QA Hates You

How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes:

The tale has all the hallmarks of technical debt in a huge, unmaintained, bitrotten codebase (the bug itself due to code that hadn’t been used for 8 years), and a really poor, undisciplined devops story.

I’d always sworn I’d never work for a health devices or financial services company because the risks were so great.

Well, so far, I’m keeping half of that pledge.

Fitbit heart rate tracking is dangerously inaccurate, lawsuit claims:

Fitbit owners from several US states claim that despite the company’s products purporting to accurately measure heart rates, Fitbits “do not and cannot consistently and accurately record wearers’ heart rates during the intense physical activity for which Fitbit expressly markets them”.

One claimant in the class-action lawsuit says that while her personal trainer measured her heart rate at 160 beats per minute, her Fitbit Charge HR recorded a rate of 82 bpm. Another who said his doctor had told him not to exceed 160 bpm found that his Fitbit Surge device was as much as 25 bpm below what other trackers said.

It looks as though the device derives the Beats Per Minute from a different measurement. So although it might be correct in a high percentage of cases, given enough absolute cases, it can have a high number of failures.

It’s like the new saying goes, “Where there’s an algorithm, there’s an error.”

Twitter is all a-tweet about this news:

Internet Explorer has long been the bane of many Web developers’ existence, but here’s some news to brighten your day: Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 are reaching ‘end of life’ on Tuesday, meaning they’re no longer supported by Microsoft.

Just because Microsoft stops supporting these things does not mean you can stop designing, developing, and testing for these old versions of IE on Wednesday.

When you’re thinking about browser compatibility, you have to judge based on actual market share and your user base’s browser statistics, not press releases.

Otherwise, you risk alienating a certain segment of your user base (“But just the uncool ones!” the kids will say) or frustrating your help desk who now has to handle the callers/emailers complaining about the site not working in IE 8.

(Actually, I am repeating myself.)

I got the 1984 Lee Aaron album Metal Queen after the holidays. One listen, and I was transported back to that era amid some inexpensive smoke effects.

To celebrate, here are three Lee Aaron tracks, although only two come from Metal Queen.

“Barely Hanging On”:

“Head Above Water”:

And, of course, “Metal Queen”: