[HN Gopher] Google Camera randomly changes some QR code URLs on ...
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Google Camera randomly changes some QR code URLs on Android 12
Author : csnweb
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-01-20 22:06 UTC (54 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.androidpolice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.androidpolice.com)
| duxup wrote:
| How does this not fail when tested?
|
| Or how do you start manipulating urls and not just realize this
| is inevitable / words have these strings inside them...?
| Naga wrote:
| This link is behind a Google account wall so I can't access it.
| Is there a summary available, or an alternative link?
| quercusa wrote:
| The camera app in Google Pixels running Android 12 tries to
| "fix" some URLs encoded QR codes, resulting in wrong URLs being
| shown and opened by the browser if the user clicks on the
| suggested link.
| bentcorner wrote:
| More specifically, it appears to truncate new generic TLDs to
| two characters.
|
| From the issue tracker:
|
| _It also affects the newer generic TLDs. Some examples:
|
| .apple becomes .ap
|
| .amex becomes .am
|
| .army, .arte, .art, and .arab become .ar
|
| .audi, .audio., .auto, .and autos become .au
|
| .bet and .beer become .be_
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| This German it site has a story on it. Probably a translation
| service does a good enough job on it
|
| https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Googles-Kamera-verfaelscht-...
| dang wrote:
| We've changed to a third party article about what I presume is
| the same issue. The submitted URL was https://accounts.google.c
| om/ServiceLogin?passive=1209600&osi....
| mcescalante wrote:
| Here is a screenshot of the issue as of time of posting.
| Forgive the zoom, the UI has a iframe scroll which isn't very
| capture friendly. https://i.imgur.com/hS8jBzw.png
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please omit swipes and snark from your comments here. It's
| against the site guidelines because it leads to dumber, nastier
| threads. Your comment would be fine without that last bit.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| paxys wrote:
| Perfect case of optimization where no optimization is needed. A
| developer encodes a URL, a user scans it. What is the rate of
| errors in this scenario? Is it really large enough to warrant
| "fixing" the end result in any way?
| WolfRazu wrote:
| Direct link to the issue:
| https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/215215744?pli=1
| sneak wrote:
| This immediately redirects to a sign-in page. Note that you
| can't get a Google account without a phone number that can
| receive SMS, so this is effectively paywalled.
| akersten wrote:
| What a horrible response by the dev investigator. The thread has
| all the info you need: the QR scanning functionality truncates
| TLDs to 2 characters. And provides a list of a dozen examples.
|
| The dev replies with "hi, thanks for the bug report, please
| provide a memory dump and a screen recording." How about they
| just try it out? Do they not have phones?
| tialaramex wrote:
| That's probably what they're incentivised to do. Chances are
| that "clearing" a dozen bugs that amount to "I am a fool and
| pressed A when I meant B, but I raised a ticket about it" is
| worth far more to an L1 queue monkey than correctly diagnosing
| a real bug that should have been caught during QA by somebody
| way up the ladder, and can be done quicker too.
|
| Also, you ask if they don't "have phones" but to see this they
| need Android 12, if you bought a _new_ high-end Android phone
| it might have Android 12. If you bought one last year, _maybe_
| it 's qualified to upgrade to Android 12 but clearly this
| brings some bugs as illustrated. If your phone was _not_ top of
| the line and you bought it say, before the pandemic, chances
| are you can 't run Android 12 at least not today and perhaps
| ever.
|
| Now, L1 support monkeys aren't flipping burgers or cleaning
| hotel rooms, I'm sure they do own phones, but there's no reason
| they own a _good phone_ on whatever they 're earning and if
| they do maybe it's an iPhone, which of course can't run Android
| 12.
| [deleted]
| _jal wrote:
| That's when I tell them I'm dumping their product.
|
| Seriously. I sit on the other side of this a lot of the time,
| and bullshit like this makes everyone's troubleshooting harder.
| I'm happy to work with someone to troubleshoot a problem, but
| blindly ask me to waste my time, and I'll usually walk away.
| Someone else can dance for your pleasure.
|
| I have gotten a lot shorter with this sort of thing, but that's
| because I've been burned being patient. Push all the effort and
| costs on to me and you won't have me as a customer.
|
| (I am neither Google customer nor product.)
