The hottest Testing Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

The SAT is not fairer than grades

Pershmail • 78 implied HN points • 03 May 23
🚌 Education Testing Admissions Fairness Social Mobility Standardized tests
  1. For poorer students, high school grades are a better indicator of success than SAT scores.
  2. Standardized tests, like the SAT, can be biased towards wealthier students by reflecting their better access to resources and test preparation.
  3. There is a need for multiple pathways to success in education that do not solely rely on grades or standardized tests, providing second chances for students.

Feature flags are ruining your codebase

Leading Developers • 3 HN points • 05 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Software Development Testing Product Management
  1. Feature flags can make codebases more complex and harder to maintain, especially when used as an excuse to avoid making hard decisions like completely removing a feature.
  2. Having too many feature flags can lead to wasted time on dead code, increased testing burden, and making testing a substitute for fixing issues.
  3. Different types of feature flags, like release toggles, experiment toggles, and permission toggles, require specific management approaches to prevent the codebase from becoming unmanageable.

Software engineering practices you should probably be following in 2024

The Tech Enabler • 3 HN points • 27 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Coding Culture Security Infrastructure Testing
  1. Prefer statically typed languages over dynamically typed ones as they offer better reliability and help catch errors earlier.
  2. Utilize automatic code formatting tools for consistent code style and to save time on debating formatting during code reviews.
  3. Consider using queues as data sources in event-driven systems for better scalability and leverage infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform for repeatable and manageable infrastructure.
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Lateral thinking

Logging the World • 79 implied HN points • 12 Nov 22
🔬 Science Research Data Analysis Public Health Epidemiology Testing
  1. Lateral flow tests had a much lower false positive rate than many initially assumed, around 0.03%, showing their effectiveness.
  2. Data on PCR retests of positive lateral flow tests revealed a positive predictive value of 82% even at low prevalence, supporting the reliability of lateral flow tests.
  3. A rise in prevalence due to variants like delta and omicron, as well as ease in lockdown restrictions, contributed to the wider acceptance of lateral flow tests for controlling the pandemic.

A Guide to Switching Platform to Shopify

Cristian’s Substack • 39 implied HN points • 10 Apr 23
💼 Business E-commerce Cost Analysis Testing SEO
  1. Shopify offers benefits like fast-loading websites, scalable infrastructure, and a great back office user experience.
  2. Potential drawbacks of Shopify include dependency on apps, development costs, mismanagement risks, and limited content management.
  3. Steps before switching to Shopify include assessing pain points, trying out a test store, evaluating costs, planning migration, and making necessary platform checks before the switch.

Standardized usability questionnaires: post-task measures

UX Psychology • 59 implied HN points • 23 Dec 21
🕹 Technology Usability Psychometrics User Experience Testing
  1. Post-task questionnaires capture user impressions immediately after a task, offering insights into user experience.
  2. Popular post-task questionnaires include the After-Scenario Questionnaire (ASQ), Subjective Mental Effort Question (SMEQ), and Expectation ratings (ER), each providing valuable usability feedback.
  3. When conducting usability studies, using multiple post-task questionnaires, like ASQ and SEQ, is recommended for a better understanding of user perceptions.

Big News! The Rapid Screen Pilots have arrived

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 119 implied HN points • 18 Dec 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Pandemic Management Public Health Testing Economic Impact Innovations
  1. The CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, led by Creative Destruction Lab and 12 companies, is implementing rapid antigen screens to enable daily screening to identify and isolate infectious individuals and protect others.
  2. The consortium aims to make rapid screening a part of daily life in Canada, with workers and visitors being frequently screened, helping to minimize exposure and bring economies back to normality.
  3. The initiative addresses the challenge of scaling pandemic management efforts, focusing on ongoing, regular screening to ensure a safer environment and eventually bringing back normalcy to daily life.

[Guest post] Edition 24: Pentesting LLM apps 101

Boring AppSec • 3 HN points • 13 Oct 23
🕹 Technology Security Development Testing Tools Integration
  1. Pentesters should care about security implications of integrating LLMs in applications.
  2. Identifying LLM usage in applications can involve looking for client-side SDKs, server-side APIs, and popular adoption signs.
  3. Assessing LLM-integrated applications requires manual testing, tooling like Garak and LLM Fuzzer, and aiding developers in defending against vulnerabilities.

Complacency

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 59 implied HN points • 05 Oct 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Prevention Testing Protocols Risks Innovation
  1. Complacency during a crisis can lead us to let our guard down, requiring constant adherence to protocols to manage the situation.
  2. Strict protocols are necessary, especially in high-risk environments like the White House, and must be followed diligently to prevent breakdowns in the system.
  3. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis demands vigilance from all of us - we need to innovate ways to maintain strict screening protocols and not let our guard down.

