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posted by janrinok on Monday January 01 2018, @02:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the Jryy-Qbar dept.

One married couple was responsible for the foundations of modern code breaking, and the principles that gave the NSA a head start in cryptanalysis. Though the husband, William Friedman, is usually apportioned the lion's share of the credit, his wife Elizebeth Friedman was in every way his equal. During World War II, both worked under total secrecy, and only now are we learning about Elizebeth's critical work uncovering the secrets of Nazi spies—and cracking the codes of the notorious "Doll Lady" suspected of working for the Japanese.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/world-war-2-codebreakers-elizebeth-smith-friedman/


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @03:43AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @03:43AM (#616334)

    Is "awesomeness" a scientifically-measureable phenomenon?

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @03:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @03:45AM (#616336)

      It's code for the banality of the publication.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:00AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:00AM (#616338)

      Yes, when males do something important it's average but when a female does something good it's "awesome". Every such article written by a creepy "male feminist ally" and that is a scientifically-measurable phenomenon.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:35AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:35AM (#616344)

        Also age.
        When a young male teen builds a Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor the media jizzes in their pants. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
        When your career culminates in the completion of a 500 MW tokamak reactor, media silence.

        You'll know when a female teen builds a baking soda volcano, because you'll be gagging and drowning in jizz.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:39AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:39AM (#616346)

          Or an alarm clock in high school.

          • (Score: 2) by chromas on Monday January 01 2018, @05:44AM

            by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 01 2018, @05:44AM (#616360) Journal

            I wish I could get fame, fortune, free scholarships and meet the Prez and astronauts just for putting clock guts into a briefcase. Damn White Privilege™.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @01:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @01:18PM (#616406)

      I detect pussy envy, Must be hard to be you.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 01 2018, @04:14AM (3 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 01 2018, @04:14AM (#616341) Homepage Journal

    How are tits relevant to math? Sorry, ladies, but cheerleading women simply because they're women is just as sexist as deriding them because they're women.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:53AM (#616353)

      Sounds like you've never tried doing maths with tits, or cheerleading without.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @12:47PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @12:47PM (#616400)

      How are tits relevant to math?

      sigh

      Turn in your nerd card, TMB. Tits are very relevant to code breaking and computer science. There are two tits and binary has two states. Do the math.

      • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday January 01 2018, @02:32PM

        by unauthorized (3776) on Monday January 01 2018, @02:32PM (#616417)

        Turn in your nerd card, TMB.

        Right back at you, AC. Even if you limit yourself to the human species and ignore genetic deformities, the set of available states is {0, 1, 2}.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:40AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:40AM (#616348)

    No mention of Alan Turing in a top code breakers of WWII article? Seems like a pretty big omission, unless my knowledge of history is wrong.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @07:30AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @07:30AM (#616371)

      I mean, the Prime Minister apologized to his estate and pardoned him; welcome to the club of the patriarchy, fags.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:26PM (#616521)

      Turing wasn't a woman, therefore his contributions to science are irrelevant. You are getting in the way of progress: we need more women in STEM and the only way to do that is propaganda like this. Or quotas... yeah, let's make a rule that 50% of important scientific discoveries have to be made, by women from now, on.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 01 2018, @04:59AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 01 2018, @04:59AM (#616355) Journal

    I'm not even a feminist, but I am perfectly aware that most of the codebreakers, as well as the computer techs during WWII were females. FFS, the story has been "broken" so many times, only people who live under rocks can be unaware of it.
    https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=ww2+women+computers+codebreakers&ia=web [duckduckgo.com]

    Don't even click any of the links - just scroll through the search results. Page after page of results. Amazon advertising books on the subject, CNN articles, BBC articles, codebreaker.org, military history, and so much more. It's no secret that women carried the burden during WW2. FFS, able bodied men were off fighting a war - who was left? Cripples, old men, and - uhhhhh - WOMEN!!

    Rosy the riveter is wondering what the fuss is all about.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by tftp on Monday January 01 2018, @05:44AM

      by tftp (806) on Monday January 01 2018, @05:44AM (#616361) Homepage

      Women’s work would be vital to the British war effort in World War Two, so much so that it soon became compulsory (women had to do it by law). Early in 1941, Ernest Bevin, the Government Minister for Labour, declared that, 'one million wives' were 'wanted for war work'. Later that year, in December 1941, women began to be conscripted for war work, when Parliament passed the National Service Act. All unmarried women aged 20-30, (later extended to 19-43), now had to either join the armed forces, work in a factory or work on the land with the Women's Land Army.

      (link) [mylearning.org]

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @05:53AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @05:53AM (#616364)

    It makes one strongly suspect that even if she wasn't her husband's equal, the author would portray her as being such anyway. A culture of celebrating a group of people with an arbitrary genetic trait only serves to undermine all celebration, legitimate or otherwise, of others with that same trait under the suspicion the celebration is in part due to that trait.

    If this article was titled "Newly Declassified Codebreaking was Key to Defeating Japan in WWII" then I'd be interested, as it is I suspect she did something worthwhile and it's being blown out of proportion by a reporter who's breathless at the shock that tits don't preclude mathematical ability.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @07:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @07:33AM (#616372)

      The notability of womanhood in a story just proves that excellence in that domain is unexpected among women.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:11AM (#616383)

    Why couldn't a woman be?
    How is this news?

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @11:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @11:29AM (#616389)

    I'm assuming she was a teenager and this article is from a teen girls magazine. Most awesome? I'd hope they also found that Alan Turing was the most fabulous and someone black was the the most hippest cat in dat bitch.

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @02:46PM (#616420)

    Total absolute garbage sentimentalism and SJW propaganda. Of course no mention of Alan Turing, because SJWs abandoned the Homosexual wagon long ago, when they hitched their horses to the ever more degenerate "queer" buggy, with their fucking "drag-queen story hour" and even more degenerate "pride dance parties" full of disgusting naked men in full view of public, gyrating and doing god knows what else.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @04:45PM (#616444)

      I know, I can hardly take my eyes off their hairless, oiled, muscular torsos. Sooooooo disgusting.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 01 2018, @10:09PM (#616515)

    This is why scientists, engineers and others doing anything useful need to learn to decide whether they want to work for a regime or not. Whether they want to fight a war or not. Just doing my job is a bad excuse. They must know and spread the word that their country (dictatorship, puppet democratic govt, whatever) is or is not doing the right thing.

    When people say a nation is not responsible for the doings of its government, I say YES _they_are_responsible_ for everything their government does in their name. Be it Vietnam or Korea. The persons doing the fighting and the supplying and the engineering need to decide whether they will be fighting a war someone in an air-conditioned office wants them to fight. Humans and animals should be different beings.

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