![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
so this is all mostly theory, which is the entire problem
In honor of only two days of work this week as Holiday!Monday and Escapade Starts Thursday, I've been contemplating the more esoteric parts of my career, or more specifically, my least favorite part.
For those who don't know, I'm a Quality Control/Quality Analyst; my formal title is System Analyst IV, my job description is program testing, primarily, UAT, aka 'User Acceptance Testing' but have done and will do everything from unit testing to testing live in production literally during and after deployment. UAT is the last line of defense before a program is released in production, and our job is to break it with only the tools and general knowledge available to the average user of this program aka Everyman.
And when I say 'the program', that refers not just to 'one single program' but 'an entire program ecosystem that all work together to do shit'. We call the latter Integration Testing, which combines 'so breathtakingly boring even death avoids you when you have to do it' with 'astronomically high stakes'. For System Integration is literally repeating all your tests on those same damn programs (sometimes you're on your fifth repetition and resent key parts of the alphabet) but now while all programs are connected to each other.
In general, if there are problems, they're tiny; earlier testing of the individual parts of a program and then the program itself should have and generally does catch everything with a realistic chance of happening, quite a bit that realistically won't but possibly could, and some that is technically impossible but when you were on repetition three of the same set of ten to twenty goddamn tests, dev was naturally the target best suited to share your suffering. At that point, they were so goddamn tired of seeing your name on defects they didn't care if it was possible this situation would ever occur, they'd code as if it would happen every day just to avoid how rejection at end of business day inevitably meant that the first thing they'd see in their inbox the next morning would be a gratingly cheerful email that included an essay (and references) on why the defect was not only very possible but could cause the apocalypse if not fixed like right now please, sometimes with malice aforethought in thirteen point Comic Sans.
But I digress.
Let me go back a bit: user testing is basically 'use program like a user would', which on the surface seems less 'a job' than 'doing what everyone does on a computer every day' but salaried with health insurance, a generous leave policy, and a pension on retirement along with paid health insurance until I die. Yeah, I'm totally living the dream here, and also, no.
What you don't know is the average user using a program is an idiot savant with an IQ ranging from 'potato' to 'requires the use of exponents to represent accurately' at the exact same time. Keeping people from deliberately fucking with a program is the testing equivalent of taking crayons from toddlers, comparatively speaking; there are some fairly strict limits for a hacker to work with and very little room for error, and that's before security specialists exercise their professional paranoia on it by assuming any attempt to hack is actually literally going to kill them dead in their beds if they don't stop it and that's not entirely hyperbole.
The average user doesn't recognize limits as a thing or if they notice them, think don't really care or, on occasion, are insulted by them for reasons vague. In horrific wtf example, you can set a text box to integers only for phone number and the end user will somehow paste in their email address and crash oracle. How the fuck is that even possible, we tested for pasting. We didn't test for entering your phone number, saving the page, hitting 'back' to reopen the saved page and for reasons very likely not even malicious control-v'ed their email in there and hit save again.
The answer of 'how' is actually not 'witchcraft' (or at least not only) but does involve 'cache', which is not dissimilar, but yeah, that's one example of how users are the nightmare offspring of chaos theory and honey badgers with fingers that may or may not be individually possessed when they touch a keyboard, you cannot predict this shit.
Now, with that context of user ability to crash oracle with back and control-v, Integration Testing.
As stated, this is not testing one program, but it's also not just testing three and how they interact or even sometimes all the programs. This involves bringing up the entire system with all functionality working and extremely accurate mockups of every single possible program/system that it interacts with or gets data from that we do not own, and not a few belonging to the Federal government. As in, these mockups aren't just supergood at pretending to be terrifyingly secure federal systems that have a start value of twenty years in prison for fucking up, some could pass for copies because fear is really motivating and no one wants to wake up to being responsible for accidentally crashing the United States with a random control-v.
And sometimes--much worse--we get access to the live system when data is read only, and now we get to where 'more boring than anything ever' would be a relief.
