š„§ Pie mail - cyber smart edition
Hi folks! There's a lot of new subscribers this time around, so a special hello if this is your first pie mail!
It's great to have you here!
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It's Cyber Smart week here in New Zealand, a great time to review your teams security practices (or lack of, haha). Got any security tips or stories to share? Reply and let me know what you're doing for Cyber Smart week, I'd love to hear it!
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Anyway, here's what's been happening in the last couple of weeks:
āØ Some interesting links āØ
Ten years in testing, ten lessons
Maaike Brinkhof has written ten blog posts to celebrate ten years in testing. Ten blog posts is a lot of reading, but there's some really interesting learnings in there. Take some time to check it out!
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An Exploration of Testers
My friend Dr Lee Hawkins compiled a book this year called An Exploration of Testers. A series of eleven questions posed to different people from within the industry. I feel very humbled to have been invited to contribute!
I haven't read through everyones answers yet, but the ones I have read, have been very insightful.
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The Twitch follow bot problem
My colleague and Twitch streamer Daria posted about her problem with bots following her on Twitch. I'd encourage you to listen to the video, and pick out what oracles she used to figure out there was a problem!
If you're a Twitch user, why not give her a follow too, she's great!
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Boeing aircraft updated by floppy disk
Because it's cyber smart week, here's an interesting cyber smart story. Boeing still update their navigation databases using a 3.5 inch floppy disk.
I'm interested to hear your opinions on using such an outdated technology - good idea or bad idea? Could this be more secure than more modern methods?
š This week I learned... š
...how important it is to be careful with 'initial values' and 'current values' in Postman!
We're really ramping up our usage of Postman at the moment as an API testing tool. Postman teams has some features that I'm really excited about. Look out for some blog posts soon!
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One of the cool things about Postman is its use of environment variables. When you set up an environment in Postman, each environment variable has two settings: an initial value, and a current value. Kinda like this:
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The initial value is what the collection starts out with, when you sync it or import it. The current value is what the variable is set to currently (because, you might change it during your tests).
The important thing to note is that when you're using Postman for teams, the initial value gets synced to the cloud. If you have a variable that contains a password or some other sensitive information, you really don't want that going into the cloud.
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In the above example, my incredibly secure password would now be compromised. Bummer, eh!
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So, always use the current value if you have sensitive information in environment variables - you could do something like this:
This way, the only thing that will get synced to the cloud is the text "[your password]", and my password will be safely stored locally.
Happy Cyber Smart week everyone!
š§© Puzzle time š§©
Here's a story from my past. I worked for a company that sold a subscription service, with an overly complex billing structure. It's a bit tough to explain, I've tried to simplify it here, feel free to ask questions if you want me to clarify though!
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We sold Products, and each Product was available on a subscription Plan. The Plan determined the region and price a Product would be available at.
Each Product and Plan also has a start and end date. Both the Product and the Plan need to be available on a given date for a customer to make a purchase. With me so far?
The company decided though, that we needed to change the price of some Plans. At the same time, they wanted to rename the Products. The "Small" Product would become "Standard", and the "Large" Product would become "Pro".
So we had to 'end' the existing Products and Plans, and create new ones. This is what the data looked like. Can you see what went wrong?
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Let me know if you can see what happened! More importantly, what would you do to make this better? I look forward to hearing your answers!
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Hint (highlight text to see): Timezones are hard!
šŖ Events coming up šŖ
There's always something exciting happening!
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Junior Dev meetup
If you're in Auckland like me, Junior Dev meetups have started again. I strongly recommend testers going to non-testing meetups, and this is a good one. The next event is on November 11.
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Ministry of Testing Auckland Workshop
āMinistry of Testing Auckland are hosting their first workshop since we've moved back to Level one too - a primer on the ISTQB syllabus. If that interests you, be sure to check it out! It's this weekend!
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Automation Week
If you're not in Auckland (or hey, even if you are), Ministry of Testing's Automation Week is coming!
There are a range of automation challenges you can take part in. I'd love it if everyone that reads this newsletter takes the chance to have a go at at least one of them. They should be great fun!
If you participate, or if you need help, please let me know, I'd love to see what you get up to.
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TestBash NZ
On a related note, my absolute favourite testing conference, TestBash NZ is only a month away! Circle November 20 in the calendar if you haven't already!
It's all online this time, so you don't even need to be in New Zealand to take part. Yay!
āSix great speakers have been lined up already - so register now! I look forward to seeing you there!
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š Thanks for reading! š
Peyow peyow, that's all for now. As always, appreciate you reading, I hope you found something of interest!
Remember, this newsletter is still small enough that I will read & respond to any replies :)
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Let me know if you have any feedback, and will see you all again in a couple of weeks (if not before!).
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Cheers,
James a.k.a. JPie š„§
āhttps://jpie.nzā
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