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I was with you until the last two sentences. I'll honestly never get that point of view: it's an evolutionary disadvantage to not fall for these kinds of attac

I was with you until the last two sentences. I'll honestly never get that point of view: it's an evolutionary disadvantage to not fall for these kinds of attacks. Our intelligence is largely predicated on how easily we can pattern match and filter out "excess" information. So OP being bombarded with a list of harmless permissions along with one deceptively dangerous one (deceptive because they wouldn't expect to lead to being pwn'd anyways, since it's stars) and granting is not being sloppy, it's being an intelligent person. Github is large enough to have UX experts who know this stuff, and at the very least if stars are grounds for being banned, they should be grouping it with dangerous permissions and using more confirmations. And even better... they should just rate limit starring! How often is someone going to star 500 of someone's repos legitimately that rate limiting would ruin everyone's day?

yashap 4y ago
FWIW, I agree GH shouldn’t have banned OP. But … I’m pretty sure they weren’t giving out access to control OP’s account through a standard SSO flow, as OP assumed. Massively more likely, OP just didn’t pay attention, and granted said access explicitly during an OAuth2 authorization code flow.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  My entire point is that they did explicitly grant the permissions and that if you see a dialog like this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iol8j.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iol8j.png And you're ready to hand over even the first 3 items there, you're not likely to assume or even notice that github stars about to get you knocked out of orbit. I know this is a place of hubris but it almost comes across as a strange lack of self-awareness that this many people actually think they'd have caught that.
sennight 4y ago
> ..is not being sloppy, it's being an intelligent person. No, that is being an intelligent ape reacting to a twitching bush by running up a tree on the chance that a predator is behind the bush. The tables have turned since then. Back then the analytical ape would have gotten eaten and not passed his genes on, but there is no longer a biological imperative to mindlessly react to things.
- Biganon 4y ago
  And now I want to listen to Running up that Tree, by Ape Bush
  - sennight 4y ago
    You got me, I thought for a moment that I accidentally channeled Weird Al instead of Pearl Jam's Do the Evolution.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  That's... not how evolution works at all? I almost want to think this is satire. Modern humanity hasn't existed for an eye blink compared to the everything that led up til now, so there's two kinds of people: - People who understand we all have these blind spots and understand account for them - People who don't even realize how often they run into these blind spot. You're much better off learning to be the former, but I'm sure it feels good to proclaim from on high how you're just sloppy for not checking every dialog you come across...
  - sennight 4y ago
    That is exactly how evolution works. Now if you wanted to argue that evolutionary pressure no longer applied due to modern medicine and safety regulations... you'd still be wrong, but at least you'd look less silly. So there's two kinds of people: - People who've heard about about the marshmallow impulse control study + the effects that medieval-plagues/cousin-marriage has had on the human gene pool - People who say silly things like "Modern humanity hasn't existed for an eye blink compared to.." You're much better off reading a long term study on the life trajectories of people who had their impulse control quantified as children - spoiler: they do not do well in the modern world relative to everyone else enjoying a reduced probability of incarceration.
- smolder 4y ago
  There's an incentive to ignore the trivial BS that other humans relentlessly waste your time with. Reading EULAs and watching ads are not the path to success. People are trained to ignore information constantly. Intelligent apes surrounded by wiggling bushes stop paying attention to wiggling bushes and get munched on by a predator eventually, no?

yashap 4y ago

FWIW, I agree GH shouldn’t have banned OP. But … I’m pretty sure they weren’t giving out access to control OP’s account through a standard SSO flow, as OP assumed. Massively more likely, OP just didn’t pay attention, and granted said access explicitly during an OAuth2 authorization code flow.

BoorishBears 4y ago
My entire point is that they did explicitly grant the permissions and that if you see a dialog like this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iol8j.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iol8j.png And you're ready to hand over even the first 3 items there, you're not likely to assume or even notice that github stars about to get you knocked out of orbit. I know this is a place of hubris but it almost comes across as a strange lack of self-awareness that this many people actually think they'd have caught that.

sennight 4y ago

> ..is not being sloppy, it's being an intelligent person. No, that is being an intelligent ape reacting to a twitching bush by running up a tree on the chance that a predator is behind the bush. The tables have turned since then. Back then the analytical ape would have gotten eaten and not passed his genes on, but there is no longer a biological imperative to mindlessly react to things.

Biganon 4y ago
And now I want to listen to Running up that Tree, by Ape Bush
- sennight 4y ago
  You got me, I thought for a moment that I accidentally channeled Weird Al instead of Pearl Jam's Do the Evolution.
BoorishBears 4y ago
That's... not how evolution works at all? I almost want to think this is satire. Modern humanity hasn't existed for an eye blink compared to the everything that led up til now, so there's two kinds of people: - People who understand we all have these blind spots and understand account for them - People who don't even realize how often they run into these blind spot. You're much better off learning to be the former, but I'm sure it feels good to proclaim from on high how you're just sloppy for not checking every dialog you come across...
- sennight 4y ago
  That is exactly how evolution works. Now if you wanted to argue that evolutionary pressure no longer applied due to modern medicine and safety regulations... you'd still be wrong, but at least you'd look less silly. So there's two kinds of people: - People who've heard about about the marshmallow impulse control study + the effects that medieval-plagues/cousin-marriage has had on the human gene pool - People who say silly things like "Modern humanity hasn't existed for an eye blink compared to.." You're much better off reading a long term study on the life trajectories of people who had their impulse control quantified as children - spoiler: they do not do well in the modern world relative to everyone else enjoying a reduced probability of incarceration.
smolder 4y ago
There's an incentive to ignore the trivial BS that other humans relentlessly waste your time with. Reading EULAs and watching ads are not the path to success. People are trained to ignore information constantly. Intelligent apes surrounded by wiggling bushes stop paying attention to wiggling bushes and get munched on by a predator eventually, no?