What A Lot Of Things

In this episode, Ian and Ash delve into the evolving landscape of social media, examining the implications of TikTok's potential ban in the U.S., the integration of AI in testing, and the shifting dynamics of platforms like Twitter (now X). They share personal anecdotes, discuss the significance of data privacy, and explore the future of social media engagement. The conversation also considers the challenges and opportunities presented by these digital shifts, offering insights into the broader tech community's response.LinksOn the TikTok saga:TechCrunch: TikTok ban: How Congress could force ByteDance to sell or push the app out of the USSpiceworks: There's Nothing Confusing About TikTok's Security RisksThe Guardian: TikTok has been accused of ‘aggressive’ data harvesting. Is your information at risk?NY Times: House Passes Bill to Force TikTok Sale From Chinese Owner or Ban the AppCory Doctorow: TikTok's Ensh*ttificationPostman and PostBot30 Days of AI in Testing from Ministry of TestingThe Leeds Testing Atelier, at which Ash has performed the role of Testing Game Show Host.How To Archive Your Tweets With The Wayback MachineThe original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit (which runs on ActivityPub)Ivory for iOS client for Mastodon, from TapBotsThreads from Meta.Bluesky which runs on the AT ProtocolThe late, lamented Apollo Reddit clientThe celebrated What A Lot Of Things LinkedIn GroupYou can find our social media links (or link, in the case of Ash) on  the website.

This episode of the podcast features Ian and Ash in a humour-filled comeback, diving into the fascinating world of generative AI and the impact of Baldur's Gate 3 on the gaming industry. They explore the nuances and controversies surrounding AI, from its potential to enhance creativity to the ethical concerns and the skepticism it faces. The discussion also highlights the importance of corporate culture in producing quality work, as exemplified by Larian Studios' success with Baldur's Gate 3. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, gaming, and creativity, offering insightful and engaging perspectives on contemporary digital phenomena.LinksA Wizard is never lateGartner Hype Cycle Research MethodologyAnthropic, their product,Claude, and their Constitutional AI research.The Turing testReinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)Other AI platforms mentioned: ChatGPT, Gemini, CopilotAI image generation: Midjourney, DALL·ENew York Times: Bing’s AI Chat: I Want To Be AliveIBM watsonxIA WriterHemingwayDungeons and DragonsStardew ValleySkull and BonesLarian Studios and Baldur’s Gate 3Cyberpunk 2077SendmailLoot boxesWhat A Lot Of Things – LinkedIn

Ian and Ash talk about those pesky testers forming communities and taking on toxic cultures, plus forming a dilapidated mind shack using personal knowledge management tools like Obsidian.LinksZettelkasten - Slip Box not SlipKnot More Zettelkasten Obsidian Home Page Ian's Thoughts on Obsidian Testers walkout after layoffs in the QA Team Raven testers form a union NFT grifters have terrible culture - not causation yet, but the correlation is hard to ignore.

Ian and Ash talk about the (mis)use of metrics, including the big four and happiness indices plus how proud Ash was of his Certified Scrum Master qualification but now bashes Scrum with everyone else.LinksHere I Belong by Matt HartleyDouglas Adams: How to stop worrying and learn to love the InternetRFC 821 - Simple Mail Transport Protocol (not RFC 822, as Ian thought, which is closely related being about the format of the files containing the messages that get transmitted over SMTP). Still, not the perfect accompaniment to a discussion about Ian’s rightness.Myth: If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It DORA (Google DevOps Research & Assessment (Team)) MetricsHow to measure developer productivity - and how not to by Isaac SacolickScrums Allegiance WebsiteI've sold agile to to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North HaverbrookOwl asking Winnie the Pooh to leave his house for saying Agile Scrum

Links Team Guide to Testability Publishers Page The Great Post Office Scandal Publishers Page  Scandal at the Post Office Panorama BBC TV Episode The Great Post Office Trial BBC Radio 4 Serial The Great Post Office Scandal Author Nick Wallis 39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question My first impressions of web3 by Moxie Marlinspike Web3 is going just great An extremely casual code review of MetaMask's crypto by Matthew Green

