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Novo Nordisk's Canadian Mistake

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/novo-nordisk-s-canadian-mistake
120•jbm•1h ago•42 comments

Show HN: 18yo first iOS app: blocks distracting apps and unlocks with QR/barcode

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/recode-screen-time-control/id6752352978
28•alhart•55m ago•5 comments

Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/advice.html
295•peterkshultz•5h ago•111 comments

Dosbian: Boot to DOSBox on Raspberry Pi

https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/
75•indigodaddy•2h ago•20 comments

Airliner hit by possible space debris

https://avbrief.com/united-max-hit-by-falling-object-at-36000-feet/
109•d_silin•4h ago•43 comments

Duke Nukem: Zero Hour N64 ROM Reverse-Engineering Project Hits 100%

https://github.com/Gillou68310/DukeNukemZeroHour
16•birdculture•1h ago•2 comments

Compare Single Board Computers

https://sbc.compare/
90•todsacerdoti•4h ago•36 comments

GNU Octave Meets JupyterLite: Compute Anywhere, Anytime

https://blog.jupyter.org/gnu-octave-meets-jupyterlite-compute-anywhere-anytime-8b033afbbcdc
91•bauta-steen•6h ago•14 comments

Could the XZ backdoor been detected with better Git/Deb packaging practices?

https://optimizedbyotto.com/post/xz-backdoor-debian-git-detection/
47•ottoke•4h ago•36 comments

The working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn't see in the movies

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-o...
62•hansmayer•1w ago•13 comments

The Spilhaus Projection: A world map according to fish

https://southernwoodenboatsailing.com/news/the-spilhaus-projection-a-world-map-according-to-fish
72•zynovex•1w ago•10 comments

Deterministic multithreading is hard (2024)

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-415
11•adtac•13h ago•1 comments

Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a new one

https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/10/14/fridge-power-consumption/
79•furkansahin•5d ago•114 comments

The Trinary Dream Endures

https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/trinary-dream/
34•FromTheArchives•5h ago•47 comments

Infisical (YC W23) Is Hiring Full Stack Engineers

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/infisical/jobs/0gY2Da1-full-stack-engineer-global
1•vmatsiiako•5h ago

Show HN: Duck-UI – Browser-Based SQL IDE for DuckDB

https://demo.duckui.com
168•caioricciuti•11h ago•54 comments

Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, study finds

https://stories.tamu.edu/news/2025/10/07/abandoned-land-drives-dangerous-heat-in-houston-texas-am...
108•PaulHoule•8h ago•113 comments

The macOS LC_COLLATE hunt: Or why does sort order differently on macOS and Linux (2020)

https://blog.zhimingwang.org/macos-lc_collate-hunt
67•g0xA52A2A•9h ago•13 comments

How to Assemble an Electric Heating Element from Scratch

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-an-electric-heating-element-from-scratch/
74•surprisetalk•9h ago•48 comments

Show HN: Pyversity – Fast Result Diversification for Retrieval and RAG

https://github.com/Pringled/pyversity
58•Tananon•8h ago•5 comments

Redis Backplane for Hubots

https://github.com/hubot-friends/hubot-redis-backplane
6•gijoeyguerra•5d ago•2 comments

Ask HN: What are people doing to get off of VMware?

89•jwithington•5h ago•61 comments

The case for the return of fine-tuning

https://welovesota.com/article/the-case-for-the-return-of-fine-tuning
123•nanark•12h ago•69 comments

The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA)

https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/
5•1970-01-01•6d ago•0 comments

Scheme Reports at Fifty

https://crumbles.blog/posts/2025-10-18-scheme-reports-at-fifty.html
38•djwatson24•7h ago•13 comments

Improving PixelMelt's Kindle Web Deobfuscator

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/improving-pixelmelts-kindle-web-deobfuscator/
82•ColinWright•10h ago•14 comments

Xubuntu.org Might Be Compromised

https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1oa4549/xubuntuorg_might_be_compromised/
282•kekqqq•8h ago•120 comments

Designing EventQL, an Event Query Language

https://docs.eventsourcingdb.io/blog/2025/10/20/designing-eventql-an-event-query-language/
5•goloroden•2h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Open-Source Voice AI Badge Powered by ESP32+WebRTC

https://github.com/VapiAI/vapicon-2025-hardware-workshop
36•Sean-Der•1w ago•3 comments

OpenAI researcher announced GPT-5 math breakthrough that never happened

https://the-decoder.com/leading-openai-researcher-announced-a-gpt-5-math-breakthrough-that-never-...
346•Topfi•10h ago•196 comments
Open in hackernews

The working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn't see in the movies

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies
62•hansmayer•1w ago

Comments

jleyank•1w ago
Like the early hackers, he made things. In Flower's case, he made things than enabled hackers (eventually). While theory is important and interesting, actually making sh*t that works moves things forward.

