Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 171 posts

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#81

Post by mhh__ »

thanatos519 wrote: post #50
stuartbman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that film was awful- they took an individual who was 'very warm and friendly'[1] and turned him into the prototypical savant nerd (Sheldon Cooper, Sherlock Holmes) 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27701207

Perhaps that was an artifact of casting Benedict Cumberbatch in the role.

There is a certain vibe to many of his performances but if you consider that he even played (in the film not the book) a gay man in roughly the same time period in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a performance in which he is still a little bit cumberbatch-y for a brief moment but generally warm and humorous, there's more to it than that.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#82

Post by galangalalgol »

boring_twenties wrote: post #72
dblooman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very few places accept them I have heard this since I was a kid, in reality, it isn't true, at least not in London. I have never been refused when presenting a £50, not that I have carried them more than a dozen times. Most places that have issues taking them are small merchants who give away too many notes breaking them, so will often ask for a smaller note. When I was in New York once, I went into a CVS and bought…

$100 bills are routinely checked in the US, but almost never refused IME.

Can they refuse a valid bill legally?

I have seen places checking $5 bills in some parts of town.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#83

Post by mhh__ »

curiousgal wrote: post #6

I personally think Turing was more worthy of being buried between the graves of Darwin and Newton than Hawking.

I feel like that's like choosing your favourite child though. Both were extremely influential in their field; both have a deeply moving human story as well.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#84

Post by ragnese »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #3

Finally, a better way to recognise him - instead of Benedict Cumberbatch's criminally inaccurate 2014 portrayal - or that renamed road on the MS campus - or the great British tradition of a park bench...

Agreed. Before I was done watching the very first scene of that movie, I had my phone out because I thought maybe I didn't know he had ASD.

Nope. He didn't. Just the way pop culture likes their nerds to act.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#86

Post by ragnese »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #17
hntrader wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was inaccurate about it for those that know little about Turing's life

It was not exactly inaccurate, more dumbed down. The film covered the basics well I thought, his early life, the impact of a relationship with a boy named "Christopher", the use of Bombe in breaking Enigma and the secrecy needed to keep the code-breaking from everyone. His personal life was I thought fair - it certainly compared role of women and gay men, and said something about need for brain not brawn. It did dumb…

I was very disappointed in the portrayal of "Christopher"!

They have him say "boy" but they never clarify that the "boy" was 19 years old. I have little doubt that some people left the movie thinking that Turing was a pedophile.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#87

Post by eigenket »

hntrader wrote: post #7
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #3

Finally, a better way to recognise him - instead of Benedict Cumberbatch's criminally inaccurate 2014 portrayal - or that renamed road on the MS campus - or the great British tradition of a park bench...

What was inaccurate about it for those that know little about Turing's life

Personally I thought it was rather sad that it ignored completely the massive contribution made by the Polish Cipher Bureau and particularly Marian Rejewski.

In 1939 the Poles basically dumped an absolutely massive amount of information they had worked out about enigma on the British and the French. The Poles had a working system to decrypt enigma from (I think) 1932 up to 1939 when the Germans added more rotors to the machines increasing the complexity significantly. The Polish techniques still worked with the new rotors but the additional complexity slowed them down a lot.

I maybe remembering this incorrectly but I think the Poles managed to construct machines logically identical to enigma machines (i.e. the same output for every input) based just on messages they'd intercepted (without ever seeing an actual enigma machine). They gave one of these machines to the French and one to the British.

The "Bombe" built in Bletchly park was directly inspired by the Polish "Bomba" machines.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#89

Post by jsmith99 »

londons_explore wrote: post #61
dan1234 wrote: post #48

A larger image, for people who want to see the detail: https://i.imgur.com/qmTZc9C.jpg

I feel like they really could have found a better photo... or at least touched that one up to remove the graininess, blur, and rough edges...

Or for people that want to print it out at home?

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#90

Post by mhh__ »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #35
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excluding housing and university fees, because that’s magic money

I thought we chopped down all the magic money trees?

The magic money tree only applies if you are buddies with members of the cabinet, silly.

https://sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-crony/

Post reply on HN