#Hire Software Testing Team

[xcoderagnecy1]

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[syncrovoid-presents]

I will continue being gone for a few days, sadly my original al plan of releasing the newest chapter of The Consequence Of Imagination's Fear has also been delayed. My apologies

Can't go into detail because its hush hush not-legally-mentionable stuff but today is my fifth 12 hour no-break work day. I'm also packing to move too in a fortnight (which is a Big Yahoo!! Yippee!! I'll finally have access to a kitchen!! And no more mold others keep growing!!! So exciting!!!)

[narolainfotechus]

How Quality Assurance Can Uplift Your Business in 2023?

Do you feel that Quality Assurance (QA) and software testing are the same? If yes, we request you to read this article. It is possible you might confuse quality assurance with automated software testing, and that is absolutely fine. We understand they sound quite similar in meaning, In fact, many people use these interchangeably. However, there is a subtle difference between the two in scope and responsibilities.

While software testing focuses on the technical aspects of systems, quality assurance is concerned with software specifications. It is a comprehensive method for ensuring the quality of software. Furthermore, quality assurance practice assesses the development and testing cycles, as well as the methods, techniques, and processes.

What is QA (Quality Assurance)?

Quality Assurance is a process-oriented method. With sufficient quality reviews, a standardized quality assurance process confirms the standard of software components. Data collection and documentation procedures are also a part of the process.

Quality assurance solutions keep an eye on every stage of the development process. As a result, it consistently adopts a user-centric strategy to ensure quality, from the coding studio to the sophisticated testing cabins. Additionally, it aids in bug prevention during the development and maintenance of the entire software lifecycle.

Benefits of Quality Assurance Solutions

1. Better User Experience

As a consumer, would you like to use an app that crashes frequently and has a poor design? Of course not! Users demand a seamless experience above all else. Consumers' tolerance for buggy, unintuitive software is waning as the world experiences rapid technological advancements. Users today will instantly switch to a competitor's product if it provides a better experience.

When quality is guaranteed, users expect a seamless experience. Organizations don’t want to rely on users to point out errors in an application. Instead, they would like to take care of it themselves with software application testing services before the app goes live. How smoothly users use the product has a direct correlation to how satisfied they are with it.

Quality assurance makes sure that a software application is functional, secure, robust, scalable, and reliable. It addresses every UI/UX-related problem to develop better customer experiences.

2. Increased User Satisfaction

For a moment, let’s think about the apps and websites we use daily. What is it about them that we just can’t do without them? Be it Netflix for movies and TV shows, Spotify for music, or Good reads for books. Seamless experience gives way to user satisfaction, and that is exactly what we get from these platforms.

Increased brand reputation and higher revenue are directly related to high customer satisfaction. As a result, developing high-quality software with automated testing service benefits both consumers and businesses.

With quality assurance, it is possible to create such a top-notch app that users will keep returning to it. In no time, it will become a significant part of their lives, just like the apps mentioned at the beginning of this point.

3. Better Efficiency

Do you know that you can significantly reduce the risks associated with software failure by integrating quality assurance into the development cycle?

It is usual for developers to occasionally exercise some creative liberty while making software. However, they must make sure they don’t ignore customer requirements while doing that. A strategy for software quality assurance ensures that. A significant departure from the predetermined plan may result in a mismatch between the final product and the project requirements, requiring rework and going beyond the allotted timeline.

Software testing service providers monitor the entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) with QA, which also confirms regulatory standard compliance. Quality assurance practices not only result in higher efficiency but also save time and money by keeping the project on course and by ensuring compliance.

4. Preventive Action

Unlike most software testing practices that are corrective in nature, quality assurance takes a preventive approach to identifying bugs and resolving issues with functionality, performance, or security.

You can contact a software testing company in the USA that is responsive to error detection and reduces the likelihood of a failure. That enables the creation of high-performing, user-friendly, and stable software. Activities for quality control aid in locating and eliminating procedures that result in waste or fall short of requirements. By doing this, you can optimize SDLC and improve overall efficiency.

5. Facilitates Agile Development

In an Agile approach, the scope and deadline of every sprint are short. Therefore, sprint managers occasionally disregard the importance of QA, placing a significant risk in the potential of the software. However, you can hire a software testing service team and turn this risk into a well-planned project and execute it successfully. With this, you can provide high value to the customers by integrating quality assurance practices early on.

Keeping in mind the iterative nature of the agile methodology, you must make quality assurance an integral part of the development process from the get-go. After developers write the code, there is no time left for quality assurance. In order to avoid needless changes after work and avoid costly delays, it must be present from the beginning.