Specifically, on those thankfully rare days that Data Broker is involved, because as we all know, the one thing all of us lack in our lives, work or not, is active terror. Data Broker, for those playing the home game, is a database (possibly a literal 'base' I really don't know) where something not unlike your entire life history from SSN/DOB/marriages/children/job history to every address you have ever had and every neighbor you have had at every address and that's just to start. It's super secure, access is incredibly limited, and even looking at the button on the screen too hard creates a log. It can only be used to look up info absolutely required and looking up anyone for any reason outside the specific person you're supposed to be looking up is a firing offense plus felony and the attention of possibly multiple Federal agencies and more acronyms that anyone sane should deal with sober or even drunk. And for the most part, because it's possible your blood pressure isn't critical quite yet nad that must be fixed, 'accident' is not something that is recognized as separate from 'deliberate attempt to identity steal/stalk/blackmail', which is equal to 'deliberately breaking into a federal system'.
Now to be fair, they're not entirely wrong; it is, actually, incredibly hard to do anything accidentally and to get any (criminally useful) data, intent is required. The average authorized user just doing their job has nothign to worry about, and I say that as a former authorized user who accessed it several times a day in the course of my job. In an honestly surprising display of logic, they made it super easy to be ethical even before you had coffee and even should you abruptly become catatonic. Doing evil took effort, and for that matter, more effort than any state employee would bother expending without a consummate increase in salary with or without a higher classification and a blood contract stating two days we could work from home into perpetuity.
(Before anyone even thinks anything close to 'totally overpaid' I am for all intents and purposes an expert, I am legitimately good at my job, and I can and do act as lead and quasi supervisor and check the work of private contractors hired by the state whose salaries at start value are twice mine. If the next statement is 'you could work for them, then', that's possible but problem: they will hire me for the same exact job I am doing now--including leading--but my pay will be equal to or less than now, almost no PTO, higher medical premiums, and no pension, because I don't have a four year degree. Yeah no.)
The problem is I am not the average authorized user accessing the system in production and only know it works for reasons that may or may not involve wizards and elves or not, they never even wonder because, much like gravity, it never doesn't work. I am the one testing brand new code for production that is sometimes interacting with other programs for the first time ever and some of those programs possess code that is also brand new, and combining that with database access where accidents are synonymous with felonies. My job is to not just make sure the code works, but to the average authorized user it is mentally classified as gravity; it works, don't care.
In a very real and not at all logical sense, my job is to do my best to get an accidental felony so the end user doesn't. If it is possible to do it accidentally, I am ethically and morally obligated to mkae it happen. You might even say that the day I am convicted of [you have no idea how many felonies this shit falls under] and sent to a minimum security federal prison, I will have reached the epitome of my career and set the bar so high when it comes to the ethical standards of my profession no one will be able to match, much less surpass me, without the addition of lethal injection and/or quite a bit of electricity. The rush for that hypothetical person would be goddamn amazing which hopefully isn't lost under the entire 'impending death' thing and also I'd be pissed because how the fuck do I top that? Asshole.
On the scale of drama from 'paint drying' to 'lady gaga wearing a meat suit to a PETA meeting with a furry paleo bodyguard' how much am I milking this if not outright lying? Not lying but definitely much higher than paint, but having said that, the principle of uncertainty assures it is not actually ever out of the realm of possibility when it comes to legality. The penalties are explained to authorized users in enough detail to assure PTSD is not out of the realm of possibility, but user testing, funnily enough, was not in mind (or technically existed as such or at least in this form) when the legalities were hashed out and as of yet, no one is really feeling this should change. Technically, a user tester could simultaneously be both an authorized user with all privileges and responsibilities inherent and hackers doing evil, who can really say but a Federal judge, which sure, does have the advantage of some legally defined clarity but also, you know, prison. So uncertainty, not all that bad, really.
And to add to this; Data Broker isn't the only program with some grey area, just the most serious. There are many that have very strict legally-binding access rules that lack clear guidelines on the status of testers, and some with read-write access.
