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nlunbeck

119 karma · joined August 17, 2023

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nlunbeck··on Dev-owned testing: Why it fails in practice and succeeds in theory
(Disclaimer: I work for shipyard.build so i am biased here..)

Dev-owned testing (or even dev-involved testing) is much more realistic when devs have shorter feedback loops between their code and its deployment. So often i've seen momentum get lost when devs have a wait period before they can run tests/do basic manual testing. Then the test aspect becomes the thing that "slows down" devs before they ship a feature, so they might tend towards shortcuts

nlunbeck··on Dev-owned testing: Why it fails in practice and succeeds in theory
Frustrating to see.

Dev-led testing is too fundamentally different from a QA function, just as any amount of E2E tests can't replace manual testing. Each tries to solve for a different type of problem. Is it possible to do effective dev peer "QA" without essentially duplicating the QA role? And forget about testing one's own work..

nlunbeck··on State of AI-assisted software development
DORA, recently, has been moving towards its own sphere outside of DevOps, hence why the acronym isn't usually expanded. So many of the core principles of DevOps (communication, collaboration, working across teams, etc) have impact beyond the DevOps discipline. DORA has been venturing into platform, DevEx, AI, etc.

From last year's DORA report:

"We are committed to the fundamental principles that have always been a part of the DevOps movement: culture, collaboration, automation, learning, and using technology to achieve business goals. Our community and research benefit from the perspectives of diverse roles, including people who might not associate with the "DevOps" label. You should expect to see the term "DevOps" moving out of the spotlight."

nlunbeck··on Automating Git Bisect with Ephemeral Environments
> Because ephemeral environments are reproducible on demand (via Docker images, Kubernetes pods, or a cloud VM), you can guarantee that each bisect step sees the same conditions. This drastically reduces "works on my machine" fiascos.

Agree on this pattern for all code changes. Hard to understate the amount of time we've saved by testing against the full prod-like environment right away. An ephemeral env implementation makes this easy and low stakes, so diving right into E2E testing a copy of your real infra isn't wildly unreasonable. However, I work for Shipyard (https://shipyard.build) so I'm a bit biased on these processes.

nlunbeck··on Uh-Oh: A story of SpaghettiOs and forgotten history
I'd be curious to know how the market is for frozen dinners designed to be microwaved on/in a separate plate/bowl. I usually do that anyway for things that come in plastic microwavable containers
nlunbeck··on Round Rects Are Everywhere
Round rect technique aside (fascinating stuff!), the storytelling here is really charming. Reads like a clever short story

> Bill returned to Texaco Towers the following afternoon, with a big smile on his face. His demo was now drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners blisteringly fast, almost at the speed of plain rectangles.

nlunbeck··on A journey into Kindle AI slop hell
I remember there being some buzz a few months back around something similar happening with Spotify. Lots of random tracks that looked/sounded suspiciously AI-generated strewn into Spotify-generated playlists.
nlunbeck··on Harvard applications drop 5% after year of turmoil on the Ivy League campus
My college's yield increased every year I was there, we got "the largest freshman class historically" four years in a row, even with their efforts to account for the new higher yield.

It's hard to accept the right number of applicants when yield isn't exactly linear year to year

nlunbeck··on BASIC turns 60
AFAIK, my highschool still is offering BASIC in their intro CS curriculum. It's just so accessible and many of us preferred it over Python for intro classes
nlunbeck··on The drinking fountain button
I always prefer the bottle filling stations over drinking fountains, for the 20% of the time that I actually have a bottle with me.

In gyms/libraries/airports it always feels like refilling stations get 5x more use than drinking fountains, but when you're anywhere else, what are the odds you're carrying a bottle?

nlunbeck··on Anonymous public voicemail inbox
The talking Minesweeper smiley is really the icing on the cake, love it!
nlunbeck··on People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
When I lived in Boston, the thing that kept most of my friends from driving during weekdays was how profoundly aggressive the drivers tended to be. There are very few cities where I've seen that level of road rage
nlunbeck··on Show HN: Zebrapuzzles.com – Daily Logic Puzzles
I've always loved these types of puzzles, glad to know what they're called and have a place to find them!