Links Bugs in our Pockets: The risks of client-side scanning What A Lot of Things on Amazon Alexa Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson The Metaverse and How We'll Build It Together, at Facebook Connect 2021 An Interview with Mark Zuckerberg about the Metaverse, by Stratechery A $10 Million Investment In SecondLife from IBM is the Latest Push to Build V-Business from November 2006 IBM CEO Sam Palmisano in Second Life, by Ian in November 2016 Ready Player One, movie trailer The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find It, and Who Will Build It, by Matthew Ball Who Runs It, on the different options for production support by Steve Smith What is You Build You Run It, from Equal Experts Enterprise DevOps: Why You Should Run What You Build, by Stephen Orban of AWS (Paid content) Influencing empowered teams to the things that matter to you, by Sarah Wells of Financial Times

WARNING: We talk about Apple's proposed measures to limit the spread of child sexual abuse material on its platform.Episode Links Are 64% of Features Really Rarely or Never Used? What's in a name: Experimenting with Testing Job Titles What A Lot Of Things Episode Three – Four day work week and Design Thinking Google Ventures Paper Prototyping video Be More Pirate Joy Inc. by Richard Sheridan founder of Menlo Consulting The NFR Rap video (and audio only version). All of Ian's Notes for the Apple's Child Safety measures Thing Breaking news: Matthew Green Twitter thread: "I’ve had independent confirmation from multiple people that Apple is releasing a client-side tool for CSAM scanning tomorrow. This is a really bad idea" Apple's info: Apple's Child Safety page A moderate view: Daring Fireball: Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery Slope A more heated view: Edward Snowden: The All-Seeing "i": Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy

Links The Mists Of Time clip from Episode 5 Ian’s Other Podcast Ash’s Twitter Nemesis - @ashwinter Ben Horowitz, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz Ben's book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ian’s book highlights from The Hard Thing About Hard Things The Guardian: Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, who took a $1m salary cut to pay his workers a minimum wave of $70k Manager Tools podcast State of DevOps Report 2021 (requires a biznass email) Martin Fowler* describes what he means by a platform, which has a very strong alignment with what the State of DevOps Report means by a platform Excellent talk by Matthew Skelton and Jamie Dobson on treating your platform as a product. Team Topologies on what is a thinnest viable platform Quote from Bill Gates about what is and isn't a platform (search within the page for "Neither of them are platforms") How to scale Brent from the Phoenix Project * – Actually, although it's on Martin Fowler's blog, it was a post from Evan Bottcher. Ian's mistake - sorry Evan!

Links: Some actual beard ASMR. “I’ve sold Agile to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook” on slide 15 of Jon McNestrie’s talk at Lean Agile Brighton 2019. Ian’s Agile Octopus Timing Alexa Skill. git rebase. Twitter to clear out inactive accounts and free up usernames. The Other Ash Winter’s Twitter Account. Ian’s three-letter Twitter handle. The Digital Legacy Association. The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data, a sequel to... The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win. The five keys to a successful Google team. Marie Kondo explains Spark Joy. Gene Kim’s talk at DevOps Days Portland 2019, on The Unicorn Project and the Five Ideals. A Brief History of Scaling LinkedIn. Bill Gates Trustworthy Computing Memo. The Goal.

Links:* Amazon Developer Services* Alexa Skills Kit* Agile Octopus* AWS Lambda Layers* Ian's Alexa Skill Source Code* Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time* Leeds Tech Bubble Divisions* Even Techies are Sick of Inequality in San Francisco* Code Club* Empowering Women with Tech* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds Full Theme

Links: Steamed Hams  Trial of Four Day Work Week at Microsoft Japan  Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman On the Phenomenon of BS Jobs  Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing Don Norman: Rethinking Design Thinking Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is BS IBM Design Thinking Intro Course d School Design Thinking Process IBM Design Thinking Loop Agile inception deck

Links: Scottish Voice Recognition Elevator Ian’s Machine Learning/Data Science links Deep Learning Specialization | Coursera Applied Data Science with Python | Coursera Kaggle: Your Home for Data Science Titanic: Machine Learning from Disaster Team Topologies Conway’s Law DevOps Topologies

Ash and Ian talk about collective bargaining in tech, and “cargo culting”.LinksCollective bargaining:Business Insider - Here's the memo Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent to employees on the changes to Google's sexual-harassment policy after the walkout. Whole Foods employees demand Amazon break all ties with ICE and PalantirAll workers need unions – including those in Silicon ValleyMaslow's Hierarchy Of Needs - WikipediaCargo Culting:Cargo Culting - WiktionaryCargo Cult - Wikipedia"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” - Quote Investigator