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GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

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Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#231

Post by saagarjha »

rwiggins wrote: post #189
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... odd. Was this a long time ago? Because these days Android has work profiles that specifically exist to let you shove work stuff in its own separate space that can be managed separately from the rest of the device, and Google itself not using the feature that they built into the OS to support that exact situation would seem really weird.

Google does use Android work profiles - if you have an Android device. Unfortunately, iOS doesn't really have an equivalent concept (e: see comment below), so device-wide privileges are necessary there. Everyone has their own level of comfort, of course. I've worked for two employers now whom I've given the power to erase my personal iPhone in exchange for the convenience of not needing to lug around a second phone.…

iOS has user enrollment which is broadly equivalent: https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/user-enrollment-a.... Google does not adopt this (but it could, b/234963918).

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#232

Post by dotancohen »

Ansil849 wrote: post #102
macintux wrote: post #92

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.

> I try to not mix work and personal content on the same laptop It's kind of jaw dropping to me at how this is still not the norm and how people gratuitously mix personal and work content on the same devices, both mobile and desktop.

Purchasing, carrying, and maintaining two devices is expensive, heavy, and tedious. Easy always beats safe. Not to mention that there may be significant overlap between work and play for some people. I code Magento (PHP) during the day and contribute to open source PHP efforts as a hobby. In which environment (work or personal) should my notes and bookmarks be?

When I have a company issued laptop I use two machines. When I don't, then I use two accounts on the same machine. Most Linux distros even allow fast account switching in different virtual consoles. I use a different background and panel color for the personal and work environments. It's not a perfect solution, but neither is separate devices.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#233

Post by saagarjha »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #225
Ansil849 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I try to not mix work and personal content on the same laptop It's kind of jaw dropping to me at how this is still not the norm and how people gratuitously mix personal and work content on the same devices, both mobile and desktop.

If you work from home, have a separate work laptop, but connect it to the same network with your home computers, it’s all for nothing.

How so? Hopping around in your home network should not be possible by default and would be a gross overreach by any IT department, even beyond “you put data on this device and therefore we will search the entire thing”.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#234

Post by indrora »

wiseowise wrote: post #204
indrora wrote: post #160

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.

I say it like the average 18 year old is not expected to be fully aware of the depth of the consequences of their actions in every situation.

To this day, people @everyone in 10,000 person discord servers because they forget the scale of what that means.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#235

Post by saagarjha »

likortera wrote: post #191
macintux wrote: post #92

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.

My solution to this is to have two separate accounts on my work laptop. One for work, the other one for side projects, personal browser, courses, learning, etc. As long as you're not doing anything illegal and are running on a non Administrator account, I think it is a good compromise vs having to carry a second laptop.

Your company likely has full access to that account and I would generally not recommend using any devices owned by your employer for side projects unless they specifically allow you to in some sort of legal contract that says something along the lines of them not owning everything you do on that account.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#236

Post by idontpost »

wolverine876 wrote: post #212
tony wrote: post #5

The toothpaste is out of the tube - notifications are going to be scrutinized more in the future, from this point on. I got the email. And about 20+ responses to that email. Every person who replies to that issue triggers another 400k emails. Personally, my email client is crashing. EpicGames, as a GitHub org is an outlier, it's basically an SSO for Unreal Engine. I forgot I was even a member of it.

> I got the email. And about 20+ responses to that email. > Every person who replies to that issue triggers another 400k emails. Personally, my email client is crashing. Your email client only received 20 messages; why is it crashing? The very long To: header?

Drunk Microsoft programmer who developed Outlook

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#237

Post by idontpost »

Sirened wrote: post #79
kenrose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS in 2005 as well.

And Apple in 1991 [1]. It's a very fun story actually, good read if you're in the business of writing "reliable" or "recoverable" software (aka pretty much everyone). A bad design choice in sendmail caused a cascading explosion of emails. I also highly recommend reading the rest of the book (?), the Unix Hater's Handbook is a wonderful bit of history and discussion of the design issues of the NIXs we all know and lov…

"Bad design choice" described basically every design choice involved in email.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#238

Post by bryanrasmussen »

idontpost wrote: post #229
macintux wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a widespread problem. I worked for a dramatically smaller IT firm and it also gave employees the opportunity to register their phones with the company’s Exchange service; when I asked my boss whether we should warn them about the power that gave us, he felt it would just cause unnecessary alarm.

Your boss was an asshole.

well, probably, but maybe it meant that while it gave the power to do this he would never do it. However one should never say never in business, so maybe naive.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#239

Post by Animats »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #169
db48x wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell it (access to the source for the engine) under a commercial license. They were going to have _some_ sort of registration system, so that they can make sure everyone who downloads it paid for it. They reused GitHub for both distribution and registration.

Access to the UE4 source code is free. They probably sell licenses that let you do more than the free license, but the Github thing is not used to gate purchases. I don't know why they do it like this to be honest, they could just put the free license in the repo, that's pretty common practice.

Because it's not a free license. Once you get a million dollars or so in revenue, they take a substantial cut.

The idea is that nobody is going to get a million dollars in revenue from a game without being visible enough that Epic's receivables department can bill you. So they can ignore the 99.99% who download it and never get a hit.

I'm amazed that 400,000 people have downloaded Unreal Engine, though. It's really complicated, hard to use, takes hours to compile, and is only worth the trouble if you're making an elaborate 3D game. Not that many people do that.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#240

Post by richardw »

blensor wrote: post #217
faustomorales wrote: post #82

Seems like an innocent enough mistake. Remind me of when I once helped organize a volunteer hackathon with people from different companies. We created a Slack organization just for the occasion. At the end of the event, I was supposed to ask all attendees to delete all the data we had given them before they went home. The message I posted to #general (the channel everyone in a Slack organization is required to be in)…

The real problem was that so many people felt the urge to reply to that PR making it so much worse than a single ping. I can live with the random message that has nothing to do with me, but having to delete an endless stream of messages because so many people felt the need to reply already knowing that it would go out to everyone is really annoying

Happened in my wife’s company of around 40k people. Mail to all, replies to stop replying, many hours to stop the firestorm. Then next timezone 8 hours out started replying. I don’t know why they didn’t just kill permissions to the mailing list.
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