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.
If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://infosec.exchange/users/mttaggart/statuses/116065340523529645 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)
It sure looks like Benj Edwards and Kyle Orland at 
@arstechnica used a badly behaved chatbot to write their article about somebody else's badly behaved chatbot. At the very least, they signed off on bunch of fabricated quotes.
Ars Technica used to be so good.
(Edit: Article got pulled, but the internet remembers: https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116065428288139586 )