A thought-provoking video by MinuteEarth:
Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?
26. June, 2015
Leave a Comment » | 
Life | Tagged: Climate Change, Science | 
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Posted by digulla
The Quest to End Poverty
25. June, 2015Poverty is a huge problem, even for those not affected. At best, the sight is disturbing, at worst, the sicknesses bred by many people crammed together don’t care much for bank accounts – even when it might help that you can pay doctor’s bills and meds.
In 2011, over $150 billion were spent on development aid. That sum sounds staggering if you look at the number alone. Keep in mind that the world’s GDP in 2011 was 75’621 billion (use the table view to see per country numbers) – aid is 0.2% of that. The US military budget alone was $610 billion. World-wide aid was just a quarter of what the US spends on its military.
What’s more, a lot of that money never leaves the donor country – it’s used to “pay” for debt which the receiving country already has towards the donor – or it’s vouchers for goods which the donor produces (like guns and other military equipment). As odd as that may sound at first: Development aid is often another tool to develop your own country. If it helps a struggling third world place, all the better.
But the problem runs deeper. Too deep to explain in a blog post but TED compiled a list of 11 through provoking talks how we could end poverty. My favorite didn’t make it into the list: Gary Haugen: The hidden reason for poverty the world needs to address now.
Think!
Leave a Comment » | Life, Philosophy | Tagged: Poverty, Social, TED | Permalink
Posted by digulla
SoCraTes Day: Testing the Impossible
21. June, 2015I’m back from SoCraTes Day Switzerland where I help a Code&Hack session called “Testing the Impossible”.
The session is based on this Mercurial repository de.pdark.testing.
Transcript
Space Shuttle – They Write the Right Stuff
- Why wasn’t the bug caught by QA?
- Why did the bug escape dev?
- Personal Bug Diary
- Team Culture: Strengths va. Blame Game
- Miscommunication with Customers
- Anyone can press the “Red Button“
- Make failures cheap. Fail fast.
I’m wrong. I have learned something.- Bug-.hunting takes time and mindshare.
- If you found a bug, write a test for it
How do I test randomness?
- Test small pieces
- Fix things that varies (IDs, timestamps, etc.)
How do I test a DB?
Layer between DB and App code which allows to switch between real DB and mock- Verify generated SQL instead of executing it
- Fast
- Allows to test thousands of combinations easily
- Useful for code that builds search queries
- Run SQL against real DB during the night (CI server)
- H2 embedded DB can emulate Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, …
- Test at various depths (speed vs. accuracy)
- Testing Walrus dives deep!
Leave a Comment » | Conference, Software | Tagged: Socrates Day, Software, Testing, Unit testing | Permalink
Posted by digulla
How Skynet Happened
9. June, 2015
Leave a Comment » | Fun | Tagged: Fun, Skynet | Permalink
Posted by digulla
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