Podcasts by Category

What A Lot Of Things

Ian Smith & Ash Winter

Technology

Ash and Ian talk about interesting Things from the tech industry that are on their minds.

15 - Episode Fifteen - Testing Career Paths and the XZ Hack

0:00 / 0:00

15 - Episode Fifteen - Testing Career Paths and the XZ Hack
In this latest episode of the "What A Lot Of Things" podcast, hosts Ian and Ash explore intriguing aspects of technology and its broader implications. They delve into the evolving career paths for testing specialists, discussing how testers can navigate organizational challenges and develop fulfilling careers. The conversation shifts to a significant security furore involving the XZ compression tool, where they unpack the complexities of open-source software maintenance and the vulnerabilities introduced by subtle malicious contributions. Throughout, the hosts' lively banter and insightful anecdotes make for a thought-provoking listen that bridges technical details with broader tech culture reflections.
Links
Guardian TechScape: How cheap, outsourced labour in Africa is shaping AI English and "ChatGPT cliches" gist iPhone 7 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S22+ (better link for the Samsung?)2030 Status meeting with Mother Nature video from Apple.Pachyderm and Hachyderm.Agile Testing FellowshipMaaret Pyhäjärvi's post on LinkedIn quoting Anna Baik, plus a Youtube video on how to pronounce Pyhäjärvi. We will do better next time! We can find other people quoting Anna saying this, but not the original source for the quotation.Articles for Thing One:Ministry of Testing: Navigating a Career Path in Software Testing TechBeacon: Two years with no testers: What I learned Dan Ashby: Dispelling the misconceptions #5 – “Lets 100% automate everything and get rid of all our testers”TestFort: AI in Software Testing: A Silver Bullet or a Threat to the Profession?Eton College King's Scholarship Exam, General Paper IAccessibility testing specialist, Ady Stokes on LinkedInThe best step-by-step story I found for the XZ backdoor was Everything I know about the XZ backdoor by Evan Boehs XKCD: All Modern Digital Infrastructure XZ maintainer Lasse Collin's page on the backdoor Andres Freund's email to the OSS Security mailing list on discovering the backdoor Dosubot, an AI-powered Github maintainer agent used in Langchain's repos.The story of `left-pad`
...and our new email address: technologyeeyores@whatalotofthings.com
Tue, 21 May 2024
14 - Episode Fourteen – Managing IT Suppliers and AI Voice Cloning
In this episode, Ian and Ash delve into the complexities of managing IT service providers, exploring the challenges and strategies of working with consultancies and independent contractors. They also discuss the cutting-edge topic of AI voice cloning, examining its potential uses and ethical implications. From historical pirate accents to futuristic technology, join them for a thought-provoking discussion on how these technologies impact our work and the broader implications they hold for society.
Our shiny new email address, as promised in this episode, is... technologyeeyores@whatalotofthings.com
Links
OpenAI, and the not particularly relevant to this episode but still oft-mismentioned OpenAPI.Be More Pirate, the book where Ian found out why we think pirates all had British West Country accentsPigeon Keeping – WikipediaDiagram Industries blog, where Ash documented his learnings from the Ministry of Testing's "30 Days of AI In Testing" event.NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month)LinkedIn is experimenting with a TikTok-like video feed in its app – TechCrunch, 27th March 2024hachyderm.io, the Mastodon server that Ian fruitlessly recommended to AshNavigating the Challenges and Opportunities of Synthetic Voices, OpenAI Blog, 29th March 2024Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation - speech providing an early overview of the Free Software movement, delivered by Richard Stallman on 29th May 2001.Crack Version 4.1: A Sensible Password Checker for Unix [PDF], white paper by Alec Muffett (estimated date, November 1991)Open LLMs – Wikipedia, a list of open source LLMs, including Meta's Llama 2 as mentioned.How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript, The Register, 