Testing Career Paths and the XZ Hack

What A Lot Of Things: Tech talk from a human perspective

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 Fellowship
• Maaret 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 I
• Accessibility testing specialist, Ady Stokes on LinkedIn
• The 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: [e-mail]