The fear is real, is what I'm saying, and sure, somewhat theoretical, and taken individually, not much. When combined, however, that is a lot of goddamn theory to have just hanging around. Pure chance says one of these totally theoretical concerns will be tested, and while it's unlikely it will be me, 'chance' is now getting a little too big an area as well. Yes, the odds are good I am wasting very valuable worrying time on this which could have been spent on increasing the amount devoted to alien abduction and my rabbits eating me if I fall down in the cage and knock myself out (rabbits? NOT ACTUALLY OBLIGATE VEGAN AND HAVE EATEN MY LASAGNA), but would it be such an imposition to de-grey some areas without duress being involved? Get that out of the way and I could get some serious worry-traction started on the likelihood of Alexa telling me I really want to buy Frye lace-up boots that are on sale to wear for my murder spree while I'm asleep and worse, that I'd wear new leather boots on a murder spree and risk bloodstains on cognac leather. That shit would never come out.
...yes, I am doing integration testing this week. How'd you guess?
For those who don't know, I'm a Quality Control/Quality Analyst; my formal title is System Analyst IV, my job description is program testing, primarily, UAT, aka 'User Acceptance Testing' but have done and will do everything from unit testing to testing live in production literally during and after deployment. UAT is the last line of defense before a program is released in production, and our job is to break it with only the tools and general knowledge available to the average user of this program aka Everyman.
And when I say 'the program', that refers not just to 'one single program' but 'an entire program ecosystem that all work together to do shit'. We call the latter Integration Testing, which combines 'so breathtakingly boring even death avoids you when you have to do it' with 'astronomically high stakes'. For System Integration is literally repeating all your tests on those same damn programs (sometimes you're on your fifth repetition and resent key parts of the alphabet) but now while all programs are connected to each other.
In general, if there are problems, they're tiny; earlier testing of the individual parts of a program and then the program itself should have and generally does catch everything with a realistic chance of happening, quite a bit that realistically won't but possibly could, and some that is technically impossible but when you were on repetition three of the same set of ten to twenty goddamn tests, dev was naturally the target best suited to share your suffering. At that point, they were so goddamn tired of seeing your name on defects they didn't care if it was possible this situation would ever occur, they'd code as if it would happen every day just to avoid how rejection at end of business day inevitably meant that the first thing they'd see in their inbox the next morning would be a gratingly cheerful email that included an essay (and references) on why the defect was not only very possible but could cause the apocalypse if not fixed like right now please, sometimes with malice aforethought in thirteen point Comic Sans.
But I digress.
Let me go back a bit: user testing is basically 'use program like a user would', which on the surface seems less 'a job' than 'doing what everyone does on a computer every day' but salaried with health insurance, a generous leave policy, and a pension on retirement along with paid health insurance until I die. Yeah, I'm totally living the dream here, and also, no.
What you don't know is the average user using a program is an idiot savant with an IQ ranging from 'potato' to 'requires the use of exponents to represent accurately' at the exact same time. Keeping people from deliberately fucking with a program is the testing equivalent of taking crayons from toddlers, comparatively speaking; there are some fairly strict limits for a hacker to work with and very little room for error, and that's before security specialists exercise their professional paranoia on it by assuming any attempt to hack is actually literally going to kill them dead in their beds if they don't stop it and that's not entirely hyperbole.
The average user doesn't recognize limits as a thing or if they notice them, think don't really care or, on occasion, are insulted by them for reasons vague. In horrific wtf example, you can set a text box to integers only for phone number and the end user will somehow paste in their email address and crash oracle. How the fuck is that even possible, we tested for pasting. We didn't test for entering your phone number, saving the page, hitting 'back' to reopen the saved page and for reasons very likely not even malicious control-v'ed their email in there and hit save again.
The answer of 'how' is actually not 'witchcraft' (or at least not only) but does involve 'cache', which is not dissimilar, but yeah, that's one example of how users are the nightmare offspring of chaos theory and honey badgers with fingers that may or may not be individually possessed when they touch a keyboard, you cannot predict this shit.
Now, with that context of user ability to crash oracle with back and control-v, Integration Testing.
As stated, this is not testing one program, but it's also not just testing three and how they interact or even sometimes all the programs. This involves bringing up the entire system with all functionality working and extremely accurate mockups of every single possible program/system that it interacts with or gets data from that we do not own, and not a few belonging to the Federal government. As in, these mockups aren't just supergood at pretending to be terrifyingly secure federal systems that have a start value of twenty years in prison for fucking up, some could pass for copies because fear is really motivating and no one wants to wake up to being responsible for accidentally crashing the United States with a random control-v.
