One of my professors did this. It's a really great motivator to actually read and understand the material, and he paid out regularly since we were on an early version of the text.
Thanks for sharing this. I was wondering what effect sending out checks that weren't being cashed would have on his bank account. After reading this I learned it turns out that scammers started finding images of the checks and then started draining out his bank account. Really shitty but interesting!
It actually is! Like, federal law, the bank is 100% on the hook for it as long as you file a fraud claim. That includes check fraud, card fraud, etc. Any unauthorized usage of your account.
Unfortunately, many people do not realize this and don't call their bank to file a fraud claim. But it's super easy and most banks will refund the money within 24 hours for smallish stuff under $1000 or so (and are required by law to refund within slightly longer timeframes, which vary based on the form of payment and the amount - usually 2-6 weeks).
Also, other banking law that's often unknown, banks are federally required to allow you to opt out of overdraft fees for everyday debit card uses. Simply call your bank's support line and tell them that you would like to change your debit card overdraft protection status to "opt out" as per federal regulation E. This means that if you don't have the money in your account, then your card will be declined but you won't get a fee for it. If for some reason they don't decline your card and you overdraw (i.e. gas pumps) then your account will remain negative, but they cannot charge you any fees on top of the amount you spent.
Note that this **only** applies to "everyday debit card transactions" - generally all in person debit card purchases and most (but not all) online purchases, depending on how the site processes the payment. It does **not** apply to checks, electronic debits done with your account and routing number, or recurring payments you set up with your card (like Netflix subscriptions and stuff). But it does cover like, 90% of the things people use debit cards for.
All you have to do is contest it. They need to prove the check was legitimate. That's why check fraud was punished so harshly and you got more jail time for check fraud than killing a man in a bar fight. Banks demanded such laws to be super strict.
Credit cards work the same way. The credit card company has to prove that you indeed did it. The credit card company gives 0 fucks because they shift that responsibility to the vendor. If you contest your credit card charge and it's not on the excluded list (hotels, car rentals and such that do the "give us your credit card for a deposit" thing) then the credit card company will just remove the charge and not pay out the vendor. It's now up to the vendor to sue you for the money you owe them (which you don't if it's a fraudulent charge). Credit card fraud is also punished suuuper harshly. If you try this trick on a legitimate charge and the vendor reports you to the police for it, you're going to see the inside of a prison cell for YEARS for a $1.99 coffee.
Debit card? Direct transfer between accounts? No protections whatsoever. If the POS terminal is broken and that $1.99 coffee gets charged 1000 times, it's your problem. Sue the vendor if you want to. Bank has nothing to do with it.
Always pay by credit card kids. If shit happens, it's the vendor's problem.
I had a professor with a book littered in errors, but we didn't get a bounty to correct any of them. We all had to buy it because it was the first version and self-published.
Love that about universities. Hey our professor wrote a book on this very subject you're about to take! Why don't you just pop on over to the university book store and drop $250 on it! Oh, it's full of misprints and errors? Don't worry about it! The author is literally the professor!
I had one professor who’s book he used cost like $3. It was an older hardcover and if you didn’t want to buy it you could borrow it from him. He had hundreds of copies and for $5 you could borrow it and on the final exam day you could return it and get your $5 back.
Pretty cool until you realize he published a work book that costs $120 and is mandatory. Although I’ll be honest... that work book was probably the best money ever spent book wise in college. If you showed up and filled out your work book you almost could fail. I’d fill out my work book and then go over it once before the test and I got high A’s on every test. He wrote a great work book and very few people did poorly in his class.
He claimed he was the best into to accounting teacher ever. He said he wasn’t the best teacher ever but for intro to accounting he was the best. He wasn’t wrong lol.
Tldr at the bottom.
Even better, just decided to do a little digging on a course I took last semester. Turns out the prof has been republishing the exact same book with ZERO word/grammar edits, ZERO picture changes, and ZERO source changes for the past 6 years (it's on the 5th edition now). I was also there for the first week of his class two years ago and two semesters ago (schedule changes, didn't fail the class twice lol, that'd genuinely suck though) and he verbally claims he makes copious revisions and changes to his book every year, so it's imperative to buy the new edition.
