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A teenage cook whose heroics onboard a warship helped shorten the Second World War has been honoured in his home town after a public vote. The regenerated centre of North Shields, North Tyneside, has been named after Thomas Brown, who was awarded the George Medal for helping to retrieve codebooks from a sinking German U-boat in October 1942. The books were later used to crack the Enigma code by experts at Bletchley Park, enabling the British to decipher Nazi messages. Two naval men died while searching the stricken submarine but Thomas, a 15-year-old civilian who lied about his age to...

The largest cut diamond in the world is about to go up for auction. The extraordinary jewel, nicknamed "The Enigma" is a billions-year-old Fancy Black diamond that is rumored to originate from space. According to the auction house, the stone is a carbonado black diamond, which are extremely rare, occur naturally, and usually date from 2.6 to 3.8 billion years old. It contains nitrogen and hydrogen but also a mineral called osbornite usually found in meteorites, which suggests an outer space connection. What that connection is exactly is unclear, however. Extraterrestrial diamonds from meteorites are tiny, usually nano-sized. This diamond...

Your spy skills could soon be put to the test by a new 50-cent coin covered in secret, coded messages. The limited-edition commemorative coin will be released on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the nation's foreign intelligence cybersecurity agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). While the coin is not intended for circulation, 50,000 specialty coins will be available for purchase from the Royal Australian Mint, each featuring four levels of coded messages to crack. ASD director-general Rachel Noble said the coin celebrated the work of the agency's members and the evolution of code-breaking. "Back in World War II,...

Folded in his bunk aboard the U-505 submarine, with temperatures topping 100 degrees, a German sailor recorded his misery: "For a few days now we have been 'enjoying' the tropical heat. Everybody is perspiring freely,'' he writes. "Even in the bunks it takes only a few minutes until everything is soaked wet. The heat is so unbearable. ... "Sometimes wish I could shed my skin." On June 5, the Museum of Science and Industry will open a new $35 million indoor exhibit of its famous World War II U-505 sub, captured by the U.S. Navy in 1944. But the museum's...

Turing thought computers would advance to the point where they could win the imitation game most of the time by the year 2000, and he got that pretty much right. What he couldn’t have predicted was that political correctness would strip away so much of human identity, and make communication so awkward, that the millennial generation of humans would begin failing his test. It is very difficult to tell the difference between a Social Justice Warrior and a bot program based solely on their discourse. It would be a simple matter to write a program that searches the Internet for...

So, this weekend's news in the tech world was flooded with a "story" about how a "chatbot" passed the Turing Test for "the first time," with lots of publications buying every point in the story and talking about what a big deal it was. Except, almost everything about the story is bogus and a bunch of gullible reporters ran with it, because that's what they do. First, here's the press release from the University of Reading, which should have set off all sorts of alarm bells for any reporter. Here are some quotes, almost all of which are misleading...

Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea Recovery of the century’s long lost-quintessential mechanical encryption machine: The Enigma code machine was made in the cold Baltic Sea in Europe nearly three centuries after its drastic beneficial purpose had been served during the second world war. Having been said that during the ending period of World War II, the machine was abandoned deep into the sea by German to keep it out of reach of the allies. WHAT IS AN ENIGMA CODE? The Enigma code machine. ( image source ) Enigma machines also used a form of substitution encryption. Substitution...

Alan Turing was a British scientist and a pioneer in computer science. He is well-known for breaking the German Enigma code during World War II. His suicide after being convicted of homosexual acts has made him a martyred hero of the gay community ... Turing made it his goal to crack the complex Enigma code used in German naval communications, which were generally regarded as unbreakable. Turing cracked the system and regular decryption of German messages began in mid-1941. To maintain progress on code-breaking, Turing introduced the use of electronic technology to gain higher speeds of mechanical working. Turing became...

"While all historians agree that the interception of German secret traffic by the Allies was a major factor in the ultimate victory in World War II, for many years, even after the declassification of official wartime documents on the subject, the role of Poles was either totally ignored or skimmed over with only vague references in historical literature." (Witold K. Liliental, Ph.D., Montreal, Canada in Everyone's War, Great Britain, 2000).

