Charles V of Spain Secret Code Cracked | Hacker News Reader

Charles V of Spain Secret Code Cracked

theguardian.com

61 pointsmikece24 comments

Emperor Charles V's code cracked after five centuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33739437 - Nov 2022 (30 comments)

Emperor Charles V's code cracked after five centuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735690 - Nov 2022 (1 comment)

Emperor Charles V's code cracked after five centuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33732392 - Nov 2022 (2 comments)

The current link is blogspam for the original article by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/24/emperor-charle...

Is it actually spam? More looks like a manually curated quote / link.

How can they write all that but then not include a translation of the letter?

The BBC has an article that explains:

> The team has not yet issued a full translation, which they are saving for an academic paper.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63757443

I agree that posting the original link is probably more useful, but I find it very odd to call Bruce Schneier's blog "spam".

I don't think parent is calling the entire blog spam, there is definitely good, original content on the blog itself. But this particular article is what's called "blogspam":

> A blog where the author paraphrases or copies from the original article/webpage in an attempt to increase his or her own traffic. This becomes a waste of the reader's time forcing them to click through the blog to get to the actual article. Often submitted to sites like Digg or Reddit.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The relevant part is "to incrase his or her own traffic".

Bruce Schneier is one of the most famous cryptography researchers. I doubt he needs more traffic. Intent matters, and when he reposts and summarises a Guardian article, this is probably done for the benefit of readers who already follow his blog.

IMHO not including the words "The Guardian" in his TL;DR is what makes it spammy

I found the summary useful. I read the whole Guardian article and Bruce highlighted the really interesting part. The only other question was: what's in the letter?

The answer is pretty boring, just a standard communique between two leaders during a conflict and talk about a previously unknown murder plot (which was just a rumour). The meat is the cipher.

> is blogspam

It is, and it isn't.

Functionally, for the reader of Hacker News, it has the same form of and effect as blogspam. It's a blog entry, it doesn't add much, and it just links to the real content.

But presumably it lacks the intent of blogspam. Bruce Schneier's blog has quality original content, and nobody is trying to game the system. Probably Schneier just wrote this blog entry to bring an interesting story to his readers' attention, and one of them posted it here.

He does that all the time where he posts a link and quotes one or two paragraphs. It's also meant for the fanbase to comment on the post.

People mean different things by "blogspam" but yes we should change the URL - this is in the site guidelines:

"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: changed now from https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/11/charles-v-of-.... Thanks! (However, it's also a dupe - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33791685)

FWIW, there has never been a Charles V of Spain. Article referes to Charles I of Spain and V of elsewhere. This guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Our last ruler of that name was Charles IV, we're still one Charles short:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_IV_of_Spain_and_His_Fa...

Good call. Thanks for pointing this out. The original article in The Guardian does not make the same mistake.

He was Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. Still good ol' Charles but different major version numbers; motherfucker inherited quite a bit of land.

https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/10728/carlos-i-de-espana-y-v-d...

This is the same reason why some Scottish people object to the late Queen Elizabeth being called "the Second".

Some?

Edit: it's just wrong is what people object to. She was the first Elizabeth of the country. Same thing for James VI (not James I which was a different dude).

Seemingly the government agreed because mailboxes in Scotland don't have EIIR : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_Box_War

James isn't a good example because he was and still is commonly referred to as "James VI and I". I learnt that in primary school.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I

Likewise for his son, James VII and II.

AFAIK Elizabeth is the only post-Union monarch who took an "England only" regnal number that didn't gel with Scottish history.

Too late to edit but I realised there's another one: William "IV" was only the third William to rule Scotland.

I guess we're in for another round of this when Charles dies and William the "fifth" takes the throne, although at the rate we're going Scotland might be a republic by then.

Original/source article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/24/emperor-charle...

5 Centuries is a long time for a cipher to be un-cracked. One could say it did a better job than modern ciphers!

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Posted to HN four days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33735690

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