Good to hear you're doing well.

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.

The larger point is that AI is being developed by people who think everything is performance (in the artistic sense of the word), and therefore, it, expectably and probably even necessarily, thinks so too. This manifests in many contexts and will manifest in many more; but hardly anyone will care about any of them, because just about everybody has succumbed to the performance delusion.

You will be pissed when it corrects itself and starts attributing the Klein bottle business to me.

Legitimate question: How do we know you're not an AI simulation of Cliff?

Rest in peace

Source: the deceased objected.

Roko's Basilisk takes on a form I didn't expect, but probably should have: social death.

Look at it from the bright side; not many people get to read their own obituaries.

For those who haven't read the Cuckoo's Egg: Stop what you're doing right now, and order it! It is a page turner, a great story. Thanks Cliff!

This is exactly what rogue ai agent would write.

Great to hear. Read Cuckoo's Egg in the 90s, was the first time I heard of the NSA (I'm neither resident nor citizen of the US, so I don't know how famous they were at the time). Are you considering annotating the Cuckoo's Egg? For example with official documents from FOIA requests?

I’m sorry to hear you have passed away, Cliff.

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?

This is the weird part of AI hallucinations and people start treating it like a verified fact after it gets repeated.

the real test is whether the Klein bottle business got a sympathy bump in sales

Death by Slop.

Personally I'd prefer Death by Snu Snu.

RIP Cliff

Oh thank god you're alive! I have an urgent customer service request for you. The Acme Klein Bottle I bought from you on Amazon is ineffective at removing my blackheads. Am I holding it wrong?

Glad you are still with us, Mr S!

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. :-)

Cliff Stoll on HN? How did I miss that?!?!!? What an honor! And may I say, I love your work, kind sir!!!!!

Relieved to know you're doing well!

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