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GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

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Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#451

Post by johnnyanmac »

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

It's the "law" of numbers. 400k pings, even if only 1% clicked on the repo, and maybe 10% of them commented: that's 400 comments to make. Even on internal repos I've never seen productive discussion really happen past 50 or so comments.

And then the news broke out and that drove even more than 1% to check out the drama. Maybe even had some people sign up for Epic just to check it out.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#452

Post by johnnyanmac »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #278
quadrifoliate wrote: post #199

The only notable thing here IMO is the lack of limits imposed by GitHub on notifications. Apparently a random tag of `@microsoft` in the comments was enough to notify 4000 people [1] as well. I have no idea why the user is even being mentioned in this headline. I haven't used GitHub in a while, and am unfamiliar with orgs and subgroups, but tagging a developer subgroup on a PR seems...a reasonable thing for a new con…

People who blame that kid are ridiculous. People who are asking to punish him somehow are pathetic. There should be no way to send any non-premoderated information to 400k people (from the system that has some trust and is unlikely to be filtered) - “spam” is the most innocent thing that might happen. It's just a fly you should ignore. Political, religious, and radical extremist groups could use it for a much more da…

The kid was annoying but if the discussion was closed and restricted immediately it wouldn't have amounted to much (Granted, it was a very late Saturday night for Epic's timezone, so I'm not surprised it lasted a few hours). The follow up is what made this headline news.

Now the dude who posted goatse and ruined the whole thing should be completely banned from Github. I guess I see why image uploads were restricted for so long there.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#453

Post by johnnyanmac »

remram wrote: post #422
EugeneOZ wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who blame that kid are ridiculous. People who are asking to punish him somehow are pathetic. There should be no way to send any non-premoderated information to 400k people (from the system that has some trust and is unlikely to be filtered) - “spam” is the most innocent thing that might happen. It's just a fly you should ignore. Political, religious, and radical extremist groups could use it for a much more da…

If anything I'm surprised no one spammed ads this way. At least now it's sure to happen so GitHub is going to have to fix it.

part of it is timing. This happened late Saturday night in America. If this happened during normal daytime hours it woulda been shut down in a few messages.

Also, I'm sure Github has spam filters itself, so obvious attempts at ads may not even make it to the PR discussion.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#454

Post by Apocryphon »

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.

Prefrontal cortex isn't developed until 25

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#455

Post by db48x »

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.

Oh, interesting. I thought you could download binaries for free and source access cost extra. I’ve never used it, so I suppose whatever story I read about it was less clear than I thought.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#456

Post by zamadatix »

oefrha wrote: post #119
zamadatix wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they dealt with the tag too as https://github.com/orgs/EpicGames/teams/developers is showing not found

Teams can be secret. This might be a secret team to begin with? Anyway, I highly doubt they deleted the team since it’s used as an authorization mechanism.

Ah that makes perfect sense, thanks!

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#457

Post by wolverine876 »

yardstick wrote: post #259
wolverine876 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Why would it be a very long To header? It’s not like the email headers include all 400k emails in one go. That would be a massive privacy breach, and people here would be making a lot more noise about such a large email database being leaked.

I agree, but couldn't think of another explanation related to that email.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#458

Post by quadrifoliate »

bhargav wrote: post #431
quadrifoliate wrote: post #199

The only notable thing here IMO is the lack of limits imposed by GitHub on notifications. Apparently a random tag of `@microsoft` in the comments was enough to notify 4000 people [1] as well. I have no idea why the user is even being mentioned in this headline. I haven't used GitHub in a while, and am unfamiliar with orgs and subgroups, but tagging a developer subgroup on a PR seems...a reasonable thing for a new con…

> I have no idea why the user is even being mentioned in this headline. I haven't used GitHub in a while, and am unfamiliar with orgs and subgroups, but tagging a developer subgroup on a PR seems...a reasonable thing for a new contributor to do? How is it their fault that the developer subgroup has been hijacked by this organization to mean "Anyone who has ever signed the Terms of Service To View Our Code"? At mentio…

> At mentioning all admins and developers in general on a PR is bad etiquette. Look at the title of the PR here as well. "Merge ASAP"?

I think this is highly dependent on your org. Usually you should look at previously merged PRs and follow what they were doing, if they mention admins/developers then it should be fine to do so.

I agree that with the admins ping and "merge ASAP" it seems that this particular PR is kind of terrible from an etiquette and usefulness perspective, but PRs with little usefulness and bad etiquette don't make it to the top of HN every day.

I am merely saying that the "sending notifications to 400k" people is a side effect that is entirely Epic Games' fault, not the author's.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#459

Post by chillbro69 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #316
blensor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The worst is that it becomes clear eventually that people are responding just to troll. The casual vandalism of hundreds of thousands of people’s time and attention is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I saw similar things at large (50k+ employees) companies when some reply-all chain got started — people who clearly knew better, replying just for the lulz. If it were up to me, I would have fired them immediately. Nobod…

No post body was provided.

Re: GitHub user sends notification to 400k users

#460

Post by tony »

whoibrar wrote: post #441
sph wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your email client is crashing because it can't handle a hundred messages in an hour, that's a little less than 2 messages per minute? Throw that thing in the bin. A human printing emails and placing them on your desk could handle that workload.

> A human printing emails and placing them on your desk could handle that workload. Best thing I've read today only after the email story.

That'd be a pretty drab day.
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