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GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

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Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#202
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. I try to not mix work and personal content on the same laptop, I’ve seen too many glitches (although usually not quite that embarrassing). Slack has been my one exception (although only on my phone). Thanks for the valuable reminder.

That and also in case there is any legal reason to sneeze the company laptop for discovery or anything you don't want any personal stuff on there. Keep personal stuff on personal devices, and never use personal devices for work either.

God bless you :)

But yes, we’ve seen from a number of US politicians how bad of an idea it is to mix personal and work on one device/account. Usually email.

It is annoying having two phones if work isn’t paying.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#203
post #60
post #18

Anyone could have done this by mistake, all it'd take is being a bit tired and @ing the wrong group. The question is - why doesn't the platform warn you that you're going to send notifications to a large number of people in the same way that many email clients do?

Yeah not sure why calls for getting the poster banned from Github - https://github.com/EpicGames/Signup/pull/24#issuecomment-114... . Seems bit excessive, murphy's law applies. Also the poster is essentially a kid. I would hold my judgement before flaming him fwiw.

Can you imagine how miserable you'd have to be to overreact this hard to an eighteen-year-old sending you a PR

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#204
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual PR looks so poor that I can't imagine it was submitted in good faith.

The person who submitted it Is, according to their github page, a nary 18 years old. One cannot say in good faith that they were a beacon of perfect judgement at 18. Anyone who says so is either looking to buy or sell a bridge in New York.

> Is, according to their github page, a nary 18 years old.

Stop posting this like an average 18 year old is supposed to be an idiot like OP. This is the age people get drafted, can start drinking alcohol, marry and start being adults.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the slack warning not tell you the number of people it was going to ping? At least nowadays it says something like "You're going to ping X people in Y timezones".

Right you are, yes, it was that same message. I suppose what I meant to convey is, "despite the thoughtful safeguards built into Slack, I still managed to screw this up." :) I really appreciate Slack and it is my preferred workplace communication platform, so I hope no one reads my anecdote as criticism of the product. I can't think of any way Slack itself could have done more to prevent my mistake. As more context,…

Well I used to have a gmail lab plugin which forced me into answering arithmetic questions when it was past 23 hours in my local time and I tried to send an e-mail

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who submitted it Is, according to their github page, a nary 18 years old. One cannot say in good faith that they were a beacon of perfect judgement at 18. Anyone who says so is either looking to buy or sell a bridge in New York.

> Is, according to their github page, a nary 18 years old. Stop posting this like an average 18 year old is supposed to be an idiot like OP. This is the age people get drafted, can start drinking alcohol, marry and start being adults.

Nit: in the US you can't drink alcohol at 18. I know in other countries that's not the case. Also another nit: the user's birth date does not check out to be 18, so his age is not entirely clear.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#209

I'm mostly surprised the group got to 400,000 before this happened.

Well, this isn't the first time something like this happened. Last time I wanted to try out Unreal engine things where much worse, I received a notification (every?) time someone forked the UnrealEngine repository. Not only that I was automatically subscribed to the notifications of those forks. That was in 2016. Size of group was probably smaller than 400k at that time, not sure if notifications and autosubscribe went every fork->every member but plenty of people where complaining about it. From the dates it lasted at least for 2 days if not week and I think ended up leaving the group before it got fixed.

After searching about it a bit more found a post from 2016 where Unreal is giving their Users instructions how to configure Github for receiving less spam from their gigantic group https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/github-notification-spam-a...

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be hard for GitHub servers, but which e-mail client is crashing from about 100 short, text-only messages received in an hour?

Most probably Outlook! Imho the worst e-mail client on earth with a massive base of absolutely blind fanboys in almost every company...

Which Outlook? There are several different email clients with that name.
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