Very well-designed site, definitely will be returning often

nlunbeck··on Firefox can add text/drawings to PDFs
Exactly! You would think a free tool for such a simple purpose would be easier to find online. Glad to see Firefox raising the bar
nlunbeck··on Google paid $10M in bug bounty rewards last year
Exactly. Bug bounty seems like one of the smartest financial decisions a company can make. As for devs, it seems like a good deal if they're going to be finding these vulnerabilities anyway
nlunbeck··on Show HN: Astro App
Looks incredible! Shows the value of a good onboarding -- really had me excited to see everything the app had to offer
nlunbeck··on Why I use Firefox
> Still, I like the idea of using a browser from a company that does not want to access my data on their own servers.

Mozilla's motives alone for creating a web browser are why I trust FF. I don't like the idea of Chrome subsisting (to the point it's their actual business model) on my personal info

nlunbeck··on My streaming fatigue got so bad I started collecting DVDs
This. And in many cases, it was not just a supplement to their streaming catalogue. A family friend lives in Alaska and has a very low data cap and relied on Netflix's DVD service, and obviously can't be use Netflix anymore. I get cases like this are a very very low percentage of their userbase, but still unfortunate for so many to lose access to an easy media solution that never cost Netflix much to begin with
nlunbeck··on DOOM rendered via console.log() in a web browser (2021)
TIL you can console log images. Cool project
nlunbeck··on Eclipse viewing at 30k feet: Delta to offer path-of-totality flight
Doesn't seem like a stupid question to me. Would love to know their terms on this, eg. partial refunds? Voucher for next eclipse in a few years?
nlunbeck··on Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches (1994)
Yes, I was also pretty moved by *Figure 6: Toaster Disposal* -- I love when research papers go 200% on context
nlunbeck··on Web Scraping in Python – The Complete Guide
I've noticed many smaller and medium sites only use client-side CAPTCHAs/paywalls
nlunbeck··on Every default macOS wallpaper
Agreed, it felt like such a major leap in modernity from the Aqua wallpapers. I still think of it as the definitive 2000s Mac OS X wallpaper, it really was everywhere in no way any of their wallpapers have been since. It was like the Bliss counterpart to Mac OS X
nlunbeck··on Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
I always thought my earbuds were wearing out unevenly, which may also be the case, but this is good to check up on every few months
nlunbeck··on Google enables OS upgrades for older PCs post-Windows 10 support cutoff
I've been waiting 2 years for them to correct that, and I'm surprised it didn't happen right away. It seemed like such a widely-hated feature would warrant a windows 8 -> 8.1 level UX adjustment
nlunbeck··on Damn Small Linux 2024
> All the applications are chosen for their functionality, small size, and low dependencies

I wouldn't mind a few extra mb of software if it improves my overall user experience. The nice thing about DSL is that its slim despite having a pretty comprehensive app suite.

nlunbeck··on Linux for Playstation 2
Iirc the PS2 also got a huge boost by being a cheap alternative to designated DVD players, but it eventually obviously paid off. I wonder how that factored into their PS3 strategy
nlunbeck··on Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014)
  has been my go-to when I'm working in markdown and don't want to use html elements
nlunbeck··on How to install Firefox on a Chromebook the easy way
I was waiting for the rest of the images to load, good to know they were just ads (using an adblocker)
nlunbeck··on Waiting on Tests
In my experience, turning on entire pre-prod infra to e2e test earlier has been effective at reducing overall test suite runtime (in that we're running e2e tests often to the extent we spot + eliminate the flaky ones). And by virtue of e2e tests being good at finding edge cases, there's less emphasis on unit/integration test performance
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