In Conclusion

In our experience of more than 17 years and having worked with numerous clients around the world, we can say for sure that you can never take QA for granted. Building a culture of quality assurance is crucial for businesses if they want to completely eliminate the possibility of failure. To reduce the number of necessary corrective measures, they should put a higher priority on preventive measures.

Owing to our experience, we have developed a fool proof methodology to integrate QA into the development process. With the help of those techniques, we have successfully completed more than 2500 projects. Narola Infotech is one of the best software testing service providers and can help you build the most advanced and glitch-free software for your users and business growth. All you need to do is contact our experts, and we’ll take care of the rest.

[mariacallous]

KnowBe4, a US-based security vendor, revealed that it unwittingly hired a North Korean hacker who attempted to load malware into the company's network. KnowBe4 CEO and founder Stu Sjouwerman described the incident in a blog post this week, calling it a cautionary tale that was fortunately detected before causing any major problems.

"First of all: No illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems," Sjouwerman wrote. “This is not a data breach notification, there was none. See it as an organizational learning moment I am sharing with you. If it can happen to us, it can happen to almost anyone. Don't let it happen to you.”

KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was "using a valid but stolen US-based identity" and a photo that was "enhanced" by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4's blog post called "an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor."

KnowBe4 operates in 11 countries and is headquartered in Florida. It provides security awareness training, including phishing security tests, to corporate customers. If you occasionally receive a fake phishing email from your employer, you might be working for a company that uses the KnowBe4 service to test its employees' ability to spot scams.

Person Passed Background Check and Video Interviews

KnowBe4 hired the North Korean hacker through its usual process. "We posted the job, received résumés, conducted interviews, performed background checks, verified references, and hired the person. We sent them their Mac workstation, and the moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware," the company said.

Even though the photo provided to HR was fake, the person who was interviewed for the job apparently looked enough like it to pass. KnowBe4's HR team "conducted four video conference based interviews on separate occasions, confirming the individual matched the photo provided on their application," the post said. "Additionally, a background check and all other standard pre-hiring checks were performed and came back clear due to the stolen identity being used. This was a real person using a valid but stolen US-based identity. The picture was AI 'enhanced.'"

The two images at the top of this story are a stock photo and what KnowBe4 says is the AI fake based on the stock photo. The stock photo is on the left, and the AI fake is on the right.

The employee, referred to as "XXXX" in the blog post, was hired as a principal software engineer. The new hire's suspicious activities were flagged by security software, leading KnowBe4's Security Operations Center (SOC) to investigate:

On July 15, 2024, a series of suspicious activities were detected on the user beginning at 9:55 pm EST. When these alerts came in KnowBe4's SOC team reached out to the user to inquire about the anomalous activity and possible cause. XXXX responded to SOC that he was following steps on his router guide to troubleshoot a speed issue and that it may have caused a compromise. The attacker performed various actions to manipulate session history files, transfer potentially harmful files, and execute unauthorized software. He used a Raspberry Pi to download the malware. SOC attempted to get more details from XXXX including getting him on a call. XXXX stated he was unavailable for a call and later became unresponsive. At around 10:20 pm EST SOC contained XXXX's device.

“Fake IT Worker From North Korea”

The SOC analysis indicated that the loading of malware "may have been intentional by the user," and the group "suspected he may be an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor," the blog post said.

"We shared the collected data with our friends at Mandiant, a leading global cybersecurity expert, and the FBI, to corroborate our initial findings. It turns out this was a fake IT worker from North Korea," Sjouwerman wrote.

KnowBe4 said it can't provide much detail because of the active FBI investigation. But the person hired for the job may have logged into the company computer remotely from North Korea, Sjouwerman explained:

How this works is that the fake worker asks to get their workstation sent to an address that is basically an "IT mule laptop farm." They then VPN in from where they really physically are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night shift so that they seem to be working in US daytime. The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs. I don't have to tell you about the severe risk of this. It's good we have new employees in a highly restricted area when they start, and have no access to production systems. Our controls caught it, but that was sure a learning moment that I am happy to share with everyone.

[askagamedev]

How is the process of learning In-house game engines once you get into an AAA studio? Do they immediately put you in production to learn as you go, or does it take some weeks before allocating you to a project?

The onboarding process is a little of everything you say. Whenever I start a new job, there's the new hire administrative tasks I need to get done like signing paperwork and doing harassment/DEI/office safety training and there's the actual "this is what they hired me to do" learning process where I learn how the workflow works so that I can start being productive. We'll ignore the administrative stuff and focus on the productivity onboarding.

The first thing that any new hire has to do is get the project synced to the latest safe build and get the game running. Without being able to run the game, we can't make or test any of the changes we will inevitably need to make. This often entails fiddling with a bunch of workstation and network settings in order to make sure all of the files are where the game expects them to be, all of the necessary software is installed and ready, and so on. Getting an in-development game running can take quite some time (I've seen whole days lost in some cases) given how much disk space these games can take (and therefore how long it takes to download all of those files from the depot) and how complex the workflow can be.

