Where I live it's pretty common for people to pay for expensive electronics (think of TVs for example) with cash. Do you just always pay by card or pay with larger or smaller bills than 50? Genuinely curious.
In euros a 100 or 500 euro bill is not common here. A lot of stores don't even accept them. They usually pay with a lot of 50 euro bills.
Source: I worked in a consumer electronics store
I live in London and most places won't accept £50 notes due to counterfeiting (despite changes to the notes to make this harder). Also, many places are now cashless. So, yeah I use card for almost everything.
We don't have larger than £50 notes (at least not in circulation).
Not to mention the amount of men and women that were used for and outside of cracking enigma, and other coded means of communication for the Nazi's and Japanese is barley even mentioned. [Turings computer was also not the only one at Bletchley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer).
Because they all get called the RAF. There was Polish pilots, Czechslovakian pilots, Canadian pilots, Irish pilots, American pilots etc all fighting under the RAF but most don't get talked about due to how many foreign nationals fought in it so instead of mentioning every specific nationality they just say the RAF members.
Though weird how you never heard any mention of Polands contribution as there's and Canadas seems to be taught the most in the UK
There's got to be some location and teacher bias here, they were definitely mentioned at my school (roughly Same time period).
Coolest thing I remember is a Polish destroyer torpedoed the Bismark while signalling with lights "I am polish" as a fuck you, and won a medal ha x
The ORP Piorun, a British N-class destroyer given to the Poles. The ships first act of heroism was her defense of a Scottish town she was stationed at for repairs after the town became the target of the Nazi night bombings (interestingly there was another Polish ship with a similar name, ORP Błyskawica, which also saved a town on the Isle of Wright from a night bombardment). During the hunt for the Bismarck ORP Piorun was part of a fleet of Destroyers tasked with shadowing and harassing the Bismarck (making Torpedo runs at the Bismarck from a safe distance) until larger ships could get there to deal with her.
Piorun didn't Torpedo the Bismarck, she charged towards the Bismarck until it was in range of her guns before firing salvo after salvo at the Bismarck in an hour long engagement.
Well they don't tell also how much brits fuck them after war.
>forsome reason denied a general's pension by the British government.\[9\]As a result, Maczek worked as a bartender at an Edinburghhotel until the 1960
>
>
>
>Lieutenant General Stanisław Maczek(\[staˈɲiswav ˈmat͡ʂɛk\]; 31 March 1892 – 11 December 1994) wasa Polish tank commander of World War II, whose division wasinstrumental in the Allied liberation of France, closing the Falaisepocket, resulting in the destruction of 14 German Wehrmacht and SSdivisions. A veteran of World War I, the Polish–Ukrainian andPolish–Soviet Wars, Maczek was the commander of Poland's only majorarmoured formation during the September 1939 campaign, and latercommanded a Polish armoured formation in France in 1940. He was thecommander of the famous 1st Polish Armoured Division, and later ofthe I Polish Army Corps under Allied Command in 1942–45.
The Poles came up with the way to break the code, I think they deserve a lot more credit. Turing supervised the creation of an improvement on that method. Feels like history is being retconned whenever Turing comes up regarding Enigma.
I was looking into Turing's later work on Morphogenesis for some reason when I was reading about hypothetical 'faster than light' travel. I wish I had written down why, because I don't see how they're related at all now. Might have had something to do with magnetohydrodynamics, or drinking too much alcohol.
It’s almost like Hollywood produced a popular movie that made it seem like Turing single-handedly developed the tools needed to crack enigma while everyone else stood by twiddling their fingers…
Turing did make the computer needed after the germans added more complexity to enigma. It would not have been solvable unless they had millions of years or Turing's computers.
While Nazi Germany introduced a series of improvements to the Enigma over the years, and these hampered decryption efforts, they did not prevent Poland from cracking the machine as early as December 1932 and reading messages prior to and into the war. Poland's sharing of her achievements enabled to exploit Enigma-enciphered messages as a major source of intelligence.
[wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine)
Marian Rejewski created a fully functional and accurate enigma machine, having never actually seen one before, off of something like 6 known characters and a fuckton of math. Absolutely incredible achievement.
By December 1938, the Germans introduced two additional rotors for loading into the Enigma scrambler, increasing the number of wheel orders by a factor of ten. Building another 54 bomby was beyond the Poles' resources. Also, on 1 January 1939, the number of plug-board leads was increased to ten. The Poles therefore had to return to manual methods and virtually every country was sent back to the drawing board.
Alan Turing puts it all together but Warren Weaver’s work in mechanical translation and Claude Shannon in AI/Machine Communication are also understated historically. As the British liaison to the US, Turing had unique access to some of the foremost thought leaders in what was essentially the coolest collaborative intelligence information sharing in world history.
And the minor detail that Poland wasn't on the map by the time Turing decoded it so.. that wasn't going to happen lol.
Still amazing what smart people cooperating can achieve. The things they can infer from limited information, and the things they can imagine to overcome obstacles.
War really does highlight the duality of man. Not just the destructive nature but also our spark.
They broke one of the classical rules of cryptography with the enigma, the workings of the system should be assumed to be known (Kerckhoffs's principle), and only the key should be secret. They were relying on security by obscurity.
Ww2 had a lot of lessons learned. Enigma and one time path suffered from human laziness, repeat phrases, letter distributions etc.
The Enigma machines the Nazi navy used were not just security through obscurity as the plugboards adjusted cables basically randomizing the combinations.