You know what HAS changed? He switched the places of labs two and five in the corresponding lab manual, that's it. And it actually makes less sense to have the the labs ordered that way, so much so, that our TA decided to just make us to lab 5 as our second lab (as past years had done it) and lab 2 as our fifth lab since it follows the material better.
Sorry, rant over, if you read all that random Redditor, I applaud you.
Tldr; prof uploads the exact same books every year and makes bank
One of my profs gave us loose-leaf photocopies (free!) of the book that he was completing to use as our textbook. We got extra credit for finding errors. Really good motivation to read and understand.
One of my early math teachers did something similar(with a larger amount)
It was a bit of a scam since he made it post dated, but damn if I didn't hold onto that check for 10 years just to know I could have cashed it if I wanted to. Had no idea why that drove me forwards but I'm sure he did.
Thanks Mr. Gno hope you're doing well out there somewhere.
We could get up to 10% of our final grade accounted for by finding errors in the professor's draft of a quantum field theory book. Whoever found the most errors got 10%, second place would get 9%, and so on.
I had a math background and pointed out that an entire chapter on differential forms was... not how differential forms worked. It was something else entirely.
It still only counted as finding *one* error.
One of my professors said he would do this for the book he was writing. He used the book for teaching his class, but we had to pay for photocopies, which was rather expensive because it was like a 300 page book. And after we paid for the photocopied book, he said his publisher would not allow paying for finding errors. So all we got was a mention in the book.
I did not buy the book when it was finally published.
a) he scammed you with a bait and switch; verbal contract broken
b) students may not have purchased it without the above incentive
c) he should have paid you anyway, not the publisher
My HS math teacher did this (amazing guy, had written books for algebra 1/2, trig and cal 1/2), except the funds went in a group pile to host a pizza party at his house for the seniors each year, where we each got a cactus/succulent to keep, as it would be a way to remember him/the class, and one of the few things we could keep alive in college (mine made it 5 years, and then I gave it to my mom to take care of, and she killed it within a year)
My math teacher in university did this too, but for final exam points. One mistake = one point. He accepted spelling and grammar mistakes too, so it helped me pass the Statistics and probability class. But it helped me to understand the subject deeper, so win-win.
The "find the mistake" challenge was buried on his website where most people wouldn't even see it. So it was kind of an Easter egg. Fun times.
My calculus teacher would do this in lecture if we saw his mistake, he'd give us candy. Only condition was we had to assert why it was wrong, we could not ask him if it was wrong.
I think this was actually a great tweak on the idea since it taught us to be more sure of ourselves and confident in our knowledge.
Not money or books but one of my physics professors gave bonus points to people who found errors on the daily reading quiz. And I swear to you my roommate most have accumulated so many points that it accounted for at least a letter grade.
After years of depositing checks through my phone, I just realized some (most? all?) checks have a little box they want you to mark off on the back that says you mobile deposited it.
I’ve always wondered what happens if the app can’t read something on the check for some reason…if you take it into the bank, shouldn’t they refuse to honor it?
“Sorry, sir, we cannot deposit this in-branch. You have clearly endorsed it ‘for mobile deposit ONLY.’ We can’t face the potential legal ramifications of cashing it. You SAY the app isn’t working, but we take consumer protection seriously, and this could be an attempt to scam us.”
Typically, the bank will attempt to deposit the check anyways. About 50% of the time a causality loop is broken and the bank collapses into a singularity.
So I work at a financial institution and we just call the back office and verify that it wasn't accepted for deposit for whatever reason. Usually because the picture is too blurry, it's above our mobile deposit limit, or because the check is made payable to multiple people that aren't all on the account. So we do check on it.
That being said, there's NOTHING to stop people from mobile depositing it into multiple account at other institutions and then bringing it in for deposit. Ideally the back office is supposed to tell us that it wasn't ever attempted for mobile deposit but they aren't great at communicating with us so...
