What's going on here?
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Aaand the full comments thread from the original story: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name.1511649/
@mttaggart Fuck! I thought that was real
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@mttaggart Fuck! I thought that was real
@staringatclouds The event is real. The quotes in the story were hallucinated.
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2/
Russia & Putin
Putin deluded himself that AI-enabled warfare will solve his manpower problems & population bottlenecks. 1.3 million dead soldiers so far in Ukraine.
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/putin-links-nuclear-buildout-to-russias-ai-ambitions/Need more evidence? Evil.
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UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
@mttaggart I'd have more respect for them if they replaced it with a retraction page. But then, I have low expectations for Ars.
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What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
"If irony were made of strawberries we'd all be drinking a lot of smoothies right now."
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What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
@mttaggart Makes me want to delete AT from my regular sources, but I'll hold off. They should issue an apology if they haven't.
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UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
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@mttaggart I did… and thanks to folks saving it

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@mttaggart this seems so unlike Benji Edwards, I'm really surprised
@robdaemon @mttaggart hmm…404s now.
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What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange link 404s
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@robdaemon @mttaggart hmm…404s now.
@europlus yeah, it was pulled
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@mttaggart@infosec.exchange link 404s
@kura Keep reading the thread
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@mttaggart@infosec.exchange ya. i saw that you updated afterwards. sorry.
though an edit on the original post would be great too. (or it didn't federate to me)
sorry for the confusion. -
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange ya. i saw that you updated afterwards. sorry.
though an edit on the original post would be great too. (or it didn't federate to me)
sorry for the confusion.@kura Which I also did.
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UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
@mttaggart It was also archived on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/
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What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
@mttaggart Personally I blame the #MoonShark
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UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
@mttaggart
"When someone’s AI agent shows up and starts acting as an aggrieved contributor, how should people respond?"
Ban them and their agent? -
@mttaggart
"When someone’s AI agent shows up and starts acting as an aggrieved contributor, how should people respond?"
Ban them and their agent?@mttaggart
"But that person has not come forward. If they instructed the agent to generate the blog post, they bear responsibility for a personal attack on a volunteer maintainer. "
Sounds like a solid case of #Libel to me -
What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
@mttaggart Sounds like the editors @ArsTechnica are letting their #AIAgent 's run rampant as well.
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@mttaggart @catsalad
slop on slop action 🫦 send toot