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  • [YASID] borderline SF - late 1970's.. terrorists aboard ship...

    From danny burstein@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 29 02:23:01 2024
    The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain
    into nagging me about a novel I read late 1970's.

    Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing
    with lots of shutdowns, brownouts, etc.

    A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from
    Alaska to San Francisco. It's been hijacked by a
    group of terrorists.

    One of them (don't recall why...) is now a Good Guy
    and working with the Feds, etc., to stop it.

    He explains the only "anti terror" attack he
    couldn't defend against (when he was with the
    bad guys) would be while the ship would be
    passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, and
    cops/Feds/troops would rappel down.

    Again, this is a vague and mixed/matched
    recollection, but does it sound at all
    familiar?

    Thanks

    _____________________________________________________
    Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
    [email protected]
    [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to danny burstein on Fri Mar 29 14:43:52 2024
    On 2024-03-29, danny burstein <[email protected]> wrote:

    The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain
    into nagging me about a novel I read late 1970's.

    Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing
    with lots of shutdowns, brownouts, etc.

    A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from
    Alaska to San Francisco. It's been hijacked by a
    group of terrorists.

    Sounds like a Clive Cussler or Alistair MacLean potboiler.

    Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
    "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978.
    Because that book doesn't exist.

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Charles Packer@21:1/5 to Christian Weisgerber on Sat Mar 30 07:59:19 2024
    On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:43:52 +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

    On 2024-03-29, danny burstein <[email protected]> wrote:

    The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain into nagging me
    about a novel I read late 1970's.

    Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing with lots of
    shutdowns, brownouts, etc.

    A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from Alaska to San
    Francisco. It's been hijacked by a group of terrorists.

    Sounds like a Clive Cussler or Alistair MacLean potboiler.

    Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
    "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
    book doesn't exist.


    What search string did you use? I'm particularly interested
    in whether you included a year or year range.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Christian Weisgerber@21:1/5 to Charles Packer on Sat Mar 30 15:18:49 2024
    On 2024-03-30, Charles Packer <[email protected]> wrote:

    Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
    "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
    book doesn't exist.

    What search string did you use?

    I copy-pasted most of the original poster's question.

    The answer regurgitated the plot points from the question, confidently
    assigned them to the fictitious book, and supported this by linking
    to two recent news articles about attacks in the Red Sea and the
    Wikipedia article about the Achille Lauro hijacking.

    I was about to post Perplexity's whole hallucination here, but then
    decided nobody would be interested. And of course I can't reproduce
    it now.

    I'm particularly interested in whether you included a year or
    year range.

    "a novel I read in the late 1970's"

    --
    Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Charles Packer@21:1/5 to Christian Weisgerber on Sun Mar 31 07:58:09 2024
    On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:18:49 +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

    On 2024-03-30, Charles Packer <[email protected]> wrote:

    Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
    "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
    book doesn't exist.

    What search string did you use?

    I copy-pasted most of the original poster's question.

    The answer regurgitated the plot points from the question, confidently assigned them to the fictitious book, and supported this by linking to
    two recent news articles about attacks in the Red Sea and the Wikipedia article about the Achille Lauro hijacking.

    I was about to post Perplexity's whole hallucination here, but then
    decided nobody would be interested. And of course I can't reproduce it
    now.

    I'm particularly interested in whether you included a year or year
    range.

    "a novel I read in the late 1970's"

    It would seem to be not too hard to design into the bot the
    capability to check its own work by a straightforward search
    for the objects that it generates.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)