80 Years Later, GCHQ Releases New Images of Nazi Code-Breaking Computer (arstechnica.com) 79
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) announced the release of previously unseen images and documents related to Colossus, one of the first digital computers. The release marks the 80th anniversary of the code-breaking machines that significantly aided the Allied forces during World War II. While some in the public knew of the computers earlier (PDF), the UK did not formally acknowledge the project's existence until the 2000s.
Colossus was not one computer but a series of computers developed by British scientists between 1943 and 1945. These 2-meter-tall electronic beasts played an instrumental role in breaking the Lorenz cipher, a code used for communications between high-ranking German officials in occupied Europe. The computers were said to have allowed allies to "read Hitler's mind," according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The technology behind Colossus was highly innovative for its time. Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind its construction, used over 2,500 vacuum tubes to create logic gates, a precursor to the semiconductor-based electronic circuits found in modern computers. While 1945's ENIAC was long considered the clear front-runner in digital computing, the revelation of Colossus' earlier existence repositioned it in computing history. (However, it's important to note that ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, and Colossus was not.)
GCHQ's public sharing of archival documents includes several photos of the computer at different periods and a letter discussing Tommy Flowers' groundbreaking work that references the interception of "rather alarming German instructions." Following the war, the UK government issued orders for the destruction of most Colossus machines, and Flowers was required to turn over all related documentation. The GCHQ claims that the Colossus tech "was so effective, its functionality was still in use by us until the early 1960s." In the GCHQ press release, Director Anne Keast-Butler paid tribute to Colossus' place in the UK's lineage of technological innovation: "The creativity, ingenuity and dedication shown by Tommy Flowers and his team to keep the country safe were as crucial to GCHQ then as today."
Colossus was not one computer but a series of computers developed by British scientists between 1943 and 1945. These 2-meter-tall electronic beasts played an instrumental role in breaking the Lorenz cipher, a code used for communications between high-ranking German officials in occupied Europe. The computers were said to have allowed allies to "read Hitler's mind," according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The technology behind Colossus was highly innovative for its time. Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind its construction, used over 2,500 vacuum tubes to create logic gates, a precursor to the semiconductor-based electronic circuits found in modern computers. While 1945's ENIAC was long considered the clear front-runner in digital computing, the revelation of Colossus' earlier existence repositioned it in computing history. (However, it's important to note that ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, and Colossus was not.)
GCHQ's public sharing of archival documents includes several photos of the computer at different periods and a letter discussing Tommy Flowers' groundbreaking work that references the interception of "rather alarming German instructions." Following the war, the UK government issued orders for the destruction of most Colossus machines, and Flowers was required to turn over all related documentation. The GCHQ claims that the Colossus tech "was so effective, its functionality was still in use by us until the early 1960s." In the GCHQ press release, Director Anne Keast-Butler paid tribute to Colossus' place in the UK's lineage of technological innovation: "The creativity, ingenuity and dedication shown by Tommy Flowers and his team to keep the country safe were as crucial to GCHQ then as today."
The important thing about Nazis... (Score:3, Informative)
is killing them. Oh sure, punch them in the face too, but most importantly kill them.
Hats off to everybody, soldier, spy, electrical engineer, or nurse, who worked together to kill Nazis.
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No, the neo-Nazis hate the fuhrer, because he wasn't American and only a foreign agitator.
(umlauts removed because they're not american enough, and for slashdot reasons)
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:3, Interesting)
So youâ(TM)re backing the guy who set up camps that were murdering people on an industrial scale? Or are you one of those folk who think the Holocaust was a fiction?
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So youâ(TM)re backing the guy who set up camps that were murdering people on an industrial scale? Or are you one of those folk who think the Holocaust was a fiction?
There's always someone foolish enough to think they'll be the ones to benefit from inequality and authoritarian dictatorships. He wouldn't dare think that he'd be the one being dragged off for forced euthanasia under Action T4 because his neighbour outed him as a degenerate (true or not, the accusation was often enough).
Remember that the rich white supremacists look down on those Rednecks who their bidding with the same disdain that they look down on the non-whites. To paraphrase Marilyn Manson "everybod
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There's always someone foolish enough to think they'll be the ones to benefit from inequality and authoritarian dictatorships.
In the United States we call them Trump voters. Or MAGA. But you are right they are always there.
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That's what the Nazis said about the Jews. What makes you any different?
You pick a scapegoat and unleash all your hate on them, for at least two minutes a day. Who the scapegoat is doesn't matter as long as it is someone else. That's what the Nazis did, and that is what you are doing.
The important thing is not to kill them. The important thing is not to be like them, and to not let it happen again that their likes dictate policy.
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Essentially, what the freeze peach fundamentalists are arguing for, whether knowingly or not, is to allow intolerance to take over. If we don't tell arseholes to f**k off, they ruin things for everyone else. That means no absolute free speech.
