[TUHS] Mark V Shaney (Re: Re: On the unreliability of LLM-based search results (was: Listing of early Unix source code from the Computer History Museum))

[Rob Pike]

Sounds like a corruption of a moment at a USENIX when a bunch of
net.singles denizens decided to host an in-person dinner, and someone asked
us (Dennis and I?) if Mark was attending the conference and would like to
join.

-rob


On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 4:11 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 27, 2025 at 2:44 AM Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My name is Rob Pike and I approve this message.
>
> Regarding Mark V. Shaney, I once heard a story that someone was so
> upset about some of its posts on USENET that they drove to Bell Labs
> to confront it, not realizing "he" was in fact a program, and not a
> person. On arriving at the labs, someone explained what was what, they
> went home, and that was the end of it.
>
> But, in the version I heard, they drove from, like, Ohio...or
> somewhere in the midwest.  I find this very difficult to believe:
> surely by the time they got to Harrisburg, perhaps, they'd have cooled
> down enough to realize they were making poor life choices and should
> turn around and go back home.
>
> Is there any truth to this, or is the story (as I suspect) just apocryphal?
>
>         - Dan C.
>
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