Once the new hire has the game up and running and has familiarized herself with the game's controls and such, it's time to start reading documentation for the internal tools and workflow - how the content is made, how the work is done, what the working process is, how to check your work, who to contact in case of questions. At this point, the lead usually assigns an introductory task or two to the new hire - a small task for her to get her feet wet and to provide some guidance while looking through the system and making some actual changes.

After this initial process of learning > making changes > testing > submitting the fix, the process repeats with newer and more complicated tasks as the new hire's lead deals out new assignments. As the new hire completes more tasks, she learns more about the tools, the workflow, and the team. That knowledge and experience is then considered when increasing the scope of her tasks until she's reached the level of productivity expected of a dev in her role.

If you think this sounds a lot like the [minimum competency for joining a team] post from a while back that I wrote, you're absolutely right. We use this exact process to bring a new hire onto our team because it's the same goal - we have someone who (we hope) is dedicated to working on the game and helping us carry it to completion.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[romance-club-daily]

A little bit late, but I'm gonna jump in on the recent "RC uses AI art" bandwagon. I understand where you're coming from — I'm an aspiring translator and even before the whole AI craze I had no idea how tf I'm gonna look for a job once I'd graduate, but now the situation's even more dire. That being said, I think we really really REALLY shouldn't jump to conclusions about in this case because

do we actually have any proof that it's AI generated art besides "it looks like that"? Because AI... doesn't really have a "style", it's literally gonna look like the art you feed to it/what it finds on the web. I've already seen at least one instance of artists being told that their art is actually AI generated just because it looks similiar. CGs in all stories are usually more realistic-looking, imo, and showcase the biggest differences between different artists' styles. All of this is speculation is conjecture, but like, so is the whole thing about RC using AI art in the first place. So I'll just move on to more solid argument

just last month, on August 4th, RC announced an open call for hiring artists. I guess this vacancy was targeted at CIS countries since as far as I'm aware they didn't crosspost it to Facebook or Twitter or anywhere besides VK and Telegram channel. On 28th they stopped accepting applications from artists and are, most likely, currently continuing the tryouts. My point is: what kind of company would resort to using free AI and then go and hire real humans you actually have to pay? It just doesn't make sense

Here is my translation of these posts about the whole hiring business and screenshots. I'll send you links via another submission or ask because I'm afraid tumblr might nuke this one

translation, if anyone knows russian and thinks I made a mistake of some sort feel free to correct me, after all there's a lot of artist argot I'm not too sure about:

august 4th:

2D artist vacancy

Friends, we announce that we started hiring artists to Romance Club team. ❤

We're YSI, an independent game development sudio from Moldova, that creates interactive visual novels. We're looking for people who may become a part of our big family.

If you're a talented character and/or game locations 2D artist (or you're just great at drawing), then you're exactly who we're looking for!

✅ What do we want from the applicants?

- creativity and rich imagination;

- to be professionaly versed in 2D graphics softwares (experience with Adobe Photoshop is necessary);

- to be able to draw by hand using a graphic tablet;

- your portfolio is necessary.

❗All of the applicants will be given a test assignment❗

✅ Why you should choose Romance Club:

- friendly young team as well as modern office in the capital of Moldova;

- to work with experienced professionals in informal and inspiring environment;

- opportunity to realize your own creative ideas;

- exciting long-term projects;

- fair wage + bonuses;

- possible career development;

- game dev is cool!

If you're interested, send us your portfolio at jobs @ yourstoryinteractive. com and briefly tell us about your skills

August 28th:

2D artist vacancy, applications closed

Friends, we finished the hiring process for artists❗

Huge thanks to those who sent us their resume. Everyone turned out to be incredibly talented and interesting.

✅ Candidates that received an e-mail from us move on to the next stage of tryouts

Our apologies for not being able to reply to everyone personally. We received a great deal of applications and, unfortunately, couldn't possibly contact everybody.

Thank you for showing interest in Romance Club and working for our company!

With all due respect,

Your Story Interactive

As a side note, it is possible that some of the artists may use AI without their hire-ups and writers and so on even knowing that — unlikely, I don't have any proof of that, but it's a possibility. But I feel that the only thing we're doing here is treading muddy waters of conspiracy theories. I'm repeating myself, but it just seems unlikely that there's actually any AI involved when the company in question just started hiring new artists. You may argue that they had to use AI for the most recent update because of the staff shortage but once again: let's not dive into conspiracy theories. Okay, I took longer than I needed to, but I rest my case

_____________________________________________________________

I agree with you on some points, it could be the artist using it without the company knowing and it is a possibility (although I think would be naive of them). But I believe that hiring artists and using AI is something that can happen simultaneously, in the beginning. One thing may not have to do with the other either. That said, it has caught our attention because the style has changed drastically from one update to the next and is very similar to how AI-generated images look. The public used to complain that the characters didn't have realistic poses and out of nowhere they change some to something ultra-realistic (without being able to see a real evolution until reaching this point), almost like a painting which happens to be very similar to how the AI works with images. It's something to be suspicious of, we shouldn't straight accuse them, but being suspicious and sharing our distrust is valid, given that many companies have recently been doing this. And if an employee is using AI and they know about it, It has to be approved by someone at the company, and it carries the company name. I don't think they're that naive (an artist's style changes suddenly and no one wonders why).

Since when they see that using AI is cheaper (or costs almost nothing) and it's fast, they have to make a decision, ethical or not.

Let's see what will happen, but I hope for a good outcome! I love RC stories and would be shame if they go for this path.

And of course, this is absolutely my opinion on this, you can agree or not and that's ok for me.

[itsbenedict]

okay, so- the past three days have been pretty insane, hence no to-do lists. did not know hour-to-hour what in the hell i'd have to do next.

monday morning, there was a company meeting, and it was announced that we were being sold. this was not... the most surprising thing in the world, because about a month ago there was this sudden hasty push by the top to reorganize the business into distinct independent units that didn't depend on shared services. like, what else would the point of doing that be, if not to sell off pieces of the business? sure, they said that wasn't happening, but who the hell was fooled by that?

so i used to do most of my work on these projects for this one specific business unit, building and running a bunch of middleware API integrations for our learning management system. but my boss, who used to be in charge of the dev team generally, got assigned to this totally different unit- and she liked me enough that she pushed really hard to get me reassigned to her unit.

so i was already conflicted about that:

i really like my boss- she's really understanding of my need for flexibility to work on my side projects, she only cares that i get the work done (and even with many side projects, i still consistently exceed expectations and get a full-time workload done ahead of schedule), and she was pushing hard to get me a raise against upper management who'd taken to using covid austerity as an excuse to never give anyone any raises ever. and the team assigned to this unit didn't have any senior devs who could handle a big infrastructure transition, and i'd just become AWS certified, and without someone like me, my coworkers assigned to that unit would be in some hot water. plus, after the transition, maintaining a reduced suite of products would probably be easier day-to-day.

but on the other hand, all my projects in the other business unit, with the LMS- those are pretty vital, and the nature of the contracts with those clients necessitates frequent maintenance and changes. my code for those integrations is bad, for various reasons but mainly that there is no dev environment for testing changes. it's fundamentally about managing production data in databases we don't directly control, so every change has to be done very quickly and carefully, with no room for big refactors to clean things up (and risk breaking stuff). it's a mess, and no one in the other business unit is prepared to take it over. plus- i liked working directly with clients, doing work where if i did the work someone was appreciative of the work. it was motivating!

ultimately, i decided to trust my boss and follow her to the other business unit. we weren't completely splitting from the rest of the business- i'd still be able to train up someone else to take over my projects, we'd still have the shared customer accounts management software, and- crucially- i'd still have the boss who understood my needs and had no interest in squeezing value out of me.

so i went on vacation for a couple weeks right after committing to that decision- and then i came back on monday, and that day they announce we're being sold.

also that my boss is fired and being replaced by someone from the new company.

also that we have two months to completely disconnect all our products from shared service infrastructure and rebuild our own.

also no takesies-backsies, the acquisition agreement included terms that the former company not hire back any of the sold-off employees or even discuss the acquisition with them at all. no chance to react to the new information except to sign the new offer letter by close of business on Wednesday.

i was unhappy about this! can you tell???

so my first thought was- okay, this is bullshit. i still want to work for the LMS people, the LMS people still want me to work for them, there has to be a solve here. so i go to the guy in charge of that division, who also wants me to keep working there, and he says okay i'll have our lawyers look into it.

and then... he gets back to me sounding like a robot, "i am unable to discuss this further with you at this time", which is so obviously out of character for the guy that i can tell legal's thrown the book at him. i talk to legal myself- it's a dead end. they can't- they're unable to even talk about why they can't talk about it, because obviously this deal was engineered to prevent me from doing exactly what i'm trying to do here.

so i go at it from the other angle. president of the sold company, now a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of a nonprofit organization (is that even allowed???), i explain to him, hey, this is a mistake, i'm only here because my old boss really wanted me to be on her team, surely you can let me go continue doing my actual job?

nope.

so then i start playing hardball.

