Latest news with #Wooldridge
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
L'nuey and Parks Canada seek board members to co-manage protected lands, historic sites
The First Nations group L'nuey and Parks Canada are looking for board members to help co-manage P.E.I.'s protected lands and historic sites, taking the next step on an agreement they have spent years crafting. "The agreements were signed and negotiated over many years. I believe the negotiations started even way back in the early 2000s," said Geraldine Arsenault, the field unit superintendant for Parks Canada on Prince Edward Island. "These agreements for both the new national park reserve and for the Toquktmekl agreement, these agreements were both signed at different moments in 2024." The new boards will consist of five members, including two selected by L'nuey and two chosen by Parks Canada. The fifth, who will chair, will be appointed by the board members. "Now we're at the phase of implementation of these agreements, and the first part of that implementation is to form the boards themselves, so that they can advise on the governance of these places," said Arsenault. The boards will oversee places like Pituamkek National Park Reserve off P.E.I.'s North Shore and national historic sites such as Province House in Charlottetown, Cavendish-North Rustico and the working inn at Dalvay-by-the-Sea. Jenene Wooldridge is the executive director of L'nuey, an organization focused on Indigenous rights for the Mi'kmaq community on P.E.I. "We advance and protect Mi'kmaq rights, and we focus on the areas of governance development, all negotiations and consultations for the Mi'kmaq," she said. "L'nuey is proud to be able to support the Mi'kmaq leadership over the past number of years. They have been steadfast in making sure that these agreements come to fruition and that we are able to now get into the implementation phase." Bringing Indigenous perspectives Arsenault said reconciliation has been very important for Parks Canada. "We've been working for a very long time with the Mi'kmaq of Prince Edward Island to really bring in the Mi'kmaw perspective to how we manage our national historic sites and our national park," she said. "And now with the new national park reserve Pituamkek, it really brings a piece of Mi'kmaw traditional lands into the family, if you will, of protected sites." Wooldridge said the boards will have different priorities. "Pituamkek is a brand-new national park reserve, so it's really building it from the ground up. It's going to be looking at what the potential visitor experience could look like, where are their protected sites, that wouldn't be so good for visitors or lots of people being around," she said. "Also access will be a discussion, I'm sure, for those co-management boards, so it's really more of the operational discussions that will be happening, building from the ground up for Pituamkek." Wooldridge said that the other board will look at existing national historic sites and the national park. She said they hope to have these board positions filled by the fall. "The recruitment is open now, and we encourage Mi'kmaw community members who have interest or expertise in culture, governance, environment, you know, community engagement, to put their names forward because all of those perspectives matter." She said non-Indigenouse Islanders are also welcome to put their name forward if they have experience in those areas.
Gizmodo
13-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
ChatGPT vs. Nazi Encryption: Why Enigma Wouldn't Stand a Chance Today
In the 1930s and 40s, mathematician Alan Turing and other Allied cryptologists devoted monumental efforts to break the German encryption machine, the Enigma, which Nazis used to send secret messages during World War II. Today, however, modern computers and artificial intelligence could break the Enigma code without breaking a sweat, as reported by The Guardian. 'Enigma wouldn't stand up to modern computing and statistics,' Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford, told the publication. In the 1930s, Polish cryptologists began the arduous task of decoding Enigma, which at one point had 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible solutions. They successfully developed 'bombas,' also called 'bombes'—machines that could decrypt messages encrypted by Enigma. Germany increased the complexity of Enigma's encryption, however, and as the threat of German invasion loomed, Poland's intelligence bureau handed over their work to the British and French. The British team, including Alan Turing, built upon Poland's work. They exploited weaknesses in the Enigma codes, such as the fact that no letter was ever encrypted as itself. 'Essentially the enigma devices got their power because the number of possible ways in which a message could be encrypted was astronomically large. Far, far too large for a human to exhaustively check,' Wooldridge told The Guardian, adding that bombes were essentially mechanical computers that automatically sifted through the gargantuan number of possible decryptions. Sound familiar? That's because modern-day artificial intelligence is trained to do exactly that: find patterns in huge amounts of data, which would take scientists a prohibitive amount of time to calculate by hand. It's no surprise, then, that Turing is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. If only he could see how far the field has come since his time. 