4 ms·

Conveniently the test votes had real candidate name instead of Pokemon or something, also conveniently test votes were posted into production database, not QA.

AdamN 5y ago
^ Lesson number 1 for QA is to use demonstrably fake metadata. Lorem Ipsum is good and if you need realish metadata like email addresses, translate real ones (i.e. from adam@google.com to testaccount+adam.google.com@tester.com) Also, prod and staging/QA/dev - never the twain shall meet.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  It’s of course possible that “test data” was an excuse they made up after the fact. Maybe it’s a cover story to hide even worse incompetence (or maliciousness). Why did it require a candidate to notice that the sums between rounds were wildly different? And wtf is a test ballot anyway? Are these physical ballots, or entries in the database? Neither inspires confidence in the integrity of this election.
  - RhysU 5y ago
    Also, why did they need 100K+ test ballots?
- chimeracoder 5y ago
  > Also, prod and staging/QA/dev - never the twain shall meet. You're expecting a lot from developers who were chosen because of their relation to elected officials rather than their domain expertise. > The list of relatives stretches even to the [Board of Elections] computer programmers, including Rubén Díaz III, a Democrat who is the son of the Bronx borough president and grandson of a City Council member. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-election-board.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-elect...
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  The flipside of this is that some defects can get through because assumptions made by the data used for QA/development might not be true for production but you don't find that out until the code is actually in production working with production data.
il 5y ago
I think even for those who do not subscribe to any election fraud conspiracies, this will seriously shake confidence in the election. If a mistake like this went by unnoticed until the results were posted, what other monkeying about with the database goes on?

AdamN 5y ago

^ Lesson number 1 for QA is to use demonstrably fake metadata. Lorem Ipsum is good and if you need realish metadata like email addresses, translate real ones (i.e. from adam@google.com to testaccount+adam.google.com@tester.com) Also, prod and staging/QA/dev - never the twain shall meet.

TechBro8615 5y ago
It’s of course possible that “test data” was an excuse they made up after the fact. Maybe it’s a cover story to hide even worse incompetence (or maliciousness). Why did it require a candidate to notice that the sums between rounds were wildly different? And wtf is a test ballot anyway? Are these physical ballots, or entries in the database? Neither inspires confidence in the integrity of this election.
- RhysU 5y ago
  Also, why did they need 100K+ test ballots?
chimeracoder 5y ago
> Also, prod and staging/QA/dev - never the twain shall meet. You're expecting a lot from developers who were chosen because of their relation to elected officials rather than their domain expertise. > The list of relatives stretches even to the [Board of Elections] computer programmers, including Rubén Díaz III, a Democrat who is the son of the Bronx borough president and grandson of a City Council member. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-election-board.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/nyregion/nyc-voting-elect...
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
The flipside of this is that some defects can get through because assumptions made by the data used for QA/development might not be true for production but you don't find that out until the code is actually in production working with production data.

il 5y ago

I think even for those who do not subscribe to any election fraud conspiracies, this will seriously shake confidence in the election. If a mistake like this went by unnoticed until the results were posted, what other monkeying about with the database goes on?