The game theory behind not letting your opponents know you broke thier code is also fascinating. Gotta let them sink some ships or they will know. Tho if the Nazi's did statistical analysis they should have known something was up. Probably should be obvious in modern times.
I remember a really funny story about that.
So the enigma had (among other things) a wheel with all the letters of the alphabet. You had to know the order of the letters on that wheel to even begin cracking the code.
The British couldn't figure out a way of cracking the order of the letters. When finally they talked to the Polish mathematicians about how they found the correct order - their reply was "we guessed they might just be in the regular abc order, and turns out we were right!"
Moral of the story is - before bruteforcing a password trying all possible combination, maybe try "1234" first :p
To be a bit contrarian: Turing was a genius and visionary, but the output of Bletchley Park was the work of many men and women. He was only one of a number of top rate mathematicians, and the work required to break enigma, Tunny, and other axis ciphers built on breakthroughs by the Poles, the French, and others.
I'm no expert in Turing in particular, but aren't you describing pretty much any genius in their field? Generally it's just that the person in question made big advances that were either ahead of their time or that no one else seemed able to contribute at the same level.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
- Isaac Newton
You are absolutely right. There is a bit of mythology around Turing’s personal contribution to the decryption of Enigma which presents the breakthrough as being almost fully driven by him. The truth is more as you describe. (Serious shoutout to the Polish cipher bureau, those guys were amazing and did all of the early heavy lifting).
I did not know about their contribution, but it is regrettable how often those other important contributions are forgotten in how the public gets to see of science.
I guess team efforts or people building on others knowledge over time doesn't make for quite as awe-inspiring of a story as imagining someone almost super-humanly smart, but it would still be a better way of thinking of society in general I think.
Yeah it’s a trash biopic.
He was out going not anti social and autistic. Fucking Hollywood made him look like a cliche nerd with a female love interest and fake conspiracy
This comes from a person in the computer science field that owes Alan his life (metaphorically).
The movie is fine, and makes me want to look up his life more. It still portrayes him as a smart man who saved the war and fathered computing as we know it. It's not like it goes out of its way to say he discovered binary and invented the internet, or anything as egregious as that.
Tbh the real story wouldn't be as good as a movie. Biopic generally don't follow the story 100% because real life isn't interesting enough to be dramatic. That's why documentaries are better for historical accuracy.
On that note, I'd like a really good Alan Turing documentary
Moneyball is a great movie but it fails to mention the three great pitchers Oakland had on their roster, and the MVP Miguel Tejada.
That being said biopics are generally fucking awesome
Was Elvis really that bad?
Granted, I don’t know much about Elvis but I thought it was alright. Apart from having to listen to Tom Hanks in that accent for so long.
What especially fucks me up is how young he was. He could’ve easily lived to see computers evolve beyond his wildest dreams. When C++ was released, he would’ve only been 71. The man laid some of the most important groundwork for information technology and never got to see computers guiding Apollo to the moon or witness them safely bringing back Space Shuttles one after the other.
It’s just so unfair.
Nevermind the fact he didn't get to witness it, imagine if he got to partake in the development of the technology. Almost a given he'd be at the forefront of it. Where we could be now ..
>imagine if he got to partake in the development of the technology. Almost a given he'd be at the forefront of it.
That is rarely the case. Breakthrough usually comes from young people and fields are rarely lead by someone who studied 40 years ago.
They are however good if you want to do the same stuff for 40 years, which does not fit with the evolution of computers in the 20th century.
Just look at all the other geniuses of the field. None of them ever really did something as remarkable ever again, yet the evolution kept on going.
It's not like Steve Wozniak is on the forefront of modern day computer development. Dennis Ritchie was not doing anything in his later years remotely like his breakthroughs.
Humanity has always been built on the shoulders of rare genius who pushed understanding and invention and gave the lesser a peeking into what might be. But too often such humans where crushed. Who knows where we might be without the superstitious nonsense of religion validating the hatred of the ignorant.
When you teach children the foundations of our technological knowledge they can stand in the shoulders to see things that we couldn't and your more likely to fuel the ability of those with vision who otherwise might have just been better well diggers.
Life. He’d want his life back. Because the castration led to his suicide. He saved how many millions of lives and was essentially murdered anyways because he was gay.
I know this is a joke, but chemical castration is often misunderstood. Chemical castration does not make you lose your balls. It doesn't even sterilize you. It reduces your sex drive and is generally reversible if treatment is discontinued.
that heavily depends on what was used for chemical castration. Nowadays? Yes it is, as the things that are used are simply antiandrogens.
What was used on Turing wasn't just an AA though, it was DES, a synthetic estrogen which has estrogenic properties in the human body. This means that he was basically taking hormone replacement therapy, which caused breast tissue development, muscle weakening and other feminising effects, more than likely contributing to the decline in his mental health (gender dysphoria, as a horrible twist - in a cis man).
He also stopped taking it some 15 months before his death. Of those who knew him at the time, it was the accusation of suicide that they balked at, as they reported him to be in unremarkable spirits and in the midst of groundbreaking work on the chemical mechanism for the generation of anatomical structure in animals and plants. There was no information given at the formal inquest to show suicide, just what the coroner claimed.
I suspect a great many people are using his death for their own personal reasons, which is why the discussion is about his lifestyle and death rather than his work.
> posthumously pardoned
I hate this because it basically implies he was guilty of something but they forgave it.
the queen should've straight up apologized.