Scaling ain't cheap or easy

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 39 implied HN points • 27 Nov 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Testing Challenges Preparation Scaling
  1. Scaling up Covid-19 testing is crucial for returning to normalcy before widespread vaccine distribution.
  2. Implementing large-scale testing efforts requires a coordinated push similar to military operations and campus-wide testing strategies.
  3. Preparing for economy-wide frequent testing demands meticulous planning, infrastructure development, and preparedness on a national level.

Dependency Injection Demystified

Jacob’s Tech Tavern • 3 HN points • 06 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Programming Testing Architecture Networking Software Development
  1. Unit testing helps in writing maintainable code by separating concerns and breaking code into manageable chunks.
  2. Modern language features like async/await and functional reactive programming provide great coding ergonomics but require careful testing to avoid flakiness.
  3. Dependency Injection separates the tasks of gathering ingredients and cooking, making code more testable and maintainable.

Large Language Model Observability

Monitoring Monitoring • 3 HN points • 04 Apr 23
🕹 Technology AI Startups Monitoring Testing DevOps
  1. Startups are focusing on solving observability challenges for teams using Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4.
  2. LLM-based applications involve sending prompts in English to an API, raising questions about prompt quality, speed optimization, and cost management.
  3. Emerging startups are exploring automating generative testing and incident response using AI models like GitHub's Copilot.

B.1.1.7

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 11 Jan 21
🏥 Health & Wellness COVID-19 Vaccines Epidemiology Public Health Measures Testing
  1. The B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 is 50% more transmissible, likely spreading rapidly globally under several names, including 'UK Variant' and 'Supercovid.'
  2. B.1.1.7 mutations mainly affect the spike protein, raising concerns about vaccine efficacy. Current vaccines may still be effective, but wide distribution could lead to the virus evolving to evade immunity.
  3. B.1.1.7 is outcompeting other variants due to increased transmissibility rather than higher virulence, emphasizing the importance of maintaining mitigation efforts, particularly in high-risk settings, and ramping up testing to contain the spread.

Worry Diary

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 17 Dec 20
🏥 Health & Wellness COVID-19 Anxiety Testing Symptoms
  1. The lack of information solutions during a family Covid-19 scare caused days of anxiety and uncertainty.
  2. Rapid testing and comprehensive information sharing could have greatly reduced worry and uncertainty during the crisis.
  3. Having access to quick and accurate testing results, along with better information systems, could have provided clarity and peace of mind in the situation.

Adding a new RISC-V extension (to spike)

Fprox’s Substack • 2 HN points • 14 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Coding Simulation Extensions Development Testing
  1. The post describes how to extend the RISC-V ISA simulator Spike to implement a new instruction for vector AES-128 encryption.
  2. It covers steps like adding the new opcode in riscv-opcodes, declaring the new instruction in riscv-isa-sim, and testing the program.
  3. The process involves modifying opcode header files, updating the simulator, and building a test program to implement and verify the new instruction.

New Fast Tests and Distress from Regulators

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 28 Aug 20
🏥 Health & Wellness Testing Regulations Infectiousness Public Health
  1. Widespread frequent testing is crucial to quickly deal with Covid-19 and reduce economic pain. Challenges include the need for cheap, rapid tests and regulators changing their approach for pandemic mitigation.
  2. The new Abbott test is a $5 fast test authorized by the FDA, but is limited to use on symptomatic individuals. The test requires administration by healthcare providers, impacting its potential impact.
  3. Regulations can be changed to expand the use of tests like Abbott's which may be more valuable for identifying infectious individuals. The decision to limit the test to symptomatic use may hinder efforts to stop the virus spread.

Combine, async/await, and Unit Testing

Jacob’s Tech Tavern • 0 implied HN points • 22 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Concurrency Testing Swift Unit Testing
  1. Combine and async/await can be used together to write robust and maintainable software with modern language features.
  2. Testing @ObservableObject view models, Combine publishers in async methods, and Combine publishers converted to AsyncSequence are key in achieving unit test mastery.
  3. Understanding the interoperation between Combine and async/await is a powerful skill for writing unit tests and marrying the two concurrency approaches.

Weekly Digest #2 : The Plan for Rails 8

monoRails - a Ruby on Rails newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Programming Web Development Software Testing Ruby on Rails Programming Web Development Testing Tools Frameworks
  1. Rails 8 is planning new features like a background worker, cache backend, framework for mobile notifications, and more development tools.
  2. The article discusses the internal workings and design decisions of Sidekiq, a popular background processing tool for Ruby.
  3. Understanding the Rails router is important for developers to grasp the concepts of routing, named routes, and different types of routes in a Ruby on Rails application.

Test fast, fail fast

Yong’s Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 11 Jul 23
💼 Business Customer Needs Testing Feedback
  1. Identifying and targeting the right customer base is crucial for business success.
  2. Understanding customer needs and preferences is essential to provide a compelling value proposition.
  3. Iterative testing, learning from mistakes, and adapting to customer feedback are key to aligning products with the appropriate customer base.