Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

I'm terribly sorry to hear of your passing, but am pleased that you have since gotten better.

Cheers!

He knew I was a bit of a nerd and into computers, and he recommended me your book, and in fact personally went to an English book store to buy it for me. And the rest is history.

I'm sorry to hear that you must have died right after we visited you in May of 2024 [1]. But I'm glad that you've figured things out and that you are now alive again! I imagine that's a much better state of affairs for you.

Here's to many more years of adventures and quilt making.

Cheers!

[1] https://daveschumaker.net/adventures-in-topology-the-cuckoos...

Back in the Wage Slave days, a story would go around, about a way to play a dirty trick on a coworker: One day, when they are out, write “DECEASED” on all the mail in their inbox, and drop it in their outbox. It would take months for them to repair the damage.

But it could be worse. This was posted here, yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037923

"Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Stoll

Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action"

I really appreciated everything you did for young students in science and your position on the role of computers in schools. You're a brilliant human and a good human. It's a treat to see both in the same package.

- The whole internet, AD 2026

The only thing that would be crueler is to revoke someone's birth certificate. "Sir, you never existed in the first place."

Your book is one of my time favorites.

Still need to send you my 3d harmonograph maker I've been working on that you were interested in - hope the quilt making is still going well!!

Wasn't this how the xz hack was discovered? A PostgreSQL benchmark was a running a bit slower than usual.

I didn’t realize you lurked around here! I’m feel joy stumbling on your post here and glad that you are still alive. I do still have the Klein greedy mug you gifted me over a decade ago. I enjoy showing it to my kids and once in a while to their class mates. Hope to one day share a meal together again!

written mere inches from my klein bottle.

glad to see you here Cliff.

https://davebarry.substack.com/p/death-by-ai

It seems it's quite exhausting.

Might want to mail the pope; maybe there’s some cross-advertising opportunity there. Their target audience is a bit different but they have enormous reach!

You captured my imagination as a teenager when I read The Cuckoo’s Egg. I’m so sorry to hear of these terrible news but I appreciate the update. Here’s hoping to a _prompt_ recovery!

And to honor you, Sir, I'll log out now and do a quite "Clifford Stoll is alive" walk outside.

Live long and prosper.

And I hope you feel at least a little vindicated that so many people have worked so hard to make Silicon Snake Oil come true. :-)

Note: Dave Barry is not dead. He is, in fact, alive.

Or it could be that the other side is the same side.

Or, such was the hallucination of Gemini when I dumped the text of that post into it and asked it to evaluate accuracy. (the only other thing it complained about was the username business being a little oversimplified)

"I was. It didn't take".

Hat tip to you, Sir!

And glad to hear you are alive and kickin', and haven't lost your sense of humor.

I'm also reminded that I need to order a Klein bottle. I don't think I need one, and I am not sure that I know what I'm going to do with one, but I am going to make a list of ideas.

AI slop is rampant on social media right now. It has become the easy way to grow accounts and gain followers. It takes less than a minute to ask an LLM to write a social media post about something interesting and then post it online. It would be easy to use a $20 per month plan from a major provider to get more accurate output with fewer (though not zero) hallucinations, but the accounts I see seem to be using cheap models that make a lot of mistakes and hallucinate facts.

I have a theory that the hallucinations add extra spice to the posts, making them feel more interesting and therefore more likely to be shared.

It's a difficult time for social media users who haven't yet caught on to what AI spam looks like and why it can't be trusted.

Keep living the Good Life!

The other was a reporter covering the Denver Broncos: https://www.denverpost.com/2026/01/15/broncos-reporter-ai-fa...

(but I ordered one of your bottles just in case)

Who would have thought? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEmfsmasjVA

Personally I'd prefer Death by Snu Snu.

I enjoyed your book greatly, back when you were alive.

Please give my condolences to your family.

Don’t be too sad about dying, Cliff - everyone has to go and you had a wonderful fulfilling life.

And remember, stay away from the light.

@dang can we have a black banner on HN for Cliff Stoll?

(I'd link but I'm wary of directing traffic or attention to them and contributing to them becoming self perpetuating and most have been getting taken down)

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