Yeah, he also helped shorten the war which saved a whole lot of lives.

WalterBright•30m ago
The U-Boot commanders all knew that the Enigma had been cracked, but Admiral Doenitz refused to believe it.

Rommel's Afrika Korps was also defeated by Enigma, because Rommel also refused to believe it was cracked. Enigma pointed out when and where Rommel's supply ships were.

No matter how secure your encryption method is, one should always assume it is cracked. Me, I would have backed it up with one-time pads.

defrost•9m ago
> all knew that the Enigma had been cracked, but Admiral Doenitz refused to believe it.

Whereas:

  The dropping results made Admiral Dönitz suspicious. Although reassured by the Abwehr, the German Foreign Intelligence, that Enigma was unbreakable, he insisted on improving the security of Enigma. On 1 February 1942 the famous Enigma M4 model with four rotors and new key sheets were introduced. 
~ https://www.ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/enigmauboats....

~ https://uboat.net/technical/enigma_ciphers.htm

There were multiple Enigma variations, based on rotor choice pool sizes, number of fittable rotors, time cycles to changing procedures, etc. Some naval enigma variations were broken, others weren't.

aspenmayer•5m ago
> Me, I would have backed it up with one-time pads.

Even one-time pads are subject to the efforts used to counter Enigma, such as so-called gardening. I fully agree that layers are better than a single method like Enigma was many times in practice, which is usually all-or-none with no failsafe, at least until later in the war, when Enigma variants started being used in combination with coded messages and code words on top of the Enigma cipher machines themselves, but those efforts were foiled by the dedication and planning of the gardeners’ known-plaintext attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardening_(cryptanalysis)

> In cryptanalysis, gardening is the act of encouraging a target to use known plaintext in an encrypted message, typically by performing some action the target is sure to report. It was a term used during World War II at the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, England, for schemes to entice the Germans to include particular words, which the British called "cribs", in their encrypted messages. This term presumably came from RAF minelaying missions, or "gardening" sorties. "Gardening" was standard RAF slang for sowing mines in rivers, ports and oceans from low heights, possibly because each sea area around the European coasts was given a code-name of flowers or vegetables.

> The technique is claimed to have been most effective against messages produced by the German Navy's Enigma machines. If the Germans had recently swept a particular area for mines, and analysts at Bletchley Park were in need of some cribs, they might (and apparently did on several occasions) request that the area be mined again. This would hopefully evoke encrypted messages from the local command mentioning Minen (German for mines), the location, and perhaps messages also from the headquarters with minesweeping ships to assign to that location, mentioning the same. It worked often enough to try several times.

drcongo•2h ago
Pretty sure anyone who knows even a tiny bit of Bletchley Park history is well aware of Tommy Flowers.
aspenmayer•1h ago
Did you ever see them or a character in their role in a movie?
ViktorRay•1h ago
I don’t understand why it matters whether someone was in a movie or not.

It’s a sad commentary on western culture that being in a movie seemingly has the importance that it seems to.

aspenmayer•1h ago
Art imitates life, except when it doesn’t accurately depict the lived reality and efforts of those who did the work and won the war, in which case it’s arguably closer to myth making. The original author of the James Bond series of books, for example, engaged in this kind of propaganda, arguably with good intentions and positive impact.

It’s relevant whether or not they were depicted in a movie because that is the context of this thread, because that is the topic of the fine article itself.

Maxatar•1h ago
Doesn't make much sense to say it doesn't matter and also that it's sad.

If it's sad then it matters, if it doesn't matter then it isn't sad.

hecanjog•1h ago
I was under pretty much all the false impressions mentioned in the article, it was a nice introduction for me. The name comes up, but I never connected the dots.
MattPalmer1086•1h ago
He's certainly in the histories I've read, but I guess most people don't read those.

Also, his grandson often sits in front of my Mum and Dad at football matches! Although I only found that out a lot later.

nkrisc•23m ago
I suppose knowing that they cracked Enigma (and what it is) there and knowing who Alan Turing is qualifies as less than a “tiny” amount because I had no idea who he is, and I would wager that’s more than a large majority of the public know.
mwnorman2•1h ago
Bill Tutte founded the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization in 1962 at the University of Waterloo (the year I was born!). No one knew about his Bletchley Park work until 1985; later in 2001 he was awarded the Order of Canada (he passed away the following year aged 84). I was amongst the usual group of often confused undergraduates in his C&O classes ... his mind just operated on a level that few of us mere mortals could ever understand!