And sometimes--much worse--we get access to the live system when data is read only, and now we get to where 'more boring than anything ever' would be a relief.
Specifically, on those thankfully rare days that Data Broker is involved, because as we all know, the one thing all of us lack in our lives, work or not, is active terror. Data Broker, for those playing the home game, is a database (possibly a literal 'base' I really don't know) where something not unlike your entire life history from SSN/DOB/marriages/children/job history to every address you have ever had and every neighbor you have had at every address and that's just to start. It's super secure, access is incredibly limited, and even looking at the button on the screen too hard creates a log. It can only be used to look up info absolutely required and looking up anyone for any reason outside the specific person you're supposed to be looking up is a firing offense plus felony and the attention of possibly multiple Federal agencies and more acronyms that anyone sane should deal with sober or even drunk. And for the most part, because it's possible your blood pressure isn't critical quite yet nad that must be fixed, 'accident' is not something that is recognized as separate from 'deliberate attempt to identity steal/stalk/blackmail', which is equal to 'deliberately breaking into a federal system'.
Now to be fair, they're not entirely wrong; it is, actually, incredibly hard to do anything accidentally and to get any (criminally useful) data, intent is required. The average authorized user just doing their job has nothign to worry about, and I say that as a former authorized user who accessed it several times a day in the course of my job. In an honestly surprising display of logic, they made it super easy to be ethical even before you had coffee and even should you abruptly become catatonic. Doing evil took effort, and for that matter, more effort than any state employee would bother expending without a consummate increase in salary with or without a higher classification and a blood contract stating two days we could work from home into perpetuity.
(Before anyone even thinks anything close to 'totally overpaid' I am for all intents and purposes an expert, I am legitimately good at my job, and I can and do act as lead and quasi supervisor and check the work of private contractors hired by the state whose salaries at start value are twice mine. If the next statement is 'you could work for them, then', that's possible but problem: they will hire me for the same exact job I am doing now--including leading--but my pay will be equal to or less than now, almost no PTO, higher medical premiums, and no pension, because I don't have a four year degree. Yeah no.)
The problem is I am not the average authorized user accessing the system in production and only know it works for reasons that may or may not involve wizards and elves or not, they never even wonder because, much like gravity, it never doesn't work. I am the one testing brand new code for production that is sometimes interacting with other programs for the first time ever and some of those programs possess code that is also brand new, and combining that with database access where accidents are synonymous with felonies. My job is to not just make sure the code works, but to the average authorized user it is mentally classified as gravity; it works, don't care.
In a very real and not at all logical sense, my job is to do my best to get an accidental felony so the end user doesn't. If it is possible to do it accidentally, I am ethically and morally obligated to mkae it happen. You might even say that the day I am convicted of [you have no idea how many felonies this shit falls under] and sent to a minimum security federal prison, I will have reached the epitome of my career and set the bar so high when it comes to the ethical standards of my profession no one will be able to match, much less surpass me, without the addition of lethal injection and/or quite a bit of electricity. The rush for that hypothetical person would be goddamn amazing which hopefully isn't lost under the entire 'impending death' thing and also I'd be pissed because how the fuck do I top that? Asshole.
On the scale of drama from 'paint drying' to 'lady gaga wearing a meat suit to a PETA meeting with a furry paleo bodyguard' how much am I milking this if not outright lying? Not lying but definitely much higher than paint, but having said that, the principle of uncertainty assures it is not actually ever out of the realm of possibility when it comes to legality. The penalties are explained to authorized users in enough detail to assure PTSD is not out of the realm of possibility, but user testing, funnily enough, was not in mind (or technically existed as such or at least in this form) when the legalities were hashed out and as of yet, no one is really feeling this should change. Technically, a user tester could simultaneously be both an authorized user with all privileges and responsibilities inherent and hackers doing evil, who can really say but a Federal judge, which sure, does have the advantage of some legally defined clarity but also, you know, prison. So uncertainty, not all that bad, really.
