Week 8

What did you do this past week?

This past week we set up the database for our website and continued scrapping more data from the internet to put in the database. I also helped a little bit with front-end development.

What's in your way?

We had some trouble finding a good API to scrape from for camera data. We eventually settled on using data from API’s from Best Buy, EBAY, and Flickr. We still need to do some work to make sure that we can get the correct data we need, especially when pulling data from EBAY. The EBAY camera data might not have the correct price information, so we will either need to find some way to make sure it is the correct MSRP price when we get it from EBAY or just get price information from somewhere else.

What will you do next week?

This week I will be setting up the RESTful API for the website and also writing unit tests for the API. I will learn more about Postman and how to use it to test an API. Also, I need to learn about the Flask library for RESTful API’s. This library has been recommended by several friends who have said it makes API creation a lot simpler.

What's my experience of the class?

I really enjoyed the guest lectures we had this week! I have really wanted to take the UTCS ethics course but have not had the opportunity to yet. This guest lecture gave me some insight into a more objective way of analyzing how to make moral decisions. This mathematical way of analyzing decision making is something I had never even considered before and it is a very interesting way to analyze decision making and morals. I wish we could have more guest lectures like this!

Pick-of-the-week!

My pick of the week is general information about the DDoS attack that hit Github last week. Some attackers abused Github’s Memcache system which lead to a 1.7 Tbps attack which is a new speed record for a DDoS attack. More information about this attack can be found here: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/world-record-ddos-attack-hits-1-7-tbps-thanks-to-memcached-flaw/