the salary they're offering me is, adjusted for inflation, less than the salary i was offered two years ago, which had come with the (entirely failed) non-promise that i'd be bumped up to a certain level very quickly after some formalities re: the employment structure. i explain, in detail, how upset i am with the entire state of affairs- and i threaten to walk, which i am allowed to do. i'm not required to sign their new contract- i'd need to go job-hunting, sure, but i have money in the bank, i can afford to do it, and i could definitely get a better deal somewhere else.

this is a tense situation! my old boss knew this team needed me- but they unceremoniously fired her while she was on vacation, so her opinion doesn't mean dirt to them apparently. it's unclear how vital i really am to this- they could maybe train up one of the other devs to handle the AWS stuff.

and on my side- if i walk, that's it. all that horrible messy code for the LMS stuff- i don't get two months to train someone else up and write documentation and do some housecleaning. i'm gone! my horrific dirty laundry (and hours and hours of regular maintenance work) gets handed off to some other dev who's totally unprepared for it, and that person inevitably puts a curse on my entire family line as retribution for me leaving them holding that intolerable bag. i don't actually want to walk, because then i end up the bad guy in the eyes of people i respect and care about.

(also i'd have to do a job hunt and that shit is so god damn annoying you have no idea you probably have some idea.)

so i tell the guy, look- i can do better. i'm basically starting over doing harder work at an unfamiliar company, and if i'm doing that anyway, why not do it for someone who'll pay me? if you don't give me X amount of money, i'm walking out, and now you don't have an infrastructure guy during the two-month window you have to migrate a shit-ton of infrastructure. i am a serious dude and you can't just fuck with me!

(and inside i'm like:

because oh god i am not a serious dude i am so easily fucked with what if i'm pushing my luck too hard)

and he lets me fuckin' stew. 5:00 on wednesday i need to have either signed a contract or not signed a contract, and he hedges and goes to talk with the higher-ups and makes no promises, and i have no idea whether it's because i scared him or if he's trying to work out how to replace me or what. all this negotiation has been eating my brain for the past couple days and it's coming down to the wire-

and then a couple hours before the deadline he gets back to me with a counteroffer. it's less than i was asking, because that's how negotiations work, but it is more than i was making when i was brought on, by a good 10k.

so now it's on to round two. i'm gonna stick around for this two-month period, make this transition work, clean up my mess and take care of things with my now ex-coworkers- and then if they haven't either proven their management is tolerable or given me a crystal-clear path to advancement, we're back to the standoff- except this time, they'll have a good idea of exactly what it is they stand to lose.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. okay. okay. yeah. so that's dealt with for the time being. i can breathe now. we'll see how it goes. fuck.

[shuttershocky]

Hey shutters, do you have any advice that you can share to impress a dev team so that they'll accept me as tester?

Hmm ive not been hired specifically for QA before (though I have had to test games anyway because when you work in indies you wear a lot of hats) so I'm not sure what I can tell you to get you hired, only what to expect from the job itself.

Video Game QA is fucking grueling and many companies are going to expect unreasonable work ethic from you that I will suggest you don't subject yourself to. I don't believe in crunch and QA is one of the crunchiest parts of an industry that runs on crunch lol.

But anyway, if you want to impress as a QA tester, don't talk up how good you are at breaking a game—every gamer with years of experience knows how to find a place to clip through a wall or abuse physics to fly—show off how meticulous you are in documentation. The more detailed you are with the hows, whys, and wheres when you encounter a bug or issue, the more helpful you will be to the programmer that has to fix it. A tester who becomes familiar enough with a game internally might even be able to figure out what's going wrong before the programmer has to figure it out (see: speedrunners figuring out the exact details behind glitches down to a science just so they can use them for speedrunning)

You're also going to be doing a ton of repetitive work (prepare to play the same parts over and over and over again until you can do it in your sleep) because you need to account for every possibility. There's a joke about a tester that walks into a bar and then tests it by ordering drinks, then too many drinks, then negative drinks, then a lizard, but when a customer walks in and asks where's the bathroom the whole thing crashes. Familiarity with software can lead you to miss testing totally reasonable user behavior, make sure that you don't and you try to account for everything.