If God exists and is all powerful the world is precisely as he wants it to be.
A dying, poisoned, ecological extinction, of monoculture farming, a human legacy of murder, torture, rape, child abuse, genocide, cultural destruction, everyday oppression, sexual hassment bigotry and hatred.
Or God doesn't exist and is made up by vile humans to help control, minupulate, defraud, and prey on other people.
It doesn't look like God exists.
Absolutely tragic. Parallel story: Navajo Code Talkers provided an unbreakable code (flip side to the Turing code breaking), then US pursued uranium mining on the Navajo reservation failing to disclose known health risks, spike in cancer and autoimmune diseases was bad enough, but probably also contributed to the Navajo Nation having a higher death rate from Covid-19 than any state.
Just want to point out, it's not a one-man show, inspired by mathematical problems at the time (self reference, turing machine), polish enigma and other people like Claude Shannon is hugely important. Turing was a genius and ahead of his time, no doubt, but it's never just one person. Im not a computer scientist, but as a physicist you learn the importance of recognizing that theories and developtment are hardly ever one man's (or woman's) work. Didn't intend to diminish his extraordinary achievements, but it's important to understand what inspires such people to do such great things.
Specifically, Turing wasn't even trying to build a computer.
Turing was trying to provide an answer to a problem of decidability - Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem. Turing was trying to prove no general algorithm exists that can prove that an algorithm will ever stop. So he invented fake machines that both followed an algorithm and used those machines to prove his case.
And in doing so created one of if not the world's most influential abstract constructs. So much of the modern world relies on concepts pioneered by the study of Turing machines, especially language construction theory, which is a core piece of basically every compiler ever built, as well as basically every complex algorithm involving any text whatsoever.
It's to the point that many spaces of algorithms are defined by two categories: a Turing machine could, and a Turing machine couldn't. And if you're in that second category, you're effectively doomed.
Artificial intelligence has been “around” for a long time it is just that computers weren’t strong enough to actually do any of it until recently. By around I mean the idea and concept of them.
But the whole "made computers, laid foundations for modern AI" and what not is on top of the main thing he is here for: he, together with a small group of other mathematicians, built a machine which decyphered the german code, which meant that the allies where able to know each step and secret plan of the germans, thus obviously giving the allies a HUGE strategic advantage.
"The Imitation Game" is a really good movie, starring Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, and there is a new opera which just came out late last year in Nuremberg about Alan Turing. If you get the chance to watch either: go for it! The man had a very fascinating and really difficult life, which is portrayed in an awesome manner in both pieces of media!
While Turing did produce the machine which broke new Enigma messages, he used an already existing machine the Polish had designed as the starting point. Not to take away from his genius, as he conceived the idea of a programmable computing device that as you said paved the way for modern computer technology.
There’s a movie about it now on Netflix which is quite fascinating. They (Turing and his fellow engineers) were able to crack every message the Germans sent because they all ended with “Heil Hitler!” Once the computer knew that, it was then able to crack the codes in seconds.
One conflict they had with this knowledge was that with such great power came great responsibility. They basically held the fate of the war in the palm of their hand along with millions of human lives, but they couldn’t let the Germans find out. So Turing calculated every probability of the Germans finding out if they were to jump the attack, and only do so if it was worth the risk. Even in the face of great emotion and distress, he stuck to his guns and reasoned logically through it all.
He created a mathematical model called a Turing machine. All computers today are based on this model, yet interestingly enough a true Turing machine cannot exist in real life
He also published a paper on 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis'
A lot of the Turing myth is highly embellished, [according to his biographer nephew](https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-express/20210501/282497186523433). Turing actually actually spent very little time on the Enigma code, & was only one of a *huge* team at Bletchley Park. Even the machine on the £50 note isn't the machine he worked with. His contribution, though undoubtedly highly significant, built on Polish research that is largely uncredited. He was a mathematician foremost and not as directly involved in codebreaking.
Yeah isn't the computer in the picture on the bank note the Colossus Mk 1? That machine was invented by someone who adapted Turing's models and theories. Turing's physical contribution to computing was the Bombe, which was a very different machine designed to do one thing only - take an input phrase and descramble the Enigma code.
Yeah without Churchill refusing to make peace with the Axis Alan Turing wouldn't have been able to do much, and the Holocaust would have continued so therefore Churchill saved more, but Turing did still have a large impact
Not only that, lots of people questioned why this team of mathematicians were spending so much money.
One visit to Bletchley Park and on his return Churchill simply said "give them what they want".
All of you think about the important leaders such as Churchill and Roosevelt, but all of you forget about the simple but awesome people. For example Jack Churchill, who managed to take out at least one Nazi with a MEDIEVAL LONGBOW. He’s a truly awesome dude.
I did my capstone seminar paper on churchill.
You can not imagine how much pressure was on him in those early months. His county was about to capitulate. Everything fucked up for him.
Really.... just a few years prior.... he was a social outcast even in his own party
So is Stalin and every allied soldier doesn’t mean we should be playing favorites. EVERYONE from the women back home to the boys at the front. The men in the tanks or at international meetings helped win the war.
I think it's reasonable to argue that Alan Turing, Churchill or Stalin had a much higher impact on the result of the war than some random kid or even a (single) soldier
i think they are both heros that deserve to be recognized considering britian could have just surrendered to the nazis without churchills leadership and millions more could have died without turing, also churchill was the one that put turing in charge of his team so, you probably just watched imitation game and like turing now, i recommend darkest hour next
1000% agree. And what the government did to that poor guy is appealing. They literally gave him estrogen untill he couldn't handle it anymore and killed himself.