23rd March 2016Everything I know about the XZ backdoor, a rather heroic and very detailed explanation last updated (at the time of writing) on 8th April 2024AI Voice Cloning news linksOpenAI deems its voice cloning tool too risky for general release – The Guardian, 31st March 2024OpenAI’s voice cloning AI model only needs a 15-second sample to work – The Verge, 29th March 2024OpenAI is pitching Sora to Hollywood. Creatives are fighting back – Mashable, 25th March 2024Resemble AI Creates Synthetic Audio Watermark to Tag Deepfake Speech – voicebot.ai, 2nd February 2023Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should – Know Your Meme
Tue, 07 May 2024
13 - Episode Thirteen – TikTok and X
In this episode, Ian and Ash delve into the evolving landscape of social media, examining the implications of TikTok's potential ban in the U.S., the integration of AI in testing, and the shifting dynamics of platforms like Twitter (now X). They share personal anecdotes, discuss the significance of data privacy, and explore the future of social media engagement. The conversation also considers the challenges and opportunities presented by these digital shifts, offering insights into the broader tech community's response.
Links
On the TikTok saga:TechCrunch: TikTok ban: How Congress could force ByteDance to sell or push the app out of the USSpiceworks: There's Nothing Confusing About TikTok's Security RisksThe Guardian: TikTok has been accused of ‘aggressive’ data harvesting. Is your information at risk?NY Times: House Passes Bill to Force TikTok Sale From Chinese Owner or Ban the AppCory Doctorow: TikTok's Ensh*ttification Vine, thestory of its demise, andIan's vines archived on the old site.Postman and PostBot 30 Days of AI in Testing from Ministry of TestingThe Leeds Testing Atelier, at which Ash has performed the role of Testing Game Show Host.How To Archive Your Tweets With The Wayback Machine The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit (which runs on ActivityPub)Ivory for iOS client for Mastodon, from TapBots Threads from Meta.Bluesky which runs on the AT ProtocolThe late, lamented Apollo Reddit clientThe celebrated What A Lot Of Things LinkedIn Group
You can find our social media links (or link, in the case of Ash) on the website.
Tue, 23 Apr 2024
12 - Episode Twelve – AI Haters and The Game That Was Too Good
This episode of the podcast features Ian and Ash in a humour-filled comeback, diving into the fascinating world of generative AI and the impact of Baldur's Gate 3 on the gaming industry. They explore the nuances and controversies surrounding AI, from its potential to enhance creativity to the ethical concerns and the skepticism it faces. The discussion also highlights the importance of corporate culture in producing quality work, as exemplified by Larian Studios' success with Baldur's Gate 3. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, gaming, and creativity, offering insightful and engaging perspectives on contemporary digital phenomena.
Links
A Wizard is never late Gartner Hype Cycle Research Methodology Anthropic, their product,Claude, and their Constitutional AI research.The Turing test Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)Other AI platforms mentioned: ChatGPT, Gemini, CopilotAI image generation: Midjourney, DALL·ENew York Times: Bing’s AI Chat: I Want To Be Alive IBM watsonx IA Writer Hemingway Dungeons and Dragons Stardew Valley Skull and Bones Larian Studios and Baldur’s Gate 3 Cyberpunk 2077 Sendmail Loot boxes What A Lot Of Things – LinkedIn
Tue, 09 Apr 2024
11 - Episode Eleven – Testers vs Toxic Culture and Personal Knowledge Management
Ian and Ash talk about those pesky testers forming communities and taking on toxic cultures, plus forming a dilapidated mind shack using personal knowledge management tools like Obsidian.
Links
Zettelkasten - Slip Box not SlipKnot
More Zettelkasten
Obsidian Home Page
Ian's Thoughts on Obsidian
Testers walkout after layoffs in the QA Team
Raven testers form a union
NFT grifters have terrible culture- not causation yet, but the correlation is hard to ignore.
Mon, 23 May 2022
10 - Episode Ten – Metrics and Scrum Bashing
Ian and Ash talk about the (mis)use of metrics, including the big four and happiness indices plus how proud Ash was of his Certified Scrum Master qualification but now bashes Scrum with everyone else.