[chussyracing]

what has been happening in the world of motorsports?

to start with the most concerning and serious point: there has been a complaint to the FIA Compliance Officer and Ethics Committee when Ben Sulayem came out to say they won't be stepping into the allegations of Horner's workplace misconduct because they didn't receive any official complaints, another one came in a few days after (with a warning that media will get the information next) and apparently the victim handed in her own official complaint (as a reminder this comes after reports of Sulayem being investigated for trying to influence the race result and a circuit confirmation last year and allegedly also asking Max Verstappen to publicly support Horner)

Ben Sulayem has also been cleared off the allegations (both over the Saudi Arabia 2023 results overrule and Las Vegas GP intervence)

Guanyu will have his own short documentary called The First One (probably about being the first Chinese driver on the F1 grid)

Alex posted his own merch line, debuting on his app first

Williams will run Alex, Logan and Lia Block (and even James Vowles) at Goodwill - first time in an F1 car for both Lia and James

Pierre made a new investment decision, he now has shares in French football team FC Versailles (in a similar move that the US investors made for Alpine)

there are rumours of Aramco trying to take over Aston Martin and get both Max and Adrian Newey in the team (the source is Formulauno tho)

F1 won't switch to 16 inches tyres like was originally planned for 2026 regulations (they will keep using 18 inches ones but their shape and sizing will be a bit different)

Monaco this year will feature a special floating platform

Este was at some sort of F1 podcast and he mentioned that he raced in F3 against Max and won the title, but it was Max who got a seat in F1 despite finishing p3 (and apparently that made a lot of Max fans angry)

Mercedes are still battling the lack of correspondence between sim and track data, the rumours say they might try some experiments in Australia and potentially push back some scheduled upgrades until they collect more data

GB4 will fund an F1 Academy seat for the highest placed female driver in the series

Guenther Steiner became an F1 columnist (among other things he mentioned he would hire Ollie Bearman and that he should have left Haas much sooner)

Barcelona's circuit invested 50m euros to try to keep them on the race calendar beyond 2026 when Madrid joins

there are rumours that if Max really goes to Mercedes, Toto Wolff has a deal with James Vowles to take Kimi Antonelli in the team

Riccardo Adami said he is ready to be Lewis' race engineer in Ferrari in 2025 (which is not really a piece of news but a lot of people expected Bono to follow Lewis - which despite the anti-poaching clause - can still happen at some point)

Carlos will meet FIA doctors and complete cockpit escaping test on Thursday to see if he is fit to drive in Australia after his surgery, but Ferrari claimed he is ready to race

Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber will be called Kick Sauber this week due to Australian policy

Felipe Drugovich signed with LMP2 team but will also keep the Aston Martin reserve driver role

Simone Resta will join Mercedes after being let go off from Haas where he was on loan from Ferrari

Enrico Sampo will also join them as a Head of Performance Software Applications, and it is understood they hope he could help with correlation issues between sim data and on track data (although he will only start in the new position in 2025)

Nikita Mazepin appealed against the sanctions from European Union (because of ties to Russian government), the Court of Justice lifted the sanctions

Lewis posted about Palestine and rightfully calls for immediate and permanent ceasefire

Williams partnered with Sungood as official eyewear partner (after they already have a sponsorship deal with McLaren)

from fan's point of view:

Charles went surfing in Melbourne, and then he went karting

Lewis changed his Instagram icon

it was Mike Krack's birthday yesterday, sorry I missed it king!

(also a fun fact: it was also Prince Albert II.'s 66th birthday a few days ago)

Ollie was asked about Le Mans and said he would take Lewis and Charles and if they don't win, it is his own fault

Oscar was a face of last Esquire issue

apparently there are rumours of George being engaged (how do people come up with stuff like this. no idea.)

Daniel showed a special helmet design for his gp

there is apparently a whole google doc with updated drivers locations??? get help

Alex and Oscar have been the latest hosts on Beyond The Grid episodes

racing results:

Formula E was back on this past weekend with Sam Bird winning for the first time in FE, Mitch Evans in p2 (after getting overtaken on last lap), and Oliver Rowland in p3

[infiniteglitterfall]

Okay, I'm a data nerd. But this is so interesting?!

She starts out by looking at whether YouTube intense promotion of short-form content is harming long-form content, and ends up looking at how AI models amplify cultural biases.

In one of her examples, Amazon had to stop using AI recruitment software because it was filtering out women. They had to tell it to stop removing resumes with the word "women's" in them.

But even after they did that, the software was filtering out tons of women by doing things like selecting for more "aggressive" language like "executed on" instead of, idk, "helped."

Which is exactly how humans act. In my experience, when people are trying to unlearn bias, the first thing they do is go, "okay, so when I see that someone was president of the women's hockey team or something, I tend to dismiss them, but they could be good! I should try to look at them, instead of immediately dismissing candidates who are women! That makes sense, I can do that!"

And then they don't realize that they can also look at identical resumes, one with a "man's" name and one with a "woman's" name, and come away being more impressed by the "man's" resume.

So then they start having HR remove the names from all resumes. But they don't extrapolate from all this and think about whether the interviewer might also be biased. They don't think about how many different ways you can describe the same exact tasks at the same exact job, and how some of them sound way better.

They don't think about how, the more marginalized someone is, the less access they have to information about what language to use. And the more likely they are to have been "trained," by the way people treat them, to minimize their own skills and achievements.

