from a certain culture/socioeconomic class…
It's also worth noting that the same laws were applied to Asians - exclusionary zoning and housing policies led to the consolidation of populations within certain neighborhoods, like San Francisco's Chinatown: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/how-1800s-racism-...
It wasn't always the case that most Asians could (whether financially or politically) move to the suburbs.
>A law can be "not racist", but still be crafted with certain intentions in mind; it's easy to exploit certain correlations to achieve a certain end result.
Correlation does not imply causation.
>But if you want to exclude certain people from your neighborhood, and those people happen to often be from a certain culture/socioeconomic class…
No doubt, no one wants to live around low class riff raff. That's not race specific, and so, is by definition not racist.
>It's also worth noting that the same laws were applied to Asians - exclusionary zoning and housing policies led to the consolidation of populations within certain neighborhoods, like San Francisco's Chinatown
Now you're straw manning hard. No one is making the claim that laws of the past weren't racist. Now, they're not, and so Asians, Indians, Africans (as in recent African immigrants) all flood to the suburbs because suburbs are decidedly not racist, and are free of the riff raff.
>It wasn't always the case that most Asians could (whether financially or politically) move to the suburbs.
Same for whites. Many/most were locked away in perpetual poverty in rural areas.
Federal marijuana prohibition and the War on Drugs (yes including laws) is rooted in racial bias. There are a HUGE amount of sources and you aren't acting in good faith so this is pointless. Some links below.
You might argue that the context around why these laws, for instance why there are specifically sentencing disparities written into law, doesn't matter because the plain text doesn't say black people shall have a 2x longer sentence. That's ignorant IMHO.
Even so, racist laws were specifically written in plain text IN OUR CONSTITUTION spelling out black worth as only 3/5ths of white.
Nixon's advisor has a 'great' quote plainly laying out the motivation and showing why context and the actual affects of these laws are racist.
you're being purposefully being flippant with a throwaway account so I'm not going to continue responding but go ahead and downvote again.
That's hubris. The reason we're in this situation, where a lack of dense housing is causing housing prices to rise, is because earlier planners were confident 50 years ago that single-family homes were the best option, and they weren't content to just follow that strategy then and there. They decided that this had to be enforced on future people too - us, that is.
We really need to densify a lot, and do so quickly, and I am skeptical the market will get us the quick enough.
Zoning is bad, but don't forget all our good unplanned construction was also pre-auto. Looking at e.g. parts of Texas, I worry that the self-perpetuation dynamics of cars --- which are very strong --- will make a market-based transition away from low density too quite tenuous.
I have 0 problem saying in Core areas single family family homes have no place, and we should ban them outright. SFH zoning is bad because it causes land too be wasted, such that future generations have to pay the costs of redevelopment rather than building right on "unimproved" land. Conversely, "too much density", if there even is such a thing, would waste very little land, meaning that a mandated switch back to SFH suburbia would be cheap, just as it was 50+ years ago.
You really can't make a categorical statement like that. I prefered living in an apartment because the housing density meant I had a grocery store, a farmer's market, and multiple other commercial hubs within walking distance. It also meant that street planning gave priority to public transport and pedestrians. There were plenty of jobs available within reasonable commute times. My neighbours gave me an easy-to-access network of people that you could befriend and somewhat rely on.
There's so many positives to living in an apartment that are pretty much direct effects of the denser housing.
I feel like a lot of people are commenting without much context. These bridges are for legal footpaths. They’re usually in the countryside. The paths aren’t maintained they’re just a legal right of way through the countryside and they have a legal obligation to put a bridge so as to not obstruct it for people on foot. It’s not like a trail as in the US. The paths aren’t even remotely wheelchair accessible for miles either way they’re usually mud. You would have to climb over stys to get to the bridge. The bridge would be the least of your problems.
And the point of this is to be able to close high-risk at-grade crossings of the line, especially those with relatively poor sight lines or where the necessity to maintain sufficient sight lines is an impediment to increasing the line speed.
It wouldn't matter. In (most of?) the US, anything you so must meet all the latest code, so if you aren't rich you line in a tent (I'm exaggerating slightly, but you are forbidden from a building a 1970s car, house, etc)
The US ADA requires reasonable accomidation, which is wishy washy, but lots of new construction nature paths in hilly terrain just have steps, because there's no room for a ramp and an elevator would be unreasonable.
Even new construction train stations don't always get an elevator to go over or under the line to the other platform... although they do get a long ramp and a ramp on the platform to load if the car floors are above the platform.
If these crossings are really in the middle of nowhere along muddy footpaths, I think you could get away with no ramp in the US, too.
If the government built a train station on the middle of the trail, then they would literally be required to build ADA-compliant ramps down to the mud.
I understand your feelings but engineering is an iterative process, what they created here was a prototype with 3 goals:
- Lower cost
- Quicker install time
- Aesthetics
Now the team can go back with the lessons they learned and modify the design.
One thing I noticed upon a second reading is how much they were emphasizing the remote monitoring capabilities.
>is that the bridge will feature built-in monitoring to monitor usage and maintenance needs.
The cynic in me reads this as yet another step in cutting staff for inspection but it may possible that they are planning on deploying this style bridge to more rural locations where there may be unofficial crossings of hiking trails.
The previous comment was about not handling bicycles in the Netherlands. For the Netherlands it's important that it handles bicycles properly, by being able to cycle. Pushing a bike or getting off isn't an acceptable solution (for NL).
Though doubt making it less steep and longer would really be an issue.
That seems quite reasonable for the NL. At least for myself, here in the States, I'd be happy to push my bike for a few feet rather than have to go miles out of my way or ride on a super busy street to cross a railroad. Of course, if we still had railroads in the US. But crossing busy roads is an issue here.
Yeah. I'm sorry your parents didn't know better. I've seen a bunch of young people being given the horrible advice by their parents of talking to the police, which is a huge no-no in the United States.
Yeah, I agree. It's much easier to say now though. I think at the time, I just didn't want my mom to have to deal with any added stress so I went along with it. I accepted (and still accept) what I did. Was it in my best interest to talk? Not necessarily. Am I mad at my mom for it? No, she was just being a mom. A little naive, but still a mom. :)
The reason why you need to talk to a lawyer is that your lawyer is ethically obligated to represent your best interests, not your company's.