Links
Here I Belong by Matt HartleyDouglas Adams: How to stop worrying and learn to love the Internet RFC 821 - Simple Mail Transport Protocol (not RFC 822, as Ian thought, which is closely related being about the format of the files containing the messages that get transmitted over SMTP). Still, not the perfect accompaniment to a discussion about Ian’s rightness.Myth: If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It DORA (Google DevOps Research & Assessment (Team)) Metrics How to measure developer productivity - and how not to by Isaac SacolickScrums Allegiance Website I've sold agile to to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook Owl asking Winnie the Pooh to leave his house for saying Agile Scrum
Thu, 24 Mar 2022
9 - Episode Nine – The Great Post Office Scandal and Moxie Marlinspike's Web3 Article
Ian and Ash talk about the high price of software without ethics in The Great Post Office Scandal and dive into Moxie Marlinspike's first impressions of web3 (lowercase w, no .0)
Tue, 08 Feb 2022
8 - Episode Eight – The Metaverse and You Build It You Run It
Ian and Ash talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot towards the Metaverse and discuss what the industry catch-phrase “You build it, you run it” means in real life.
Sun, 26 Dec 2021
7 - Episode Seven – Other Development Team Roles and Apple's Child Safety Measures
Ash and Ian give some love to those other development team roles - the ones that save you from wasting loads of time on hippos - and then they try to decide how much outrage is appropriate for Apple's proposed Child Safety measures which have, since the recording was made, been postponed.
Fri, 01 Oct 2021
6 - Episode Six - The Hard Thing About Hard Things and the State of DevOps Report, 2021
Ian and Ash discuss venture capitalist Ben Horowitz’s book for startup CEOs, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and look at the different way organisations create and use platform teams, based on The State of DevOps Report 2021.
Fri, 13 Aug 2021
5 - Episode Five – digital legacies and The Unicorn Project
Here’s an extra-length episode to keep you going over the holiday season. Ash selfishly relishes the upcoming Twitter username purge but realises that you need to be careful with digital legacies, even those which involve insulting footballers. Ian delved into 'The Unicorn Project', follow up to one of his number fave books, 'The Phoenix Project' and unwittingly creates a DevOps version of the 12 Days of Christmas.
Tue, 10 Dec 2019
4 - Episode Four - Building Alexa Skills and popping city tech bubbles
Ian and Ash talk about building an Alexa skill to reduce Ian's energy consumption and how Leeds is growing a tech bubble all of its own, to complement its existing socio-economic geographical doughnut.
Tue, 26 Nov 2019
3 - Episode Three - Four day work week and design thinking
Ian and Ash talk about how Microsoft Japan trialled a 4 day working week, busting Ash's myths about Japanese working culture and why technology people should care about design thinking, even for test automation.
Thu, 14 Nov 2019
2 - Episode Two - Getting into machine learning, and Team Topologies
Ian and Ash talk about how to get into machine learning and discuss the principles for building teams within your organisation outlined in the book and training course on Team Topologies.
Tue, 29 Oct 2019
1 - Episode One - collective bargaining and cargo cults.
Ash and Ian talk about collective bargaining in tech, and “cargo culting”.
Links

Collective bargaining:
Business Insider - Here's the memo Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent to employees on the changes to Google's sexual-harassment policy after the walkout. Whole Foods employees demand Amazon break all ties with ICE and Palantir All workers need unions – including those in Silicon Valley Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs - Wikipedia
Cargo Culting:
Cargo Culting - Wiktionary Cargo Cult - Wikipedia "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” - Quote Investigator
Tue, 15 Oct 2019

Show More Episodes

Podcasts by Category

What A Lot Of Things

Podcasts similar to What A Lot Of Things