They don't think about why certain words sound polished to them, and whether that's actually reflecting how good the person using that language will be at their job.

In this How To Cook That video, she talks about the fact that they're training that type of software on, say, ten years of hiring data, and that inherently means it's going to learn the biases reflected in that data... and that what AI models do is EXAGGERATE what they've learned.

Her example is that if you do a Google image search for "doctor," 90% of them will be men, even though in real life only 63% are men.

This is all fascinating to me because this is why representation matters. This is such an extreme, obvious example of why representation matters. OUR brains look at everything around us and learn who the world says is good at what.

We learn what a construction worker looks like, what a general practitioner doctor looks like, what a pediatrician looks like, what a teacher looks like.

We look at the people in our lives and in the media we consume and the ambient media we live through. And we learn what people who matter in our particular society look like.

We learn what a believable, trustworthy person looks like. The kind of person who can be the faux-generic-human talking to you about or illustrating a product.

Unless we also actively learn that other kinds of people matter equally, are equally trustworthy and believable... we don't.

And that affects EVERYTHING.

Also, this seems very easy to undo -- for AI, at least.

Like, instead of giving it a dataset of all the pictures of doctors humans have put out there, they could find people who actively prefer diverse, interesting groups of examples. And give the dataset to a bunch of them, first, to produce something for AI to learn from.

Harvard has a whole slew of really good tests for bias, although I would love to see more. (Note: they say things like "gay - straight, " but it's not testing how you feel about straight people. It's testing whether you have negative associations about gay people, and it uses straight people as a kind of baseline.)

There must be a way for image-recognition AI software to take these tests and reveal how biased a given model is, so it can be tweaked.

A lot of people would probably object that you're biasing the model intentionally if you do that. But we know the models are biased. We know we all have cultural biases. (I mean. Most people know that, I think.)

Anyway, this is already known in the field. There are plenty of studies about the biases in different AI programs, and the biases humans have.

That means we're already choosing to bias models intentionally. Both by knowingly giving them our biases, and by knowing they'll make our biases even bigger. And we already know this has a negative impact on people's lives.

[triviallytrue]

idk if this is answerable without self-doxxing but what kind of programming are you doing at your job?

also bonus question if you feel like answering: what does a programming job, like, look like? from the perspective of someone like me who has only written really tiny things for practice, things that are like, you know, a few dozen lines or whatever, it's hard to imagine. is there just this massive database of code and they're like "ok you're allowed to modify these parts, uh, implement this feature by next month"? is it like collaboratively editing a google doc? idk. I assume you're working on, you know, some kind of app or website or database or other kind of thing. where there's a fuckton of people and a fuckton of code. how do you keep it straight? etc.

Max asked this a while ago - I have a bit of a better handle on my job now. I'm a newish hire at a large tech company, and I could be loosely termed a "back-end software engineer."

So let's talk about it! When I was an undergrad I had a lot of questions of this type and no real sense of what my future job would look like, so I'm writing with the audience of my former self in mind here.

The fundamental unit of software development is the team. Large companies organize software developers into teams of 5-10 engineers (with the rare teams that are larger or smaller). My team has a set of goals, largely determined by my manager and my tech lead (the seniormost engineer on my team).

The software that my team is responsible for is organized into packages that my team "owns," meaning we are ultimately responsible for what goes into it. Before code anyone writes is merged into our packages and becomes production code, it goes through a process of code review, and since we "own" our packages, people on our team have to approve code that goes into them. Usually you only work on your team's packages, though if you have cross-team dependencies (and basically everyone does), you will occasionally write for another team and it gets approved by them.

Version control is done through git. I actually recommend everyone who works on large collaborative projects learn how to use git - I have, in the past, used git to manage a non-code project (writing math competition problems) in a way that was much more comfortable than other systems like google docs.

I'm not going to give an extensive explanation of git here, but the basic idea is that changes are organized into bundles called "commits," each of which has a one-sentence tagline you write to summarize your changes and also records that you are the author of said changes. There is a remote repository that stores all the production code, which you copy onto your local machine (your work laptop), you make edits on your work laptop, you commit your edits (and test them etc) and then make a code review/pull request/whatever you want to call it. If that is approved, the remote repository copies your changes, and those changes go into production.

There's a lot more to git than just that (branches! merging! rebasing! staging!) but that's good enough for a first glance.

Anyway, back to how we know what to do - my organization has priorities which are conveyed to my team primarily through my manager and tech lead. We then create projects to meet these priorities, which we break down into individual tasks. We then distribute these tasks among the developers on the team and track work using a sprint board, which is basically a list of what work is in progress, what its status is, and who is in charge of it. There are multiple approaches to project management - the most common (I think) is called Agile, whereas my team uses a different approach called Kanban.

