161–170 of 266 posts
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."
Don't believe this imposter. I'm the real Cliff Stoll and I died in 2024.
Who are you and what is this about?
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!!
Pardon the interruption but ... who are you? Your bio is empty.
Google Cliff Stoll. The dude is a total bro. One of my friends just bought one of his Klein bottles, and the included written materials attested to this indisputable fact. Unlike his death in 2026, which currently has an open dispute.
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
Pardon the interruption but ... who are you? 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...Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bio is probably empty because for a certain age of HN readers, he's already well known and regarded, but over time as the HN population grows it's obviously less likely to be the case.
I'd argue that age isn't even relevant. I'd say that there's a significant overlap between readers of "The Cuckoo's Egg" and HN folk, whether young or old. 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?
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!
Thank you for the update, Cliff. I will update your Wikipedia page to show that your death is currently under dispute.
I've gone out of my way to not read my wikipedia page. Beyond this, there's a rule (suggestion??) that you not edit your own biographical page. As a result, I have no idea whether things are right, wrong, misguided, or kflooey on that page. Anyone who wants to know details can simply stop over here for coffee and a chat. Cheers, -Cliff
> Wikipedia provides a structured process for subjects to suggest changes without directly editing articles. The mechanism centers on the article's "talk page", a discussion area attached to every Wikipedia entry where editors coordinate improvements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_a_page_about...