And to add to this; Data Broker isn't the only program with some grey area, just the most serious. There are many that have very strict legally-binding access rules that lack clear guidelines on the status of testers, and some with read-write access.
The fear is real, is what I'm saying, and sure, somewhat theoretical, and taken individually, not much. When combined, however, that is a lot of goddamn theory to have just hanging around. Pure chance says one of these totally theoretical concerns will be tested, and while it's unlikely it will be me, 'chance' is now getting a little too big an area as well. Yes, the odds are good I am wasting very valuable worrying time on this which could have been spent on increasing the amount devoted to alien abduction and my rabbits eating me if I fall down in the cage and knock myself out (rabbits? NOT ACTUALLY OBLIGATE VEGAN AND HAVE EATEN MY LASAGNA), but would it be such an imposition to de-grey some areas without duress being involved? Get that out of the way and I could get some serious worry-traction started on the likelihood of Alexa telling me I really want to buy Frye lace-up boots that are on sale to wear for my murder spree while I'm asleep and worse, that I'd wear new leather boots on a murder spree and risk bloodstains on cognac leather. That shit would never come out.
...yes, I am doing integration testing this week. How'd you guess?
no subject
(one of the bits of feedback we got back from them was "we had a lot less trouble with error reports after we worked through the test scripts you sent us!" like, ok, that's nice, but why does it take your customer to put together a basic set of tests to make sure that you didn't irretrievably break core functionality before releasing new versions???)
no subject
no subject
(they're very nice people, just.)
no subject
no subject
The logging on medical records is intense but the penalties less so. You'll just get fired for looking up people that are none of your business, probably.
no subject
no subject
By the way, may I publicly link to this and to https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1019270.html ? I am writing a post about missing stories in fiction about programming (because of the art festival I'm running).
no subject
no subject
no subject
Honestly, as frustrated as I get with dev, I also feel bad for them when not in last stage testing hell where I feel nothing for anyone but hate. I mean, I program for fun, I work mostly for myself or open source, but I can sympathize with how it feels to get a defect where even though you did everything right according to what you were told and the design documents said, you're told you're wrong because of 'insanely complex federal/state policy reason' that you literally do not have the context to understand (and I mean whatever your first language might be, first-language English speakers are in pretty much the same boat and all are united in low-grade hostility at times).
It's pretty much on testers to be able to not just explain the problem in human-compliant language but break it down and how it applies to what's wrong. Even then, though, it's often a leap of faith for them to trust that even though they still don't understand why x can/cannot happen, we do know what we're talking about.
no subject
Have fun with the integration testing.
no subject
Tedium plus terror: what a fantastic combination.
no subject
If it helps, there have been emergency releases--code, write, test and release over twenty four hours aka 11:59 PM the next day--to avoid nullifing a legit settlement the state just barely pulled off and they (they unspecified but assume prosecuting law firm with many people and combined salary equal to the GDP of like, Poland) are watching literally. Like, no one says it straight out but scrolling down the forwarded email and seeing who was on all the previous 'cc's is kind of a terrifying hint. Like, bad enough if the Communications director is randomly showing up in what looks like an ORacle tech document in conjunction with design, but if the commissioner also appears in conjunctio with a state legislator, I hit google because this is epic shit and also communication director equals public record.
Like, emergncy releases aren't rare or anything and the twenty four hour clock isn't either, but htere's 'emergency because fucked up code and users' and the very, very, very rare 'emergency because we may have ACTUALLY SUPER LIKE SO MUCH violated so many kinds of civil rights, ADA and even invented new ways to do it'. And before I was a tester but while my mom was a business analyst who wrote design documents: "the governor got a letter from the USDA." Like, it could be a blank piece of paper or asking the govenor about the weather, doesn't matter; if they've noticed we exist, it's because we are fucked, assumed minimum degree 'so very much'.
(Acutal letter: super polite mild query on what was going on with the new computer system, still have it.