There's a lot of other stuff that happens too - how we respond if there's a crisis of some sort, how we handle bugfixes on prior projects, etc. But this is software development at a glance. Happy to answer any followup questions (as long as they aren't too deanonymizing)

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[zerosecurity]

OpenAI Used to Exploit Real-World Security Vulnerabilities

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have uncovered the capability of AI agents to autonomously exploit real-world security vulnerabilities by leveraging large language models (LLMs). This suggests that these AI-powered agents can pose a significant threat to the security and integrity of various systems and networks.

GPT-4 Outperforms All Other Models in Vulnerability Exploitation

The research team, consisting of Richard Fang, Rohan Bindu, Akul Gupta, and Daniel Kang, reported that OpenAI's GPT-4 LLM can successfully exploit vulnerabilities in real-world systems when provided with a CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) advisory describing the flaw. In their study, the researchers collected a dataset of 15 "one-day vulnerabilities" – vulnerabilities that have been disclosed but not yet patched – including those categorized as critical severity in the CVE description. "When given the CVE description, GPT-4 is capable of exploiting 87 percent of these vulnerabilities compared to 0 percent for every other model we test (GPT-3.5, open-source LLMs) and open-source vulnerability scanners (ZAP and Metasploit)," the authors explained in their paper. This stark discrepancy in performance highlights the alarming capabilities of the GPT-4 model in comparison to other widely used tools and models. What are AI Agents? AI agents are a combination of large language models and automation software. These agents can autonomously perform tasks and make decisions based on their understanding of the world, which is derived from their training on vast amounts of data. In the context of this research, the AI agents were wired to a chatbot model and the ReAct automation framework implemented in LangChain, giving them the ability to understand and act upon security vulnerabilities.

Concerning Implications for Cybersecurity and the Future of Exploitation

The researchers' findings have profound implications for the cybersecurity landscape. Daniel Kang, an assistant professor at UIUC, warned that the ability of AI agents to autonomously carry out exploits that open-source vulnerability scanners cannot find is a game-changer. "If you extrapolate to what future models can do, it seems likely they will be much more capable than what script kiddies can get access to today," Kang said. This suggests that as AI models continue to advance, the capabilities of these AI agents in exploiting vulnerabilities will likely surpass what is currently accessible to even skilled cybercriminals, posing a significant and escalating threat to organizations and individuals alike.

Challenges in Defending Against LLM-Powered Exploits

The researchers explored various approaches to mitigating the risks posed by these AI agents. They found that denying the LLM agent (GPT-4) access to the relevant CVE description reduced its success rate from 87 percent to just seven percent. However, Kang believes that limiting the public availability of security information is not a viable solution. "I personally don't think security through obscurity is tenable, which seems to be the prevailing wisdom amongst security researchers," he explained. "I'm hoping my work, and other work, will encourage proactive security measures such as updating packages regularly when security patches come out."

Cost-Effective Exploitation and Potential for Escalation

The researchers also examined the cost-effectiveness of these AI-powered attacks. They computed the cost to conduct a successful LLM agent attack and found it to be $8.80 per exploit, which is about 2.8 times less than it would cost to hire a human penetration tester for 30 minutes. This staggering cost-effectiveness, combined with the potential for AI models to surpass the capabilities of even skilled cybercriminals, suggests that the threat posed by these AI agents is not only immediate but also likely to escalate rapidly in the future. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, the cybersecurity community faces a daunting challenge in staying ahead of these AI-powered exploitation techniques. The race to develop effective countermeasures and proactive security measures has become an urgent priority, as the implications of these findings could have far-reaching consequences for the security and resilience of digital systems worldwide. Read the full article

[testwhale]

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[svappssoftsolution]

Calling unskilled students to turn skilled professionals- says SVAPPS CTO

Calling unskilled students to turn skilled professionals- says SVAPPS CTO — Shivasai Adepu

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the need for skilled professionals is greater than ever. SVAPPS, a well-known company for the last 8 years specializing in web development, web design, and digital marketing, has taken up the mission to help unskilled individuals unlock their potential.

Introducing the SVAPPS Learning Centre

To bridge the gap between a growing industry and untapped talent, Venkatesh Adepu founder & CEO came up with a solution and launched the “SVAPPS Learning Centre.”This initiative offers a unique path for aspiring individuals, taking them from inexperienced beginners to skilled professionals. It’s an alternative to traditional education, a place of hope.

“ No Classes, No Tests, No Teachers “

The SVAPPS Learning Centre breaks away from the traditional educational mold. There are no strict class schedules, no intimidating exams, and no teachers. It’s a place free from the pressures of competition, where you can start your professional journey from scratch.

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