'It would be straightforward to recreate the logic of bombes in a conventional program,' such as ChatGPT, Wooldridge explained, as reported by The Guardian. 'Then with the speed of modern computers, the laborious work of the bombes would be done in very short order,' he added. 'Enigma would not remotely be a match for these.' When I asked ChatGPT to confirm this directly, it responded: 'Wooldridge's quote is broadly accurate: Enigma would not stand a chance today. But it's not because AI like ChatGPT alone can break it—it's because modern computing can trivially simulate what the Allied bombes did, and do so much faster.' This, however, doesn't make Turing and his colleagues' achievement any less admirable—especially given some estimates that their efforts shortened the war by up to two years.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Today's AI can crack second world war Enigma code ‘in short order', experts say
The Enigma code was a fiendish cipher that took Alan Turing and his fellow codebreakers a herculean effort to crack. Yet experts say it would have crumbled in the face of modern computing. While Polish experts broke early versions of the Enigma code in the 1930s and built anti-Enigma machines, subsequent security upgrades by the Germans meant Turing had to develop new machines, or 'Bombes', to help his team of codebreakers decipher enemy messages. By 1943, the machines could decipher two messages every minute. Yet while the race to break the Enigma code has become famous, credited with shortening the second world war by up to two years, and spawning various Hollywood films, experts say cracking it would be a trivial matter today. 'Enigma wouldn't stand up to modern computing and statistics,' said Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science and an expert in artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Oxford. The Enigma device used by the Axis powers was an electro-mechanical machine that resembled a typewriter, with three rotors that each had 26 possible positions, a reflector that sent the signal back through the rotors and a plugboard that swapped pairs of letters. Its set-up meant that even if the same key was pressed twice, a different letter would be produced each time. What's more, the initial settings were changed every 24 hours. 'Essentially the enigma devices got their power because the number of possible ways in which a message could be encrypted was astronomically large. Far, far too large for a human to exhaustively check,' Wooldridge said, adding that the 'bombes' were crude hardwired mechanical computers, searching through enormous numbers of possible alternatives to decrypt Nazi messages. Dr Mustafa A Mustafa, a senior lecturer in software security at the University of Manchester, added that the key to the success of Turing and his colleagues was that Enigma had a number of weaknesses, including that no letter would be represented as itself once enciphered. 'It was [a] brute force attack, trying all different combinations out. But with these weaknesses of the Enigma, they managed to do that. They managed to automate this to do it fast enough to be able to crack the code,' he said. Today, however, the process would be far less arduous, not least because of a technology Turing himself pioneered: AI. 'It would be straightforward to recreate the logic of bombes in a conventional program,' Wooldridge said, noting the AI model ChatGPT was able to do so. 'Then with the speed of modern computers, the laborious work of the bombes would be done in very short order.' Wooldridge added that a range of modern statistical and computational techniques could also be deployed. 'And the power of modern datacentres is hard to imagine,' he said, noting modern computing power would have astounded Turing. 'Enigma would not remotely be a match for these,' he said. Using a slightly different approach – that Wooldridge suggested might be slower – researchers have previously used an AI system trained to recognise German using Grimm's fairytales, together with 2,000 virtual servers, to crack a coded message in 13 minutes. But while modern computing would have rapidly defanged Enigma, techniques such as the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cipher – a system initially developed in 1977 and based on large prime numbers – remain robust. Related: 'A very camp environment': why Alan Turing fatefully told police he was gay 'In the case of RSA, it's the problem of factoring very large numbers. Brute force techniques – looking through all the alternatives – just won't work on these problems,' said Wooldridge, although he noted such techniques might not hold up against future developments. 'If quantum computers ever deliver their theoretical promise, then we may need completely new techniques to keep our data safe,' he said. But while the Enigma code would not stand up long to modern technology, Mustafa said cracking it during the war was a huge achievement, not least as it was considered unbreakable. 'To be able to crack it – it took them months, more than a year – but to be able actually to do this within the lifetime of the war, it was a huge thing,' he said. 'God knows what would have happened if we hadn't cracked Enigma in time.'
