Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#1

Post by gizmore » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 12:28 PM UTC

One time i was on filezilla FTP and moved a folder to the parent folder. I slipped with the mouse. The application recreated logs and all the parent folders. Filezilla got crazy. A simply undo or re-move was tricky. I only slipped with the mouse. 30 min downtime.

Has something similiar ever happened to you?

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#2

Post by kstenerud » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 12:34 PM UTC

I once watched a coworker do a complete ls -lR of a remote customer system he was working on so that he could copy-paste the listing to a text editor. Unfortunately, he accidentally hit the middle mouse button while he was still over the terminal window. And he was logged in as root.

Every file that had a symlink pointing to it was overwritten (including most of bin and etc and the backup disk which was unmounted at the time). The system was completely broken, and had to be reinstalled from scratch.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#3

Post by stop50 » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 12:39 PM UTC

Closed the browser with my remote session. Took over 10 minutes to get everything back.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#4

Post by eternityforest » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 12:52 PM UTC

I've never had more than minor inconvenience with a mouse. Unlike terminal, where I've accidentally wiped a(Thankfully unused) windows partition with dd.

GUI software typically has confirmation and undo as high priorities. Most software that doesn't is throwing away a lot if the benefit of GUI.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#5

Post by Peach_blue » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

Clicking the wrong flightpath in WoW classic. That would cost you time that felt like an eternity back then.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#6

Post by treesprite82 » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #2

I once watched a coworker do a complete ls -lR of a remote customer system he was working on so that he could copy-paste the listing to a text editor. Unfortunately, he accidentally hit the middle mouse button while he was still over the terminal window. And he was logged in as root. Every file that had a symlink pointing to it was overwritten (including most of bin and etc and the backup disk which was unmounted at…

Default behavior being for a single mouse button to paste and run (if it contains newlines) whatever's on the clipboard always seems dangerous to me. Beyond the accidental mistakes, I bet a website could catch a lot of people out about not checking in a text editor if it presented an innocuous command then swapped it out (with JS or tiny invisible text) for something nefarious when copied.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#7

Post by airbreather » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

Not actually happened, but we were doing hazard and risk studies for a new mineral processing plant that had some very large gas fired equipment and due to the placement of adjacent units and possibility there could be a turnaround crew on the adjacent unit, the identified scenario was "operator sits on mouse, kills twenty people".

End result is we took the equipment in question out of the normal operator controls and put it in the safety system PLC to remove direct control by fat fingered (butts) of operators.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#8

Post by 0xfaded » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

I had a putty session open connected to a friends server he was trying to recover after a somewhat malicious employee walked off. For dumb reasons (basically I don't know how to use windows), I had the whole bash_history on my clipboard and accidentally middle clicked. Luckily the first commands where apt upgrade and then reboot, but that could have been a total disaster.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#9

Post by unixhero » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

Drag and drop FileZilla (which they refuse to remove btw) irreversibly.essed up a few systems and folder structures.

Re: Ask HN: What is the worst that ever happened when you slipped with a mouse?

#10

Post by mjw1007 » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

treesprite82 wrote: post #6

kstenerud wrote: post #2

I once watched a coworker do a complete ls -lR of a remote customer system he was working on so that he could copy-paste the listing to a text editor. Unfortunately, he accidentally hit the middle mouse button while he was still over the terminal window. And he was logged in as root. Every file that had a symlink pointing to it was overwritten (including most of bin and etc and the backup disk which was unmounted at…

Default behavior being for a single mouse button to paste and run (if it contains newlines) whatever's on the clipboard always seems dangerous to me. Beyond the accidental mistakes, I bet a website could catch a lot of people out about not checking in a text editor if it presented an innocuous command then swapped it out (with JS or tiny invisible text) for something nefarious when copied.

Many (most?) combinations of a terminal emulator and a shell nowadays won't run pasted content without a further press of the return key.

This is a consequence of "bracketed-paste mode".