'It is the height of the Second World War. A group of codebreakers stands in a dimly lit warehouse 50 miles northwest of London, a giant machine composed of spinning drums and wires looms in front of them. It's taken years of work -- as well as a few shouting matches -- to get the device assembled and ready to start sorting through 159 quintillion combinations in search of the one that will let the British crack the Germans' infamous Enigma machine. The switch is flipped and nine rows of drums begin spinning as the assembled group waits... and waits....

Alan Turing and the New Emergentists Erik J. Larson February 18, 2015 4:29 AM | Permalink The acclaimed Alan Turing biographical film The Imitation Game is up for multiple Oscars on Sunday. It is a tale of Turing as a tragic hero and misunderstood genius, irascible, certainly idiosyncratic, who insinuates himself into a job interview at Bletchley Park as a self-proclaimed mathematical genius, which later is born out as true. He "invents" the digital computer to solve the decryption challenge posed by the German Enigma machines, and thus saves the Allied powers from Hitler.  The film is a human-interest story,...

The head of Britain's digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization's historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency's ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. "The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the Cold War, but it does not...

The head of MI6 has apologised for the “misguided, unjust and discriminatory” ban on gay spies, 30 years after the restriction was lifted. In a message on Twitter, Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, apologised for the treatment of LGBT staff and potential candidates before the government-wide security ban was lifted in 1991. Same-sex relationships were decriminalised in Britain in 1967. However, it took more than two decades before the security bar to LGBT individuals serving in any of the UK intelligence agencies was rescinded. Mr Moore said this was down to a “misguided view that they...

The acclaimed fiction author tells the tale of the man who changed the world, though few have heard of him. John Atanasoff got an idea one night in the late 1930s and developed it into the first computer. Ms. Smiley discusses the man, his invention and his obscurity with Washington Post technology writer Cecilia Kang. Jane Smiley has written 15 works of fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres. She's also written four works of non-fiction and been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2006, she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for...

1865: After learning that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the previous month, Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest surrenders his men at Gainesville, Ala.. Forrest orders his men to “submit to the powers to be, and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land.” The infamous cavalry officer, whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman would refer to as “that devil Forrest,” is considered one of the most brilliant tacticians of the Civil War; a remarkable feat considering he enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private with no prior military experience. 1926: Naval aviators...

The naval family has lost a quiet hero whose actions helped change the course of the Battle of the Atlantic - and World War 2. The bravery of Sub Lt David Balme in the chilly waters of the North Atlantic off Greenland in May 1941 ensured the most prized piece of equipment in the German war machine fell into Allied hands: the Enigma coder. Balme, who died at the weekend aged 95, led a boarding party on to crippled U110 when the submarine was brought to the surface by depth charges after the boat attacked a convoy. The U-boat's captain...

Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea Century’s long lost-quintessential mechanical encryption machine-the Enigma code machine was recovered in the cold Baltic Sea in Europe nearly 75 years after its drastic beneficial purpose had been served during the second world war. Having been said that during the ending period of World War II, the machine was abandoned deep into the sea by German to keep it out of reach of the allies. WHAT IS AN ENIGMA CODE? The Enigma code machine. ( image source ) Enigma machines also used a form of substitution encryption. Substitution encryption is a simple...

The head of Britain’s digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization’s historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency’s ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. […] The speech offered a poignant tribute to Turing, the gay computer science pioneer and architect of the effort to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cipher. Turing...

Not Every Leak Is Fit to Print Why have federal prosecutors subpoenaed a New York Times reporter?by Gabriel Schoenfeld 02/18/2008, Volume 013, Issue 22 Investigations of national-security leaks in Washington are not all that rare. But until Judith Miller of the New York Times was sent to jail for 85 days by a special prosecutor digging into the Valerie Plame imbroglio, investigations of such leaks in which journalists are subpoenaed were about as common as unicorns wandering the National Mall. We now have another such unicorn. On January 24, a federal grand jury in Alexandria issued a subpoena to...

The bright teenager from Beckingham, Kent — known then as Dorothy Winifred Shiers — had studied accounting in high school and turned her proficiency with numbers into a job with a London company. But with her nation at war, she heeded the call and joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service, or Wrens as they were known. At the end of her basic training, she was required to sign the Official Secrets Act, its inherent solemnity backed by the promise of a £2,000 fine and two years in prison for contravention at any time prior to 1975. Lincoln was an Enigma...