Emily Bache's short example of preparing "Approval Tests" for refactoring Python code is very good. Not only for the approach, but also for how advanced IDEs like PyCharm greatly support developers common editing and refactoring needs.
Reaction: Arjan Codes wrote tests the HARD way - My way is BETTER
If you live in RI your home's electric meter was recently replaced to enable remote access. I have wondered how secure is that remote access? While this presentation does not address the electric meter, it does address how much of our satellite infrastructure is unsecured and accessible with cheap hardware. The presentation is about the available downlink data, but note the presenter's off-hand comment that if you fly a drone between the uplink site and the satellite you could likely gather the uplink data.
39C3 - Don’t look up: There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites
At dinner last night a friend's comment about "being right and being ignored" reminded me (somehow) of this conversation between Cass Sunstein and Tyler Cowen
In particular,
COWEN: Now, your new book On Liberalism is primarily a defense of the liberal concept, but if someone asks you, what’s the most likely scenario for liberalism being self-undermining, what’s your worry?
SUNSTEIN: Low probability. The likelihood is that we’ll be undermined by anti-liberal and illiberal forces, not self-undermining. I think it’s fair to say or to worry that liberalism doesn’t create the conditions for its own self-perpetuation, so it’s not as if it’s self-undermining, but it doesn’t necessarily maintain itself [emphasis added]. The reason is that a society that is flourishing needs a lot of stuff in it, including norms of cooperation, norms of charity, norms of mutual support. Liberalism, in my view, doesn’t undermine those things, but other forces can undermine them, and it’s not clear liberalism has the resources to respond.
Given the times we are in, I do very much worry about our not having the resources to respond.
I enjoy the "Conversations with Tyler" podcast. The participants mostly assume you know what they know and, since I don't, this results in me very often pausing the audio and searching for a primer on what was just said.
My children would have loved this Multi-Terra Helio Cell Vehicle 407 cockpit control. I especially like the addition of the fans!