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| We both saw a request for more information met with the reply
| of "get over yourself," but we came to different conclusions
| about whose response was horrible.
| gambiting wrote:
| If I describe an issue exactly and the company goes "yeah
| that's great, can you just do all these extra steps for us
| first before we can even accept a bug report" then sorry, I'm
| not going to. Your loss.
| notyourday wrote:
| Google engineers are good at white boarding and terrible at
| coding.
| readams wrote:
| That's not a dev; that's just someone assigned to triage the
| queue and get more information from users.
| akersten wrote:
| I assumed it was a developer because in my experience with
| issue trackers, it's always been developers who get assigned
| to fix things. And this looks more like an issue tracker than
| a tier 1 support site. But if that's the case, my point
| stands - it was the wrong canned response for the support
| representative to use.
|
| I can't tell one way or the other from that interface the
| roles of all involved. But I'm not sure it matters.
| kahrl wrote:
| It is insulting the the reporter who spent time and energy
| detailing this issue in written form.
| darknavi wrote:
| > How about they just try it out? Do they not have phones?
|
| Not sure what this has to do with Diablo Immortal /s
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| Well, it may not be up to the dev. I bet some manager created
| some "process" to control how devs interact with people.
| gambiting wrote:
| Sure. And that process is stupid in that case, and should be
| called stupid. If Google refuses to create a bug report
| themselves even though the issue is clearly described, then
| they can get lost.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Par for the course for Google's "issue tracker". Bugs get
| ignored in triage for years, Google doesn't take external
| patches for Android, issues are left without update or closed
| because they did not respond.
| johnny-fun-time wrote:
| This is almost certainly a scripted/automated comment (source -
| triaged external bug reports as a Google eng for several
| years).
|
| Difficult to use human touch when dealing with >>> thousands of
| bug reports.
| akersten wrote:
| I get it's a canned message, but surely part of that external
| triage would be "is there enough info here that we could
| reasonably just assign this to an intern to try out before
| needing to even ask for a crash dump [and insert
| corresponding "we're looking into it" message]." Unless it's
| a purposeful barrier to entry, which I also cynically
| understand.
| nikanj wrote:
| Makes sense. Google goes to incredible lengths to avoid
| having one person do a job well, when a microservices-based
| machine-learning hyperscale blockamothing can do it
| incredibly poorly.
| titzer wrote:
| Looks like it is hooking up AI-powered suggestions to something
| that doesn't need it.
|
| One super-annoying thing I hit often: the Contacts app on a
| Samsung phone suggests autocompletes of phone numbers in the
| _edit /add contact flow_. Do I now need to explain to stupid
| computer that I am _entering_ a new number that it does not yet
| know, ffs?
|
| I mean, seriously, something deep in the OS just sees "oh a phone
| number goes here? Let me supply one from Contacts...". It's
| trying to be smart, but in a completely oblivious and counter
| productive way. It's been like that for _years_. Does no one use
| these apps?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Along those lines a friend was complaining about Samsung's
| contacts app search results.
|
| I took a look and soon deduced it was searching on "sounds
| like" rather than the actual string, so an exact match is way
| down the list of partial matches that sound like the search
| string.
|
| It is madness, like Google refusing to do exact matches only
| worse.
| lockyc wrote:
| The contacts situation from everyone is abysmal, only really
| good for light personal use. As soon as you are trying to keep
| your contacts organised or light work use everything turns to
| shit
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Ah...I thought this was going to be a "camera turned my QR code
| into a different QR code" like the fake-news "iPhone camera made
| my friends face a leaf" story. But in fact it just seems like
| after the QR code is converted to a URL, the app tries to
| normalize the URL and isn't familiar with a bunch of new TLDs, so
| it truncates them(for some reason).
| gsich wrote:
| Googles pet peeve with URLs in full effect.
| awinter-py wrote:
| I turned off web services in google photos on a droid phone and
| 'lens' (their image scanning app) died, along with QR code
| scanning
|
| fennec (f-droid firefox) has a QR code button if you tap the URL
| bar
| floatingatoll wrote:
| OP, I can't view this. Can you post a copy of the page to
| archive.xyzzy or whatever their current URL is?
| sodality2 wrote:
| https://notes.matthew.science/share/pixel-qr-error
| dang wrote:
| We've changed to a third party article about what I presume is
| the same issue. The submitted URL was https://accounts.google.c
| om/ServiceLogin?passive=1209600&osi....
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(page generated 2022-01-20 23:00 UTC)