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Do you know who else resolved the tolerance paradox by deciding to pre-emptively kill people they disagreed strongly with?
Re:The important thing about Nazis... (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition, most countries already have laws that prevent the most extreme forms of intolerance & some have laws against intolerance against demographic groups, e.g. women, people of colour, LGBTQ+, people with different religions or no religion (secular state), etc..
There's really no need to go around killing people. We just need to be a bit more pro-active about cultivating the societies that we should have, i.e. beneficial & pleasant for everyone.
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What's with all this killing people? How about cultivating tolerance & educating people about the benefits of tolerance & the dangers of intolerance?
Education, real education, where critical thinking and empathy and a wider view of us as part of something bigger, call it society, the human race, the world, the universe, are part of the curriculum, is expensive and hard to do right. Creating little automatons that fall in line and do the work, even if they are mentally exhausted, physically abused by their employers and governments (speaking of the American work provided insurance/insurance/healthcare scam), bled of resources that could be used to provid
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But the rich need the commoners, and the commoners need the rich. I think there's an irrational hatred of someone rich that can be self defeating. Ie, a state GOP decides that they hate their rich benefactors and put their own person in charge, and then the fundraising dries up, the books go into debt, and still the faithful rank and file like it because the new leader isn't one of the "establishment".
The uber-rich get portrayed as the ultimage enemy, the powers that pull the strings: Soros for example.
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Yes! To prevent free speech from being under attack we must limit free speech. To prevent democracy from being under attack we must control who can appear on the ballot. For we are the good guys, and they are the bad guys, and so it shall be forever more!
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Do you copy & paste that comment or type it out each time. It's a well-worn, knee-jerk retort without merit. You haven't addressed my point at all.
It's totally with merit. What you use against your enemies, you warrant against yourself. Tell me; how many neo-nazis and kkk members are in the US? Does that make it right to limit the ballot of a party? Does that party have the right to limit you if it gains power? Take the Israel / Palastine conflict... there is obvious intolerance there, but who has a right to fling the first missile?
It is the boy who cried wolf. Giorgia Meloni hasn't rounded up and killed all the immigrants, Trump didn't round up all o
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Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:2)
Congratulations, you understood why it's called a paradox.
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The paradox is that you think you are being tolerant while being intolerant.
You think that by murdering people you are not a murderer because you only murder people you want to murder.
And you don't even notice this inconsistency.
Tolerance is always the tolerance of those who disagree with you. Otherwise it wouldn't be tolerance. You subscribe to the notion that there must be an in-group that you are part of, a group which is protected by the rules but not bound by them, protected from an out-group that is
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Why would you think that?
Are you fishing for a definition?
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The difference is that Nazis practised genocide. Kill all the Nazis, however, is not genocide because political persuasion is not a characteristic covered in international law for what constitutes genocide.
The death penalty for anyone engaged in genocide seems pretty reasonable to me. Under that perfectly reasonable set of rules killing all Nazis is a perfectly rational and reasonable position.
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Under that perfectly reasonable set of rules killing all Nazis is a perfectly rational and reasonable position.
Except if they're a "good" Nazi [smithsonianmag.com] who knows things [xkcd.com].
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Except that now you have to define "Nazi". Kill anyone who wants a strong leader in charge who can cut through legislative obstruction? Kill anyone who might have a racist thought? Even in WWII Germany, most Nazis did not really have strong Nazi beliefs, the death camps were kept secret from most citizens. Even those who supported the NSDAP were mostly there because they were caught up in the lies. And that party existed _before_ Hitler wrested control of it.
Killing all the Nazis means thought crimes ge
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The difference is that Nazis practised genocide.
Is it really?
They were just following orders, like the Campbells in Glencoe.
They were doing their duty for God and fatherland.
They could no longer allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, and the international conspiracy of Communists to sap and impurify their precious bodily fluids.
Yes, the Nazis committed genocide. So did The Honourable East India Trading company. Genocide is also how the West was won. If capital punishment for genocide is rational and reasonable (which I have reservatio
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There is a subtle but very important difference.
The Nazis hated Jews, and blamed them (and LGBTQ people, and Roma, and many others) for all their problems.
People who oppose Nazis hate fascism. If a Nazi renounces their ideology, they cease to be a Nazi. A Jew or an LGBTQ person can't cease being what they are.
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In addition to Jews and Roma, Nazis also [ushmm.org] went after "political opponents, gay men, 'asocials,' and Jehovahâ(TM)s Witnesses". And that was even before WW2, during which they expanded their targeting. Jews were always considered worse enemies to the Nazis than the other groups, but being "asocial" was enough to send one to a death camp.
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One of the very first things they did when they came to power was to destroy the only gender clinic in Germany. Nazis were the original "gender critical" group.