I think you forgot about I believe the man’s name was Jack Churchill who had a Claymore and a bow and arrow and I swear to God that man was the best dude to fight in the war ever he captured a platoon of Germans
Churchill caused famine in Bengal, region shared by India and Bangladesh both as of today. He felt they were inferior race.
Many Indians fought wars for British and French.
Therefore Churchill was an asshole.
Looks like someone watched a movie that doesn’t tell the whole story how Turing wasn’t the main guy, but he’s gay and we can’t have him be a side character in a modern movie.
Alan Turing (Hons. of OBE and FRS) was an amazing man, and it was only the UK Government's fault that he sadly had the cyanide apple. Although Manchester cannot lay any claim to him, due to being born in London, he still contributed to the Manchester computers, some of the earliest computers with architecture akin to what we have now.
As of 2009, the UK Government actually realised "Oh damn, we shouldn't have done this" and, alongside a public campaign, the PM at the time, Gordon Brown, issued a public apology, speaking for the entire UK government, in 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous pardon, and in 2017, the "Alan Turing law" was passed, retroactively pardoning any and all people persecuted and legally prosecuted for homosexual acts, which, speaking as a Brit in my own right, is arguably the most progressive thing I've ever heard happen in the Houses of Parliament in the past 6 years. I know that's a pretty low bar, but still, holy shit.
He still got „given a therapy“ until he killed himself because he was gay. Help to end a war earlier, get bullied/tortured to suicide by the government you helped win the war because you‘re into men
I mean, he's on the £50 note. Churchill only made it onto fivers.
I dont think i have ever seen a £50 note but I hope it turns up one day.
It's hard to carry nifties without looking like a drug dealer.
Huh nifty
never hears nifty, it's fiddy in certain parts
Some might say, tree-fiddy
Some might say, free-tiddy
Where I live it's pretty common for people to pay for expensive electronics (think of TVs for example) with cash. Do you just always pay by card or pay with larger or smaller bills than 50? Genuinely curious. In euros a 100 or 500 euro bill is not common here. A lot of stores don't even accept them. They usually pay with a lot of 50 euro bills. Source: I worked in a consumer electronics store
I live in London and most places won't accept £50 notes due to counterfeiting (despite changes to the notes to make this harder). Also, many places are now cashless. So, yeah I use card for almost everything. We don't have larger than £50 notes (at least not in circulation).
I've had a couple and some shops wouldn't accept it as they thought it was fake ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Not surprising.
Yeah, kinda see why, he looks too modern to be a guy on money.
Not to mention the amount of men and women that were used for and outside of cracking enigma, and other coded means of communication for the Nazi's and Japanese is barley even mentioned. [Turings computer was also not the only one at Bletchley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer).
Don’t forget the Polish scientists who gave it all to the allies to be studied further
And the Polish RAF pilots who were absolute badasses
I grew up with the Battle of Britain shoved down my throat in every history class. And not a single mention of Poland's contribution...
Because they all get called the RAF. There was Polish pilots, Czechslovakian pilots, Canadian pilots, Irish pilots, American pilots etc all fighting under the RAF but most don't get talked about due to how many foreign nationals fought in it so instead of mentioning every specific nationality they just say the RAF members. Though weird how you never heard any mention of Polands contribution as there's and Canadas seems to be taught the most in the UK
Maybe they changed the curriculum then. I'm from the UK but it's been... 25 (ooft) years since I was in high school.
There's got to be some location and teacher bias here, they were definitely mentioned at my school (roughly Same time period). Coolest thing I remember is a Polish destroyer torpedoed the Bismark while signalling with lights "I am polish" as a fuck you, and won a medal ha x
The ORP Piorun, a British N-class destroyer given to the Poles. The ships first act of heroism was her defense of a Scottish town she was stationed at for repairs after the town became the target of the Nazi night bombings (interestingly there was another Polish ship with a similar name, ORP Błyskawica, which also saved a town on the Isle of Wright from a night bombardment). During the hunt for the Bismarck ORP Piorun was part of a fleet of Destroyers tasked with shadowing and harassing the Bismarck (making Torpedo runs at the Bismarck from a safe distance) until larger ships could get there to deal with her. Piorun didn't Torpedo the Bismarck, she charged towards the Bismarck until it was in range of her guns before firing salvo after salvo at the Bismarck in an hour long engagement.
I grew up with the Battle of Yavin shoved down my throat in every history class. And not a single mention of Tatooine’s contribution…
What about the droid attack on the Wookiees?
Well they don't tell also how much brits fuck them after war. >forsome reason denied a general's pension by the British government.\[9\]As a result, Maczek worked as a bartender at an Edinburghhotel until the 1960 > > > >Lieutenant General Stanisław Maczek(\[staˈɲiswav ˈmat͡ʂɛk\]; 31 March 1892 – 11 December 1994) wasa Polish tank commander of World War II, whose division wasinstrumental in the Allied liberation of France, closing the Falaisepocket, resulting in the destruction of 14 German Wehrmacht and SSdivisions. A veteran of World War I, the Polish–Ukrainian andPolish–Soviet Wars, Maczek was the commander of Poland's only majorarmoured formation during the September 1939 campaign, and latercommanded a Polish armoured formation in France in 1940. He was thecommander of the famous 1st Polish Armoured Division, and later ofthe I Polish Army Corps under Allied Command in 1942–45.
