Look, this is obviously terrible for someone who just lost most or perhaps all of their data. I do feel bad for whoever this is, because this is an unfortunate situation.

On the other hand, this is kind of what happens when you run random crap and don't know how your computer works? The problem with "vibes" is that sometimes the vibes are bad. I hope this person had backups and that this is a learning experience for them. You know, this kind of stuff didn't happen when I learned how to program with a C compiler and a book. The compiler only did what I told it to do, and most of the time, it threw an error. Maybe people should start there instead.

It took me about 3 hours to make my first $3000 386 PC unbootable by messing up config.sys, and it was a Friday night so I could only lament all weekend until I could go back to the shop on Monday.

rm -rf / happened so infrequently it makes one wonder why —preserve-root was added in 2003 and made the default in 2006

I seem to recall a few people being helped into executing sudo rm -rf / by random people on the internet so I’m not sure it “didn’t happen.” :)

Just wait til AI botswarms do it to everyone at scale, without them having done anything at all…

And just remember, someone will write the usual comment: “AI adds nothing new, this was always the case”