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And let's not neglect their disdain for people of other colors.
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:1)
Nazi germany defined you as a Jew if some of you grandparents were Jewish. It wasnâ(TM)t as simple as whether you avoided bacon and attended synagogue.
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You can hate the Nazis and other Fascists without calling for their extermination. That is the decisive and not at all subtle difference.
Threatening people with death if they don't change their believes is not a reliable conversion strategy. It is a proven way to make people lie about their convictions, which won't stop them from acting on them, it just makes it more difficult to do something about it.
Therefore, calling for the extermination of those who you are ideologically opposed to is no different fr
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:2)
I'm willing to coexist with anyone else that is also willing to do the same. Ideally people who will do so as equals in a classless, nonheirarchal way. But it was clear at Mein Kampf and onwards these guys weren't willing to coexist with a whole lot of groups.
Practically speaking, any 20th century German was free to change his mind and stop supporting Nazis. But no Jew could stop being a Jew in the eyes if an antisemite.
P.S. I live in a country that still hasn't resolve this basic problem with people gettin
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>P.S. I live in a country that still hasn't resolve this basic problem with people getting along.
You've narrowed that down by eliminating zero countries!
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Practically speaking, any 20th century German was free to change his mind and stop supporting Nazis.
That depens on what you mean by "support".
The Nazis didn't have a lot of political support in Germany. (Or anywhere, really. King Edward VIII was a sympathiser, but most of their backers where American industrialists; even the German industrialists only began actively backing them after Hindenburg's death. Mostly they were seen as a joke until then.) Practically speaking, there was no way for people to stop being Nazis if they had never been Nazis to begin with.
But people still paid their taxes, and the
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Yup, this political tactic is time tested and still being used today. You can lie, cheat, and steal as long as you accuse others of the same or worse crimes. There are enough people who don't pay attention that you will have support even if the dirty secrets come out. Just call everything you dislike "socialist", because anyone who disputes this is a dirty socialist. Rhubarb pie is socialist. See, it works! You get arrested, then accuse your enemies of making up lies. Hitler was a nobody until after
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I'll start worrying about Nazis when I see them putting little boys in dresses and cutting off their dicks. Until I do, I'll do my worrying about the people who really are putting little boys in dresses and cutting off their dicks, and they aren't the Nazis. Nazis would be a step up.
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:2)
I can count the number of elective gender assignment surgeries perform on children on ... Zero hands.
Christ I hope your just trying at satire and I'm having trouble understanding it this morning. because I'll be disappointed if you seriously believe in weird child abuse politics.
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You are flat out lying.
https://www.foxnews.com/politi... [foxnews.com]
No U R (Score:2)
For children who have not yet started puberty, there are no recommended drugs, surgeries or other gender-transition treatments.
Please call the POLICE and the FDA and the AMA and the AAP if you catch someone performing illegal and unapproved procedures on children. That hypothetical doctor needs to medical license ripped up.
Professionals have expressed a preference for consuling as the treatment of gender dysphoria and transgender minors. The main medical treatment available for transgender children is a pub
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It used to be standard when an intersex baby was born that doctors would consult with parents about whether to 'fix' the problem or what sex they wanted assigned. Anathema at the time to be ambiguous.
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That wasn't considered elective by doctors or insurance at the time. Not performing the correction was an uphill battle and you pretty much needed a priest to call up the hospital and put a stop to it on religious exemption.
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This myth just won't die. They don't do gender affirming surgery on children. The only medication is puberty blockers, to give the child time to develop emotionally without the trauma of developing sexual characteristics not matching their gender. In most cases, stopping the puberty blockers allows puberty to proceed normally, with no lasting side effects.
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The only medication is puberty blockers, to give the child time to develop emotionally without the trauma of developing sexual characteristics not matching their gender.
That you don't have an issue preventing children from developing their sexual charateristics is saddening. These are children (in reality their parents) that we are preventing from naturally growing up.
We don't trust them with cigerettes, alchohol, pornography, but trust them to decide - with all their years of experience - that they don't want to be their gender?
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That's the point of puberty blockers. They give the child time to reach adulthood and make a decision to begin medical transitioning or not.
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:2)
They are the culture equivalent of cancer and you can't let it spread.
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:1)
To be fair, the body count under communism made Hitler look like an amateur. Maybe we can say that both nazism and communism are awful?
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Based upon listening to many people here and there, it seems like half the world is communist and half the world is fascist. That really leave just you and me as the only sane ones, and we're not enough to repopulate the planet.
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You should try telling that to the people who actually fought in the war.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
Re: The important thing about Nazis... (Score:1)
That was a very interesting link. Thank you. I bought the book it referenced.