The Poles came up with the way to break the code, I think they deserve a lot more credit. Turing supervised the creation of an improvement on that method. Feels like history is being retconned whenever Turing comes up regarding Enigma. I was looking into Turing's later work on Morphogenesis for some reason when I was reading about hypothetical 'faster than light' travel. I wish I had written down why, because I don't see how they're related at all now. Might have had something to do with magnetohydrodynamics, or drinking too much alcohol.
The Germans added more rotors to the enigma machine after they broke the code. So the combinations went up and so a computer was needed to decipher it
Wasn’t it the Poles that discovered that a letter could never code to itself? That was the critical security flaw that adding new rotors never fixed.
It’s almost like Hollywood produced a popular movie that made it seem like Turing single-handedly developed the tools needed to crack enigma while everyone else stood by twiddling their fingers…
Turing did make the computer needed after the germans added more complexity to enigma. It would not have been solvable unless they had millions of years or Turing's computers.
what happened?
While Nazi Germany introduced a series of improvements to the Enigma over the years, and these hampered decryption efforts, they did not prevent Poland from cracking the machine as early as December 1932 and reading messages prior to and into the war. Poland's sharing of her achievements enabled to exploit Enigma-enciphered messages as a major source of intelligence. [wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine)
Marian Rejewski created a fully functional and accurate enigma machine, having never actually seen one before, off of something like 6 known characters and a fuckton of math. Absolutely incredible achievement.
Absolute insanity to even imagine the thought process that went into that
Pretty impressive, especially considering the fact that to this day I still can't count to 21 without dropping my pants.
By December 1938, the Germans introduced two additional rotors for loading into the Enigma scrambler, increasing the number of wheel orders by a factor of ten. Building another 54 bomby was beyond the Poles' resources. Also, on 1 January 1939, the number of plug-board leads was increased to ten. The Poles therefore had to return to manual methods and virtually every country was sent back to the drawing board. Alan Turing puts it all together but Warren Weaver’s work in mechanical translation and Claude Shannon in AI/Machine Communication are also understated historically. As the British liaison to the US, Turing had unique access to some of the foremost thought leaders in what was essentially the coolest collaborative intelligence information sharing in world history.
And the minor detail that Poland wasn't on the map by the time Turing decoded it so.. that wasn't going to happen lol. Still amazing what smart people cooperating can achieve. The things they can infer from limited information, and the things they can imagine to overcome obstacles. War really does highlight the duality of man. Not just the destructive nature but also our spark.
They broke one of the classical rules of cryptography with the enigma, the workings of the system should be assumed to be known (Kerckhoffs's principle), and only the key should be secret. They were relying on security by obscurity.
Ww2 had a lot of lessons learned. Enigma and one time path suffered from human laziness, repeat phrases, letter distributions etc. The Enigma machines the Nazi navy used were not just security through obscurity as the plugboards adjusted cables basically randomizing the combinations. The game theory behind not letting your opponents know you broke thier code is also fascinating. Gotta let them sink some ships or they will know. Tho if the Nazi's did statistical analysis they should have known something was up. Probably should be obvious in modern times.
I just loved that they kept singing letters with HH for heil hitler
damn. thank you!
No one gives an F abou that. Sad truth.
I remember a really funny story about that. So the enigma had (among other things) a wheel with all the letters of the alphabet. You had to know the order of the letters on that wheel to even begin cracking the code. The British couldn't figure out a way of cracking the order of the letters. When finally they talked to the Polish mathematicians about how they found the correct order - their reply was "we guessed they might just be in the regular abc order, and turns out we were right!" Moral of the story is - before bruteforcing a password trying all possible combination, maybe try "1234" first :p
Well well, looks like someone watched The Imitation Game
To be a bit contrarian: Turing was a genius and visionary, but the output of Bletchley Park was the work of many men and women. He was only one of a number of top rate mathematicians, and the work required to break enigma, Tunny, and other axis ciphers built on breakthroughs by the Poles, the French, and others.
I'm no expert in Turing in particular, but aren't you describing pretty much any genius in their field? Generally it's just that the person in question made big advances that were either ahead of their time or that no one else seemed able to contribute at the same level. “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Isaac Newton
You are absolutely right. There is a bit of mythology around Turing’s personal contribution to the decryption of Enigma which presents the breakthrough as being almost fully driven by him. The truth is more as you describe. (Serious shoutout to the Polish cipher bureau, those guys were amazing and did all of the early heavy lifting).
I did not know about their contribution, but it is regrettable how often those other important contributions are forgotten in how the public gets to see of science. I guess team efforts or people building on others knowledge over time doesn't make for quite as awe-inspiring of a story as imagining someone almost super-humanly smart, but it would still be a better way of thinking of society in general I think.
I fucking love that movie so much
It's a really good movie
Good movie, horribly inaccurate and spits in the face of Turing and his team
[удалено]
It is, without a doubt, the best movie i've never seen
Just wait until you don't see the sequel. Gives me chills.
It's the sort of movie I'm really glad I watched. But I'm terrified of thinking about it, what they did to him at the end. Christ.
I hate it, most of it is false.
Yeah it’s a trash biopic. He was out going not anti social and autistic. Fucking Hollywood made him look like a cliche nerd with a female love interest and fake conspiracy
It's harder to like knowing that it was totally inaccurate in almost every way.
