Posted by CliffStoll 3 days ago
Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated
A couple people recently emailed, asking whether the Klein bottle business was still operating after my death.
“Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”
After some digging, I discovered the source: an AI-generated review of The Cuckoo’s Egg circulating on Facebook. Alongside the usual synthetic praise and fabricated details, it confidently announced that I had died in May 2024.
Apparently AI has now advanced to the point where it can kill people off before they notice.
Mark Twain once wrote, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I never expected to field-test the quote personally.
source: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=989939243570691&id=100076638743004
Cheers, -Cliff
It's too bad he's dead, despite his objections.
Congratulations on your continued existence!
Your bio is empty.
I'm giving a talk this Thursday (May 14th at a San Francisco Computer Security group, SFISCA. They asked for a bio. Here's what I wrote:
Cliff Stoll graduated from Buffalo Public School #61 with a blue star for good attendance. In his spare time, Cliff pieces quilts and squeezes lumps of bituminous coal into diamonds.
I wonder if they'll use it...OTOH, I can see how times truly have changed. If I was as relaxed as you wrt. my carrer I'd be living under a bridge, lol.
After his boss spotted a discrepancy, he understood that one person was using the computer that he managed without permission.
He was the only one who really cared.
He pushed and asked everybody for help (FBI, NSA, CIA, Air Force, etc).
That person was actually connecting from Germany.
The German police arrested the guy and released him.
It's a cool story because it puts you in the shoes of the 1980s phreaking and hacking scene but from the defense-side.
Now he is selling glass bottles that look like klein bottles (but are obviously not but it's still a cool object, and again don't want to spoil).
This is between the point where Tim invents his crap hypermedia system with the grand name (the "World Wide Web") and the point where you can get a billion dollar valuation for your idea to sell water on the Internet (the "dot com bubble").
I read it in my early teens.
Now, at 75, I'm astonished at how much has changed online. When I first started fooling with the Arpanet in the early 1980's, I calculated that I probably knew around 0.01 percent of everyone on the net. (where "knew" meant something like "have heard of" or "saw at a meeting") ... that number impressed me with how big the network was.
Today, what percent of the network users does a person know? 1 / 10^-7 or so?
So how could I convince people that I'm alive and not some AI construct?
(do pass along my warm cheers to your nonorientable friend) -Cliff