Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

AI hallucinations are getting ambitious.

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

356 points | by CliffStoll 1 day ago

35 comments

  • ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago
    Glad to know you’re still kicking around, but, to be honest, I had no idea that you were supposed to be an ex-Stoll.

    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

    [-]
    • sevenzero 2 hours ago
      >Back in the Wage Slave days

      Excuse me, but when did we leave those days?

      [-]
      • ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago
        Sorry. Just speaking for myself (retired).
        [-]
        • sevenzero 2 hours ago
          Ah nice, happy you got there! Thanks for clarifying
    • comrade1234 2 hours ago
      Fiddler-diddler. I understand the mixup.
  • jdw64 4 hours ago
    Source: the deceased objected.
    [-]
  • monegator 3 hours ago
    "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact"

    - The whole internet, AD 2026

  • koliber 2 hours ago
    A doctor friend of mine once joked that it would be really cruel to issue a death certificate for someone who is alive. This seems to be a soft version of that.

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

    [-]
    • t0mas88 1 hour ago
      Undeclaring someone dead is one way to fix it, but you could also issue a new birth certificate, SSN etc and have minted an entirely new citizen :-) free of debt and ownership, uneducated and unemployed on paper but somehow quite experienced.
    • onei 2 hours ago
      It's no joke for some.

      It was some time ago that I read about it, and I'm struggling to find a source now, but there are instances in India of people being declared dead to allow their next of kin to steal their land. In doing so, the 'dead' unsurprisingly lose access to various public resources, health care, etc.

      Edit: found a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_Association_of_D...

    • worldsavior 2 hours ago
      You define your liveness by some piece of paper?
      [-]
      • ElFitz 1 hour ago
        The state does. And once a death certificate have been issued and filed, proving you are in fact still around is whole can of worms of its own.

        eg https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/03/they-sa...

        Edit: and a few others https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48060857

        The Romanian man Guardian article has a great and horrible quote:

        > The court told him he was too late, and would have to remain officially deceased.

      • koliber 2 hours ago
        I don't. But many others do. The only thing that let's banks and other companies know that you are dead is a piece of paper called a Death Certificate.
  • dvh 4 hours ago
    This is exactly what rogue ai agent would write.
  • lb1lf 4 hours ago
    Look at it from the bright side; not many people get to read their own obituaries.
    [-]
    • erk__ 4 hours ago
      Will this be the reason for the Stoll prize to be set up?

      Instead of a medal it should be a klein bottle of course.

  • lproven 3 hours ago
    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. :-)

  • axegon_ 3 hours ago
    Cliff Stoll on HN? How did I miss that?!?!!? What an honor! And may I say, I love your work, kind sir!!!!!
  • wolfi1 4 hours ago
    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?
  • djeastm 2 hours ago
    So cool that you're on HN (and alive, of course). My interest in hacking began when I read The Cuckoo's Egg as a kid.
  • tun0 2 hours ago
    I now have reason to loathe, randomly, the month of May from 2024. My heart skipped a beat before I started reading third paragraph.

    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.

  • Andy_Donner 2 hours ago
    The irony of an AI hallucination killing off one of the most famous people to have tracked down a real human with a computer is brilliant. Glad the Klein bottle business lives on — and glad you're here to confirm it personally.
  • klempner 2 hours ago
    I do not believe the death here is an AI hallucination -- it is very likely deliberate engagement fodder.

    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)

    [-]
    • altmanaltman 2 hours ago
      Is AI hallucinating false information or is a human using the fact that AI hallucinates false information to create a fake post to drive engagement but likley used the AI to create that false post itself. 2026 is going pretty well so far, why do you ask
  • dgellow 2 hours ago
    Outside of the funny aspect, I do find that concerning. Assuming Cliff Stoll would have been using AI to answer their email, it is possible the agent would have answered that yes, the business does still exist even if the original owner unfortunately passed in May 2024, how can I help you today?
  • vishnukool 4 hours ago
    This is the weird part of AI hallucinations and people start treating it like a verified fact after it gets repeated.
    [-]
    • organ1cwast3 3 hours ago
      Yeah that's weird. Finding everything2 decades ago it occurred to me the internet is 100% untrustworthy source for anything.

      Believing AI is bonkers to me. But these shields been up since the 90s. None of this stuff matters. It was all gibberish

  • GuestFAUniverse 3 hours ago
    Somebody tell the LLMs that "LogOut" doesn't mean: from life (on the contrary).

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

    Live long and prosper.

    [-]
    • imiric 2 hours ago
      In the age of language like "unalive" being normalized, "logout" doesn't sound too far off.
      [-]
      • mapontosevenths 8 minutes ago
        > normalized

        Only amongst the chronically online. There is very much still a big world out there, unmediated by a glowing screen, in which that would still sound ridiculous.

  • Aurornis 1 day ago
    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.

    [-]
    • CliffStoll 1 day ago
      You betcha, Aurornis. Simple economics tells us that cheap work drives out quality. (Is that Gresham's law?).

      Slowly, people will adapt to AI in online forums. But for me, it's one more reason to share coffee with friends, rather than investing hours in social media.

  • segmondy 1 day ago
    You will be pissed when it corrects itself and starts attributing the Klein bottle business to me.
  • 2b3a51 2 hours ago
    I hope the 'slightly' in the title is a rhetorical device and wish you the best of health.
  • soupspaces 6 hours ago
    Rest in peace
  • nakedrobot2 4 hours ago
    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!
  • Groxx 4 hours ago
    Roko's Basilisk takes on a form I didn't expect, but probably should have: social death.
  • varjag 3 hours ago
    Relieved to know you're doing well!

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

  • aykutseker 4 hours ago
    the real test is whether the Klein bottle business got a sympathy bump in sales
  • FrankWilhoit 1 day ago
    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.
  • PsycoRobot 3 hours ago
    so you are dead or not?
  • dnnddidiej 3 hours ago
    HN is fun sometimes
  • andrewstuart 4 hours ago
    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?

  • metalman 2 hours ago
    Good fun like this is rare enough, but that it is so topical, and susinct,is ,well as they say sometimes, "snap"
  • b3lvedere 2 hours ago
    “Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”

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

  • gostsamo 2 hours ago
    Cheers to the Pratchett reference. :)
  • runjake 19 hours ago
    Legitimate question: How do we know you're not an AI simulation of Cliff?
    [-]
    • input_sh 3 hours ago
      Because the post actually listed one single source instead of listing 50, 49 or which are only tangentially related to the topic at hand?
    • GJim 4 hours ago
      It's turtles^H^H^H^H AI all the way down.
    • brudgers 15 hours ago
      AI comments are not in the spirt of and the account is basically about as in the spirit of HN as it gets.
  • DonHopkins 3 hours ago
    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?
  • dmurray 3 hours ago
    RIP Cliff
  • DonHopkins 3 hours ago
    Death by Slop.

    Personally I'd prefer Death by Snu Snu.