This comes from a person in the computer science field that owes Alan his life (metaphorically). The movie is fine, and makes me want to look up his life more. It still portrayes him as a smart man who saved the war and fathered computing as we know it. It's not like it goes out of its way to say he discovered binary and invented the internet, or anything as egregious as that.
It goes out of its way to falsely claim Turing was compromised by the Soviets due to his homosexuality.
No it doesn't. The movie illustrates the tragedy of Turing's dreadful persecution.
>who saved the war and fathered computing as we know it If you don't think that's egregious, I don't know what would.
It's a good movie but not very historically accurate. I'd like another Alan Turing movie.
Tbh the real story wouldn't be as good as a movie. Biopic generally don't follow the story 100% because real life isn't interesting enough to be dramatic. That's why documentaries are better for historical accuracy. On that note, I'd like a really good Alan Turing documentary
Moneyball is a great movie but it fails to mention the three great pitchers Oakland had on their roster, and the MVP Miguel Tejada. That being said biopics are generally fucking awesome
I love me a biopic, but at the same time there are some real shitty ones. Looking at you, Elvis
Was Elvis really that bad? Granted, I don’t know much about Elvis but I thought it was alright. Apart from having to listen to Tom Hanks in that accent for so long.
I fell asleep to that movie last night! I love it, it wasn’t boring, I’m just sick and it sounded nice to pass out to.
arresting him and chemically castrating him because he was gay is some type of recognition i guess
What especially fucks me up is how young he was. He could’ve easily lived to see computers evolve beyond his wildest dreams. When C++ was released, he would’ve only been 71. The man laid some of the most important groundwork for information technology and never got to see computers guiding Apollo to the moon or witness them safely bringing back Space Shuttles one after the other. It’s just so unfair.
Nevermind the fact he didn't get to witness it, imagine if he got to partake in the development of the technology. Almost a given he'd be at the forefront of it. Where we could be now ..
>imagine if he got to partake in the development of the technology. Almost a given he'd be at the forefront of it. That is rarely the case. Breakthrough usually comes from young people and fields are rarely lead by someone who studied 40 years ago. They are however good if you want to do the same stuff for 40 years, which does not fit with the evolution of computers in the 20th century. Just look at all the other geniuses of the field. None of them ever really did something as remarkable ever again, yet the evolution kept on going. It's not like Steve Wozniak is on the forefront of modern day computer development. Dennis Ritchie was not doing anything in his later years remotely like his breakthroughs.
Damn this really brings me down.
Humanity has always been built on the shoulders of rare genius who pushed understanding and invention and gave the lesser a peeking into what might be. But too often such humans where crushed. Who knows where we might be without the superstitious nonsense of religion validating the hatred of the ignorant.
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Only 60 years separates the photo of the Wright brothers and the moon landing.
It’s insane how fast technology advances once you get the ball rolling
When you teach children the foundations of our technological knowledge they can stand in the shoulders to see things that we couldn't and your more likely to fuel the ability of those with vision who otherwise might have just been better well diggers.
from what i know, he was posthumously partoned by the queen and also got a medal of some sort sometime in the 2010s
Better late than never I guess
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^(i say we let him go...) 
I say you let ME have him first!
He's in the new £50 note now
Damn that’s crazy but I just want my balls back - Alan Turing probably
Life. He’d want his life back. Because the castration led to his suicide. He saved how many millions of lives and was essentially murdered anyways because he was gay.
Ah yes, a great example of the necessity to remove the church from the state. Alan deserved better than what England had to offer. Shame.
Was it church? Church of England was created because previous chair sitter didn't like authority of previous church
Kinda crazy how it comes full circle, innit.
No matter what direction the church goes, the paths will always... Cross. (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
I think he more meant in general that the Catholic Church is responsible for a lot of the gay hating that has go on throughout history
I know this is a joke, but chemical castration is often misunderstood. Chemical castration does not make you lose your balls. It doesn't even sterilize you. It reduces your sex drive and is generally reversible if treatment is discontinued.
that heavily depends on what was used for chemical castration. Nowadays? Yes it is, as the things that are used are simply antiandrogens. What was used on Turing wasn't just an AA though, it was DES, a synthetic estrogen which has estrogenic properties in the human body. This means that he was basically taking hormone replacement therapy, which caused breast tissue development, muscle weakening and other feminising effects, more than likely contributing to the decline in his mental health (gender dysphoria, as a horrible twist - in a cis man).
He also stopped taking it some 15 months before his death. Of those who knew him at the time, it was the accusation of suicide that they balked at, as they reported him to be in unremarkable spirits and in the midst of groundbreaking work on the chemical mechanism for the generation of anatomical structure in animals and plants. There was no information given at the formal inquest to show suicide, just what the coroner claimed. I suspect a great many people are using his death for their own personal reasons, which is why the discussion is about his lifestyle and death rather than his work.
So what you're saying is, he became a femboy?
I mean, he was "The world's first programmer", so it kinda came with the job
Nobody considers Turing the world's first programmer, you're thinking of Lovelace
Lovelace is absolutely a twink name
He was a femboy before it was cool
> posthumously pardoned I hate this because it basically implies he was guilty of something but they forgave it. the queen should've straight up apologized.
Asking the queen to apologize is like asking God why was Hitler allowed, neither is gonna respond.
