Mark V. Shaney's descendants

A couple of days ago, LLM generated text was discussed on The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, and this exchange caught my eye:

an LLM is pretty much just a much-fancier and better-automated descendant of Mark V Shaney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney

I am glad someone has finally pointed that out.

I followed the Wikipedia link and learned that "Mark V. Shaney" was the name used to post markov chain generated usenet articles, made at Bell Labs back in the 1980's.

I wasn't on usenet in 1984, but I do have an archive, so let me look up the Mark V. Shaney articles I can find:

The Wikipedia entry has this information, under Examples:

Other quotations from Mark's Usenet posts are:[3]

• "I spent an interesting evening recently with a grain of salt." (Alternatively reported as "While at a conference a few weeks back, I spent an interesting evening with a grain of salt."[4][5])
• "I hope that there are sour apples in every bushel."[6][7] (see also sour grapes)

Interestingly we can solve the "alternatively reported" issue by going to the source, which is the very first article in the archive, [email protected], where it says:

When I meet someone on a professional basis, I want them to shave their arms. While at a conference a few weeks back, I spent an interesting evening with a grain of salt. I wouldn't take them seriously! This brings me back to the brash people who dare others to do so or not. I love a good flame argument, probably more than anyone...

(my emphasis).

The second, sour apples quote from the Wikipedia entry is from the article [email protected], where it is the closing line.

The (almost) full article shown in the Wikipedia Examples section is [email protected]; it looks like Wikipedia is missing the quip below the sign off, "Never attribute to malice what can be found in scientific american, under computer recreations."

The program behind Mark V. Shaney used a third order markov chain, so it makes statistics on triplets of words, and generates the next work by looking two words back. Reading the usenet articles, I want to revisit my little "politisnak" project, which is a basic markov chain looking at tuples of words, and expand it.

Sometimes it's fun to sit on top of a trove of old usenet articles!

Rob Pike added to the exchange on the TUHS mailing list, quoted at the beginning:

My name is Rob Pike and I approve this message.

:-)

Via The Unix Heritage Society's mailing list, Dennis Ritchie's usenet post to alt.os.multics titled "BTL leaves Multics" starting:

I offer some memories about the withdrawal of Bell Labs from Multics and the start of Unix.

"The Most Surprising Unix Programs", Doug McIlroy (https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-March/020664.html).

Via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574603

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