Consequence: I am working from memory but roughly like this: the state agency very quickly broke a very expensive contract with a new contractor two years in and paid astronomical fines plus extra for expedited 'get the fuck out of our offices, we will physically carry you to the border, do you get this the USDA IS UNDER ALL THE DESKS AND IS EATING OUR DREAMS' This, in the middle of a fiscal year, while in the middle of prepping for a major release they were in the middle of coding right then, and proceeded to re-contract our old contractor to come back like, I don't even know how much we paid, no one cared, probably with the entire executive begging just please please fucking please all of our beds are filled with USDA approved organic horses' heads and now they're buying us organic beds delivered to our houses with horses' heads pre-installed and the horses' heads are locally sourced and guaranteed cruelty-free there is a horse watching me through my window it has no body but screams.
IT's reaction: fell in love with the USDA and had multiple parties with the returning contractors while sending that polite email to everyone that existed. Overall yes a very good thing--it took two year and change to get to where we were before hiring the fired contractors, but maybe literally teh only time ever that justifies a summons of the USDA
no subject
no subject
...I knew nothing and actually still don't, but I do know now enough to realize now there is no acronym in the US Federal government that has as much power as the USDA has, so much they almost never have to use it. At the time, the governor was under a lot of pushback and pressure to fix the problem with the new computer system that ran food stamps, TANF, Medicaid et al, the Texas legislature was upset, there was shit from the Federal level for Medicare/Medicaid about 'this shit is getting critical, people aren't getting their benefits' because the AARP was showing some crankiness--I could list off all the honestly alarming feedback and letters he was getting, but all of it was still effectively toothless. This by hte way had been building for about three to five years, since I was a caseworker, so it was almost background; everything sucks, must be alive. There was a very real possibility we'd have to literally crash the entire system and be in all the lawsuits ever to even start a re-evaluation but Republicans, so yeah.
The USDA does the equivalent of "Hey, I notice you exist", shit didn't just become real, it did an entire reversal on a dime of everything. Why? Food Stamps. It is not an exaggeration to say not even worst case scenario is bankrupting the state by pulling all our Food Stamp funding--which is Federal money, lots of Federal money, so very much Federal money--while we are still Federally mandated to not stop giving food stamps, so we'd keep doing it until we ran out of money, which give or take two months, tops, maybe three, while cutting funding to every possible thing teh state is not required by Federal law (or state law but that would get squiggly) and rouse pretty much every elder god slash lobbying group in existence and the Eldest Gods the AARP and their vast over-sixty voting pool and that does not include the all the farmers in an agricultural state and the political careers of like everyone up to Congress.
And if you're curious: yes, they would have cut us off without blinking and not even bothered to watch the state burn. Why? USDA-->Agriculture-->Food-->Food Stamps, a program that directly benefits food-making activities, and for all people whine about "CANDY AND SODA BUYING" cute but tiny: milk, eggs, beef, chicken, pork, bread, butter are all on the top 10 and billions of dollars. This program has a positive economic benefit across the board; you can even use food stamps at farmer's markets!
One day, I'll go into more detail on the ACA rollout drama and how they tried to play with hte provisions in regard to Medicaid and ended up showing their belly and making me analyze, parse, design and write tests for, and test a massive portion of the online application process as regards to all the Medicaids halfway through a major release code/test period but I should be drinking first. Not USDA (please God no) but kind of funnier.
no subject
no subject
"Surely you have some method to prevent that!" he blustered.
"That's why we have a bucket."
no subject
no subject
no subject
Like I almost hope I hit a flag and some poor fucker is required to examine every ridiculous thing I look up, read, type, or ask Alexa, and God willing, when I haven't slept in twenty four hours and nothing I google is even close to correctly spelled and sometimes, pig latin, and that one time I was tryign to find out the source of a gay anime bdsm vid from 2004 on one of my drives that had no author or title so google to work out what the hell was going on (I think there's a twink cage match involved?) and ninety two sites for 'how much broccoli is it safe for a rabbit to eat' (answer: all of them different). That day, for one shining moment, I will know what it feels like to be Satan condemning someone to their own personal hell; I suspect it'll be super great.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
As in, the concern is real, the tech is there, but the algorithms aren't, not really, and neither is the sheer amount of processing power. Like, what's going on with Tumblr's hilarious AI filtering magic is case in point; that is the lowest common denominator, that's one step down from a smart Magic 8 Ball, but illustrative. Small-batch data--still ungodly huge amounts--is one thing, yeah, you can get some good stuff there, but large-batch, say, even teh equivalent of a very small country, the best you can get is going to be select for 'everyone who likes buying red socks specifically this year' not 'all people who buy socks ever', if that makes sense. Even running the query will take forever, and then you start narrowing that down by secondary selection, because again: teh sheer amount of incredibly useless data itself is acting as buffer.