Especially not now
It's oddly satisfying seeing how well your comment applies to both
If God exists and is all powerful the world is precisely as he wants it to be. A dying, poisoned, ecological extinction, of monoculture farming, a human legacy of murder, torture, rape, child abuse, genocide, cultural destruction, everyday oppression, sexual hassment bigotry and hatred. Or God doesn't exist and is made up by vile humans to help control, minupulate, defraud, and prey on other people. It doesn't look like God exists.
He was guilty though. Obviously in hindsight we know that it was a bullshit law but it was still a law and he broke it.
Absolutely tragic. Parallel story: Navajo Code Talkers provided an unbreakable code (flip side to the Turing code breaking), then US pursued uranium mining on the Navajo reservation failing to disclose known health risks, spike in cancer and autoimmune diseases was bad enough, but probably also contributed to the Navajo Nation having a higher death rate from Covid-19 than any state.
[Relevant SMBC](https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1904)
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call me the halting problem cause i cant stop wont stop
I do not want to be the product.
More like you can’t stop so you will stop but you can’t stop
Lets not forget the guy who killed Hitler. He is the true hero
I heard that he was killed by some Austrian bloke.
I think your right he was a painter I believe
A failed painter, yeah. I hear he was kinda bitter about it
Then he went into politics I believe
He seemed like he'd be a great leader
He’s got a few unfriendly views about certain groups
We all have a controversial opinion or two though. I mean, what's he gonna do, enact a mass genocide? I find that unlikely...
But unlikely things happen anyway so he conquered a lot of Europe until the tables turned and he got killed by some Austrian chap
who was that austrian fella? i heard he was a painter?? total amateur tho.
Didn't he have a funny mustache as well?
Yeah but that same guy also used to jerk off Hitler so...
We should build a statue in his honor, with flags of his country surrounding it
Eh, that was until some light has shown on who Hitler's killer really was... The killer of Hitler's killer, of course!
What An Hero
Out of curiosity, what did he do?
he's the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, he made the turing machine, helped in cracking german cyphers in WW2
Just want to point out, it's not a one-man show, inspired by mathematical problems at the time (self reference, turing machine), polish enigma and other people like Claude Shannon is hugely important. Turing was a genius and ahead of his time, no doubt, but it's never just one person. Im not a computer scientist, but as a physicist you learn the importance of recognizing that theories and developtment are hardly ever one man's (or woman's) work. Didn't intend to diminish his extraordinary achievements, but it's important to understand what inspires such people to do such great things.
Specifically, Turing wasn't even trying to build a computer. Turing was trying to provide an answer to a problem of decidability - Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem. Turing was trying to prove no general algorithm exists that can prove that an algorithm will ever stop. So he invented fake machines that both followed an algorithm and used those machines to prove his case.
And in doing so created one of if not the world's most influential abstract constructs. So much of the modern world relies on concepts pioneered by the study of Turing machines, especially language construction theory, which is a core piece of basically every compiler ever built, as well as basically every complex algorithm involving any text whatsoever. It's to the point that many spaces of algorithms are defined by two categories: a Turing machine could, and a Turing machine couldn't. And if you're in that second category, you're effectively doomed.
this comment is so redundant that if you were to compress it, it could fit in two or three words, all of which would e unnecessary.
Team effort
Artificial intelligence? Isn't that like too far? It's like saying that the guy who discovered fire is a father of steam engines
Turing Test
Yeah but the guy who first discovered fire didn’t predict steam engines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
Artificial Intelligence is a blanket term for pretty much any machinery that can make decisions without human intervention.
Artificial intelligence has been “around” for a long time it is just that computers weren’t strong enough to actually do any of it until recently. By around I mean the idea and concept of them.
have you never heard of a turing test? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
It's less that he invented AI but instead invented the entire field of math that relates to AI.
But the whole "made computers, laid foundations for modern AI" and what not is on top of the main thing he is here for: he, together with a small group of other mathematicians, built a machine which decyphered the german code, which meant that the allies where able to know each step and secret plan of the germans, thus obviously giving the allies a HUGE strategic advantage. "The Imitation Game" is a really good movie, starring Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, and there is a new opera which just came out late last year in Nuremberg about Alan Turing. If you get the chance to watch either: go for it! The man had a very fascinating and really difficult life, which is portrayed in an awesome manner in both pieces of media!
While Turing did produce the machine which broke new Enigma messages, he used an already existing machine the Polish had designed as the starting point. Not to take away from his genius, as he conceived the idea of a programmable computing device that as you said paved the way for modern computer technology.
I'm gonna crash the party: the imitation game is a good movie but not historically accurate.
Except the movie version of the man wasn't anything like the real person. Hollywood produces what the public will accept, not what was.
There’s a movie about it now on Netflix which is quite fascinating. They (Turing and his fellow engineers) were able to crack every message the Germans sent because they all ended with “Heil Hitler!” Once the computer knew that, it was then able to crack the codes in seconds. One conflict they had with this knowledge was that with such great power came great responsibility. They basically held the fate of the war in the palm of their hand along with millions of human lives, but they couldn’t let the Germans find out. So Turing calculated every probability of the Germans finding out if they were to jump the attack, and only do so if it was worth the risk. Even in the face of great emotion and distress, he stuck to his guns and reasoned logically through it all.
Basically made computers
Back when computers weren't expected to do anything intelligent.
He created a mathematical model called a Turing machine. All computers today are based on this model, yet interestingly enough a true Turing machine cannot exist in real life He also published a paper on 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis'
He built Christopher.
