Ministry of Testing’s Weekly Software Testing Newsletter

We’re Demystifying AI-Driven Test Automation at TestBash San Francisco

This newsletter is kindly supported by MoT!

Only a week until TestBash San Francisco
We’re massively looking forward to bringing you such a diverse lineup of talks. All aimed at making you an even more awesome tester. Grab a last minute ticket!

Testing and the Community

• We’re Demystifying AI-Driven Test Automation at TestBash San Francisco — How do these testing robots really work? Is this technology any good? Tariq can help you understand in his TestBash San Francisco talk.
• Randomize Your Thinking — Variation is one of the key concepts that we harness during our testing.
• How to Test API Usability: Part 2 — We care about hidden code quality, therefore we need to care about externally visible code like APIs even more.
• Testing: How Do You Know Something Is A Bug? — Using Mental Models and Oracles in Testing — Did you ever find a problem of which you weren’t sure it was a bug?
• How to verify everything returned in the response body — Are your automated API checks verifying everything in the response body? Or just the status code and a couple of selected fields?
• Performance Testing an API — Searching for recommendations for a product to test the volume going to the endpoint.

Upcoming MoT Events

• TestBash New Zealand — 29th October 2019
• TestBash San Francisco — 6th — 7th November 2019
• Masterclass: [E] Building a World Class QA team with Chris Thacker — 1hour — 8pm UK Time 12th November 2019.
• TestBash Brighton — 26th — 27th March 2020
• TestBash Detroit — 23rd — 24th April 2020
• TestBash Netherlands — 28th -29th May 2020

Accessibility

• Accessibility is part of the job — If you use a website to take money from people, you should make that site accessible.
• Subtitle Guidelines — The BBC Academy has produced an online guide to subtitling.
• The Internet Is for Everyone, Right? Not With a Screen Reader — Are lawsuits like the one against Domino’s going to make a difference?

Automation

• 10 Automated Testing Tools That Threat Stack Uses — and Why — Sharing some insights that will help you in your testing activities.
• Your Flaky Tests Are Destroying Trust — Let’s create a culture of excellence for testers everywhere by making sure that every test we run is reliable and provides value!

Business Posts

• API Testing Mistake #7: Running Tests Manually — Robert Schneider explains why API tests require automation and lists the major requirements.
• You need to test less, and think more about the quality of your project. — We like to measure. And all of us are wrong in doing so…
• Tests as Documentation — What do your tests say about your application?
• How to Prioritize QA Tasks — In any given day, there are prioritization decisions to be made.

Tools

• Best Python Tools for FullStack Automation Testing — Listed are a few of Joe’s past interviewees’ favorite Python automation libraries, as well as a few that he has personally found helpful.

Podcasts

Check out our forever automagically updated list of software testing podcasts…

• Is Cross Browser Testing Still Needed? — Find out why it’s even more critical than ever with Mudit Singh.
• ABT 343 — Introduction — They interviewed one of their 3 listeners by asking them 3 questions about their career, and how it /may/ relate to the things they talk about on the main podcast.
• Episode 608 — Interesting Story About Police Encrypting Radio Traffic — This epsiode talks about an interesting take when police departments move to encrypted radios.
• 151: Frankly, sometimes paying the ransom is a good idea — Discussing ransomware, findings of the LastPass global password security report and more.

Security

• These 17 iPhone apps have been removed from the Apple App Store for delivering malware — apps bypassed security measures by hiding code behind a C&C server.
• NordVPN Hack — Everything You Need to Know — While the news may be alarming to some, the tangible impact of this issue for NordVPN users is quite limited.
• Technical analysis of the checkm8 exploit — Analysis of the unfixable vulnerability in the BootROM of most iDevices and what causes the vulnerability.
• Massive Malvertising Campaign Uses Zero Day Exploit to Deliver Malware — While the ad networks have controls in place to prevent abuse, cybercriminals often succeed in bypassing those security measures.

Jobs

• Software Development Engineer in Test — SDET — Nottingham, UK.
• Quality Engineer — Milwaukee, Wisconsin. US.

Meetups

• TestBash Afterparty — Wellington
• Topic: CI/CD — Cincinnati
• Ministry of Testing & Coffee — Kansas City