no subject
My own (somewhat depressing) take is that if they really want to send us to camps (as that man the bus suggested; I kid you not -- California the liberal state still includes the experience of sharing public transit with people will say out loud that all Chinese and Mexicans should be sent to camps), having a squeaky clean record under voluntary surveillance is STILL not going to help.
no subject
Yes. As in, I agree, with the (terrifying) concerns because literally, yes, that has, is, and will happen more. But your assessment of actual results is basically an equally depressed 'yes'. Surveillance has never at any point even by accident been to explore exactly how many baby nuns you are saving bare-handed from Cthulhu when not rescuing dogs from trees every day; they are assuming 'wrongness, lots' and trying to work out 'how much'.
Bus: That is so beyond sickening I don't even have an appropriate word.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Is the Smart Refrigerator going to get compromised and start sending spam? (we don't have a smart refrigerator, partly because expensive and the current one is fine, partly because this)
Is the Smart Lightbulb going to DoS the network? (Some unfortunate person traced the flood on their home network to a rogue lightbulb, as linked by the Internet of Shit Twitter account)
What happens when the Smart Lock manufacturer goes out of business? What happens when the internet goes out during the ice storm?
At my old apartment I had a beautiful suite of moderately smart switches controlling lights, but it's somewhat harder to orchestrate the light schedules for 3 people than for 1. Plus the wiring in this house is faintly terrifying.
no subject
I have a spreadsheet for my network, and literally everything that can connect has a hard IP assigned from an IP range assigned a type (Example: 192.168.0.40-49 = LIFX), and everything that can be LAN is LAN on three routers (Two are AP only) and two switches. This is because a.) anything I didn't authorize shows up, I know on a glance on my router's device list and b.) data allocation. It's not an exact science, but I'm familiar enough with what the numbers generally are to notice a spike.
Because yeah, it's super easy to kill your wifi with All the Devices and as it turns out, routers don't really advertise they have a hard limit on how many wifi devices they'll support.
What happens when the Smart Lock manufacturer goes out of business? What happens when the internet goes out during the ice storm?
Keys. Though mine is an August; hardware is only on the inside and can be locked/unlocked manually by turning it from the inside manually--it's very big and easy--or unlock. I have wondered about the other types, though.
no subject
no subject
ohhh my God
(this whole post is gold especially the parenthetical about the non-vegan rabbits)
no subject
We're dealing with the opposite problem right now--phone number in email space--that's happening in production on our mobile app. Problem: I can't reproduce it.
Context: I know this app inside and out, I've tested in since first iteration, I wrote a primer on it for testing, every page, every data type, driver flow, etc.
Like, it's down to 'witchcraft', an Android phone with something super hinky going on in the OS somewhere, or something incredibly unlikely in web services in response to 'x' condition(s) but without being able to reproduce it, magic is pretty much it. Worse (better?), it's not happening nearly enough to have a start point, just bizarre phone numbers in email space in the database.
So you know, I almost miss control-v.
no subject
Note: to date,I have fallen into full stop issues on every upgrade I've tested. The higher ups hate me, but the people actually doing the work now request me by name.
no subject
I have been on a binge reading fan fic. Read “Three Impossible Things”, three times, Lol. I’m looking to read more of your ClarkLex fic. Do I miss those days.
no subject
no subject
Well, if you follow this sequence of events which no sane person could have predicted then the whole thing gets screwed up, pls fix asap" defect arriving in my inbox.
To be fair, two thirds of our maintenance defects are literally just that, soemtimes on emergency release. Deal with that enough, you get creatively proactive rather than deal with having to do it on 24 hour timer.
But then of course the offshore team get a 3 hour headstart on me in the mornings, so I log in to a stack of "Yep that one is fixed but then there's this mad scenario..."
I have written those, yeah.
Thanks for this