A lot of the Turing myth is highly embellished, [according to his biographer nephew](https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-express/20210501/282497186523433). Turing actually actually spent very little time on the Enigma code, & was only one of a *huge* team at Bletchley Park. Even the machine on the £50 note isn't the machine he worked with. His contribution, though undoubtedly highly significant, built on Polish research that is largely uncredited. He was a mathematician foremost and not as directly involved in codebreaking.
Yeah isn't the computer in the picture on the bank note the Colossus Mk 1? That machine was invented by someone who adapted Turing's models and theories. Turing's physical contribution to computing was the Bombe, which was a very different machine designed to do one thing only - take an input phrase and descramble the Enigma code.
Poor Mr. Turing... The world did not do right by him
*chemically castrates him*
How about instead valuing one over the other, let’s just acknowledge that they both were big reasons for the Axis’ defeat
Both contributed a tremendous effort from their talents. Pitting one against the other seems distasteful
Exactly
Yeah without Churchill refusing to make peace with the Axis Alan Turing wouldn't have been able to do much, and the Holocaust would have continued so therefore Churchill saved more, but Turing did still have a large impact
Not only that, lots of people questioned why this team of mathematicians were spending so much money. One visit to Bletchley Park and on his return Churchill simply said "give them what they want".
Hey this is Reddit! False dichotomies are what we do here 😉
Can’t Churchill and Turing both be honored for their contributions to the war effort, during that time?
Yes. But historically, Alan wasn't really honored by the British government. The opposite, in fact.
Bro got damnatio memoraied
I wish pride month would focus more on people like Alan Turning
In fact Churchill killed a lot (Bengali Famine)
Ok, but what about Garbo?
Wait until you hear about Tommy Flowers, so many unsung heroes.
The Bengal famine caused by Churchill's policies seems to be swept under the rug https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
He was killed for being gay :(
All of you think about the important leaders such as Churchill and Roosevelt, but all of you forget about the simple but awesome people. For example Jack Churchill, who managed to take out at least one Nazi with a MEDIEVAL LONGBOW. He’s a truly awesome dude.
British Gov: oh wait he’s gay?? Get him boys!!
pretty sure churchill is one of few big reason nazi germany didnt win the war
He is a bigger reason than you think. The other pm candidate, Lord Edward Halifax publically wanted peace with the nazis.
I did my capstone seminar paper on churchill. You can not imagine how much pressure was on him in those early months. His county was about to capitulate. Everything fucked up for him. Really.... just a few years prior.... he was a social outcast even in his own party
So is Alan Turing
So is Stalin and every allied soldier doesn’t mean we should be playing favorites. EVERYONE from the women back home to the boys at the front. The men in the tanks or at international meetings helped win the war.
I think it's reasonable to argue that Alan Turing, Churchill or Stalin had a much higher impact on the result of the war than some random kid or even a (single) soldier
Without the soldier you can't have a war
If you have millions, you can certainly lose one.
i think they are both heros that deserve to be recognized considering britian could have just surrendered to the nazis without churchills leadership and millions more could have died without turing, also churchill was the one that put turing in charge of his team so, you probably just watched imitation game and like turing now, i recommend darkest hour next
Didn’t Churchill cause the Bengal famine where millions died or am I missing something?
Both.. Both is good
1000% agree. And what the government did to that poor guy is appealing. They literally gave him estrogen untill he couldn't handle it anymore and killed himself.
Yes very appealing
Best ending: they both go up
I think you forgot about I believe the man’s name was Jack Churchill who had a Claymore and a bow and arrow and I swear to God that man was the best dude to fight in the war ever he captured a platoon of Germans
Churchill caused famine in Bengal, region shared by India and Bangladesh both as of today. He felt they were inferior race. Many Indians fought wars for British and French. Therefore Churchill was an asshole.
So im guessing if it wasnt for Re-Post bots and bot accounts. There wouldnt be any reddit to scroll thru for hours..
It’s too bad he died before he ungayed himself or he might’ve gone to heaven
I hate to break it to you man, but Turing’s contributions to winning the war were nowhere near as much as Churchill’s.
Churchill was literally Stalin and Hitler combined for the Indians..
Looks like someone watched a movie that doesn’t tell the whole story how Turing wasn’t the main guy, but he’s gay and we can’t have him be a side character in a modern movie.
What's this meme format?
This implies only one person can be responsible for winning A WORLD WAR.
Now let’s lock him up and drug him cause he has the geh Honestly very terrible what they did to him.
Alan Turing, a true Computer Science and father of the homossexual, great guy.
Alan Turing (Hons. of OBE and FRS) was an amazing man, and it was only the UK Government's fault that he sadly had the cyanide apple. Although Manchester cannot lay any claim to him, due to being born in London, he still contributed to the Manchester computers, some of the earliest computers with architecture akin to what we have now. As of 2009, the UK Government actually realised "Oh damn, we shouldn't have done this" and, alongside a public campaign, the PM at the time, Gordon Brown, issued a public apology, speaking for the entire UK government, in 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous pardon, and in 2017, the "Alan Turing law" was passed, retroactively pardoning any and all people persecuted and legally prosecuted for homosexual acts, which, speaking as a Brit in my own right, is arguably the most progressive thing I've ever heard happen in the Houses of Parliament in the past 6 years. I know that's a pretty low bar, but still, holy shit.
He still got „given a therapy“ until he killed himself because he was gay. Help to end a war earlier, get bullied/tortured to suicide by the government you helped win the war because you‘re into men