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Comment by dsirijus | Hacker News Reader

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dsirijus·

If this article piqued your interest, be sure to read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

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Speaking of which, I recently read this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LW5JL2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

Which is about WWII in the Pacific, up to the battle of Midway. He talks about the code breaking efforts in Hawaii, and I immediately recognized one of the minor characters from Cryptonimicon - the guy in charge of the cryptanalysis efforts - who was apparently a bit eccentric, and not big on military formalities. I didn't realize that the character in the book was based on someone real.

It's a very well written book, and I'd highly recommend it, as well, as, of course, Cryptonimicon.

Edit - here's a link that talks about him some:

http://www.worldwar2history.info/Midway/mission.html

Several other characters in that book are also based on real people, albeit living (at time of writing anwyay) ones, so names and some details were changed, as well as adding some more speculation. For example the character Earl Comstock was pretty much Robert McNamara. A lot of the people in the 90's timeline seem to be based on real people Stephenson wrote about in his factual articles. (particularly the ones about cable laying in the pacific).

Wasn't aware that he was a real person either.

Cryptonomicon is a long but very good read. There's enough technical details to keep us hackers intrigued without scaring away the non techie folks. My dad read it and even though he didn't get some of the more subtle crypto jokes he very much enjoyed it without having any history of computing or security.

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