Yeah it really is insane. I have folders where I will be looking at the file and no search expression will show it. It has been like that for a while. Stunningly bad.
Worked on a simulation game in the 80s.. boss coded the entire world simulator as an excel spreadsheet.. I then wrote a tool to compile that spreadsheet and its formulas into 68k assembly language that would run the sim for 1 tick. It worked Amazingly well. I have never doubted the power of spreadsheets since then, and whenever a problem in a similar domain comes up, it's one of my go to tools.
I just got a pixel 3 about 3 months ago.. They delivered it in about 48 hours, and it was ready to go w google fi. Have been using it like crazy, and it takes the best pictures of any camera I've ever owned. The voice recog is flawless to the point where I literally rely on it. I've never seen it download an update. Granted it cost me about 1g all together, which is more than I've ever paid for a phone.. but so far my experience has been fantastic.
If you’ve never seen it download an update, then either it is downloading, installing, and rebooting into them them in the background without you noticing at all (impressive) or it’s not receiving security updates (very scary).
I think you can chill out a little. These are volunteers and this is speculative research. And these people are already wired and receiving gross electric shocks to different nerve clusters in their brain to regulate epilepsy, so I doubt that more nuanced stimulation like this, is much worse, and may lead to new breakthroughs, and may turn what is a handicap, into a special abilility for these people. They are pioneers.