Bletchley Park is worth a visit (Score:5, Informative)
In recent years they've massively expanded the BP museum. And the National Museum of Computing (which has working replica Colossus and Heath Robinson machines) on the same site is even better. If you want to see everything, plan a two-day visit.
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*This* is how history is retained. By illustrating it, documenting it, and repeating it.
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In recent years they've massively expanded the BP museum. And the National Museum of Computing (which has working replica Colossus and Heath Robinson machines) on the same site is even better. If you want to see everything, plan a two-day visit.
+1 for the Bletchley Park Code and Cypher School and the criminally underrated National Museum of Computing. Both worth a visit if you live in or are visiting southern England... other than that there's not much of a reason to be in Milton Keynes, fun fact: there are 140 roundabouts in Milton Keynes giving you ample opportunity to turn around.
Jokes aside, cant recommend Bletchley Park or the museum of computing enough. Both are walking distance from Bletchley train station and there's ample parking. If y
Impressive work (Score:2)
The first digital general-purpose computer was the Zuse Z3, but the ENIAC was a a close second.
The Colossus looks cleaner than I expected for something hacked together in a hurry.
Seeing how in The Forbin Project the computer was named Colossus, it seems that a lot more people knew about this above top secret machine than the GCHQ would have been comfortable with. Or maybe it's coincidence?
Re:Impressive work (Score:5, Informative)
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I would also add that as I understand it Colossus *WAS* a general purpose computer. The difference between Colossus and ENIAC was the latter was electronically programmable in later iterations (initially it was programmed like Colossus) whereas Colossus required you to physically change the system via plug boards to program it. ENIAC was also a decimal rather than binary system like Colossus and the Zuse Z3. However the Zuse Z3 was electromechanical rather than electronic.
The Manchester Baby is the first "p
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Colossus is not a general-purpose computer. It had no program storage, it could only run the data stream to a fixed set of algorithms - the programmer would choose one from the available set.
(from Colossus - the secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking machines, by Copeland)
Re:Impressive work (Score:5, Informative)
The main leap forward that Colossus made was that it was the first large scale vacuum tube machine in the world. Until that point there was considerable doubt as to if a machine with more than 1000 vacuum tubes would be practical. As well as drawing a lot of power and producing a lot of heat, it was thought that vacuum tubes were unreliable, so having more than 1000 all working at once would be impossible.
The cause of the unreliability was mostly the heater elements. Vacuum tubes need to be warmed up to work, so have a small electric heater in them, basically a lightbulb filament. Flowers' believed that most failures were due to thermal cycling putting stress on the heating elements, and by keeping them on all the time that could be avoided. He was able to convince others and Colossus was born.
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Baby was the first stored program computer, certainly.
I'd argue that the Z3 was the first proper one, though. It was programmed via punched tape, not rewired like it's not quite contemporaries. We shouldn't forget the Z4 which also came out in 1945 and had a conditional branch instruction (though the Z3 was technically Turing competed, the Z4 meant it).
Baby was mostly a tech demonstrator for stored program computers.
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Colossus was not hacked together. It was made from telephone exchange parts [...] Colossus therefore used mostly off the shelf parts.
So it was hacked together from spare parts designed for a different kind of system.
If that isn't impressive, I don't know what is.
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On Thursday, UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) announced the release of previously unseen images and documents related to Colossus
It's good that they're finally declassifying the details of the Forbin project after all this time. Now I'm just waiting for the German government to release the details of Projekt KÃsespÃtzle, which will finally explain the cattle mutilations when the details come out.
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The Z3 was much more advanced than ENIAC. It was fully programmed via punched tape, no plug board nonsense involved.
I personally think it's something of a stretch to call ENIAC programmable, it was more wireable. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference, but with the Z3, you could simply rerun an existing program by feeding the old tape in, and it would run the same. For ENIAC, it was days of rewiring and re debugging to get the same program to run again.
It was obviously a lot slower, but it was buil
Valve computers are better (Score:2)
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The quality of the numbers that they produce is better than digital. Hey, wanna come over & see my valve racks & experience the qualitatively superior numbers?
The guitar nerd in me sees the words "valve" and "racks" in such close proximity and started jumping around on a virtual stage in my head rocking out. Thank you for the brief moment of joy on this bleak winter morning.
That's great and all.... (Score:1)
....but can it play DOOM?
Re:That's great and all.... (Score:4, Funny)
No, it can only manage Wolfenstein.
The Nazis had a Code-Breaking computer?! (Score:3, Funny)
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Seriously.
English very much.
Please read Garner's Modern American Usage (2003).
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RDJ and the boy Pitt are also sniffing on it.
Call my people.
The government acknowledged it in 1975, not 2000 (Score:2)
"It was not until October 1975, when the British Government released photographs of Colossus, that its existence became public"
https://www.vodafone.co.uk/newscentre/features/five-facts-colossus/