Irish Examiner
07-05-2025
- Science
- Irish Examiner
Today's AI can crack second world war Enigma code ‘in short order', experts say
The Enigma code was a fiendish cipher that took Alan Turing and his fellow codebreakers a herculean effort to crack. Yet experts say it would have crumbled in the face of modern computing. While Polish experts broke early versions of the Enigma code in the 1930s and built anti-Enigma machines, subsequent security upgrades by the Germans meant Turing had to develop new machines, or 'Bombes', to help his team of codebreakers decipher enemy messages. By 1943, the machines could decipher two messages every minute. Yet while the race to break the Enigma code has become famous, credited with shortening the second world war by up to two years, and spawning various Hollywood films, experts say cracking it would be a trivial matter today. 'Enigma wouldn't stand up to modern computing and statistics,' said Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science and an expert in artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Oxford. The Enigma device used by the Axis powers was an electro-mechanical machine that resembled a typewriter, with three rotors that each had 26 possible positions, a reflector that sent the signal back through the rotors and a plugboard that swapped pairs of letters. Its set-up meant that even if the same key was pressed twice, a different letter would be produced each time. What's more, the initial settings were changed every 24 hours. 'Essentially the enigma devices got their power because the number of possible ways in which a message could be encrypted was astronomically large. Far, far too large for a human to exhaustively check,' Wooldridge said, adding that the 'bombes' were crude hardwired mechanical computers, searching through enormous numbers of possible alternatives to decrypt Nazi messages. Dr Mustafa A Mustafa, a senior lecturer in software security at the University of Manchester, added that the key to the success of Turing and his colleagues was that Enigma had a number of weaknesses, including that no letter would be represented as itself once enciphered. 'It was [a] brute force attack, trying all different combinations out. But with these weaknesses of the Enigma, they managed to do that. They managed to automate this to do it fast enough to be able to crack the code,' he said. Today, however, the process would be far less arduous, not least because of a technology Turing himself pioneered: AI. 'It would be straightforward to recreate the logic of bombes in a conventional program,' Wooldridge said, noting the AI model ChatGPT was able to do so. 'Then with the speed of modern computers, the laborious work of the bombes would be done in very short order.' Wooldridge added that a range of modern statistical and computational techniques could also be deployed. 'And the power of modern datacentres is hard to imagine,' he said, noting modern computing power would have astounded Turing. 'Enigma would not remotely be a match for these,' he said. Using a slightly different approach – that Wooldridge suggested might be slower – researchers have previously used an AI system trained to recognise German using Grimm's fairytales, together with 2,000 virtual servers, to crack a coded message in 13 minutes. But while modern computing would have rapidly defanged Enigma, techniques such as the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cipher – a system initially developed in 1977 and based on large prime numbers – remain robust. 'In the case of RSA, it's the problem of factoring very large numbers. Brute force techniques – looking through all the alternatives – just won't work on these problems,' said Wooldridge, although he noted such techniques might not hold up against future developments. 'If quantum computers ever deliver their theoretical promise, then we may need completely new techniques to keep our data safe,' he said. But while the Enigma code would not stand up long to modern technology, Mustafa said cracking it during the war was a huge achievement, not least as it was considered unbreakable. 'To be able to crack it – it took them months, more than a year – but to be able actually to do this within the lifetime of the war, it was a huge thing,' he said. 'God knows what would have happened if we hadn't cracked Enigma in time.' Read More Fighter jet landing on US aircraft carrier goes overboard
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Multiple Ragin' Cajuns sign to NFL teams in UDFA
LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) — With the conclusion of the 2025 NFL Draft on Saturday, the Ragin' Cajuns did not see any of their draft-eligible players selected over the weekend in Green Bay. However, several Louisiana football players would go on to sign with NFL franchises shortly after during undrafted free agency. The 2024 Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year Ben Wooldridge is heading to the New England Patriots. Wooldridge tallied 2,453 yards, 16 touchdowns and 7 interceptions through 11 games last season. Advertisement Cajuns Linebacker K.C. Ossai was signed by the Houston Texans. The 2024 All-Sun Belt First Team selection returns to his home state of Texas and joins his brother Joseph Ossai of the Cincinnati Bengals, in the National Football League. Three Acadiana athletes picked in 2025 NFL Draft Defensive Lineman Mason Narcisse is joining the NFC South after signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Reserve native produced 18 solo tackles, 3.5 sacks and 1 forced fumble during the 2024 season. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now KLFY Daily Digest A pair of Ragin' Cajuns are off to 'The Big Apple'. Wide Receiver Dalen Cambre and Defensive Back Tyrone Lewis Jr. both signed in undrafted free agency with the New York Giants. Advertisement 2024 All-Sun Belt First Team offensive lineman AJ Gillie was picked up by the Seattle Seahawks, and defensive back Keyon Martin announced on his Instagram that he is signing with the Baltimore Ravens. This article will be updated with additional signings when they become available. Photo courtesy of UL Football Latest news Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to