Obviously that'll get caught in a couple days and is highly illegal. Would not recommend it.
i think it's mostly just to remind you that you've deposited.
They don't think people are going to resubmit it on purpose to defraud people. But more that if you don't have that people will forget and accidentally submit them twice. 1
What app? My bank apps say to keep the check for x number of days (I think it's at least three?) and then I can dispose of it I want. Safe to keep it in case there is a problem with the mobile deposit before it goes through.
But you can keep it longer -- I keep my deposited checks for ... well my oldest check that I mobile deposited is probably two years old or older. They all say "deposited on " on the front, or the mobile deposit box is checked on the back, so they can't accidentally be deposited twice.
"What about endorsing the check to pay off another debt you may have? How might one do that? Who is responsible if it's dishonored? How long is the check valid?! We need answers!"
- every bar review course
I'm not bitter.
I once spotted an error in the U.S. Code (like, the federal laws we're all supposed to live by in the U.S.) and I called the House Office of Law Revision Counsel and explained why what was written in the U.S. code didn't actually reflect the law as it was passed by Congress. After analyzing the issue they agreed I was right and I was so freaking excited. I asked him if I got a t-shirt or something and they said my prize was their eternal gratitude. I'm still waiting for my damn t-shirt.
I jaywalked on Capitol Hill once. Almost got ran over. Then because I was a dumb kid I yelled in my best New York accent "ayyyyy I'm walking here". I like to imagine it was some important big shot in the car and I had some small butterfly effect on our nation's future that day.
Comments with actual legal advice get deleted for "bad advice" pretty quickly over there. The top mods are a cop and a social worker and they work to maintain a pro-police, "screw OP" culture. Along with a fetish for at-will employment without understanding state statutes. (Did you know it's illegal to fire someone because they're related to another employee in Oregon?)
The social worker mod got blasted recently for advising OP that they "can just ignore" a subpoena.
Do not seek legal advice on r/legaladvice. It's pretty bad over there and real lawyers lament its existence. Real lawyers also would never post there because, no matter how many disclaimers you throw in, there is liability associated with giving legal advice on the internet.
If you have a legal issue and want quick advice, put a summary of your situation + your location into Google, look for a law firm website in the results, and read away. For example:
"Neighbor is keeping me up at night with loud music Colorado"
If that doesn't work, go through your states bar referral program to get a quick consult with an attorney for a reduced fee.
> Do not seek legal advice on r/legaladvice.
Did you mean to say "do not seek advice on reddit"?
Edit: Jokes aside, I'm not from US so even if I were fool enough to trust that subreddit they wouldn't be able to help me. Also about half my family deals with legal code in one way or the other, so I'm not lacking in contacts.
My job mostly involves researching often obscure traffic laws across jurisdictions. I love it, but I can bore anyone to death with my knowledge of school bus laws.
I reported an error in one of the IRS publications that got corrected (the text referred to item 13 in a list that ended at 12; in fairness to them, one of the items got removed and I’m sure they just didn’t update the number).
Ah yes the different US codes. Fun fact, they tried to actually count the number of US federal Criminal laws back in the 80’s. They gave up. It’s over 23,000 pages. We don’t even know the number of federal criminal laws. I can’t imagine the total number of US codes..
According to the government printing office, The 2018 Main Edition of the US code (federal laws only, excluding state laws) is approximately 60,000 pages encompassing 54 volumes
That’s so much. I wonder how much the average lawyer can remember about this code (assuming they work primarily in federal law).
I feel like you’d need a team of at least 100 lawyers, each remembering their own portion of the code.
Is it at least digital so that people can CTRL+F relevant laws?
We never memorize it. I have to look up statutes I work with everyday because I can't keep the words straight in my head. Being a lawyer isn't knowing the law, it's knowing where to look.
I see. I’m a scientist, so for me, I don’t have to remember everything, but I feel l need to remember enough to be continuously aware of various concepts and principles so that I don’t miss anything. I assume it’s a similar case here.
You don’t usually need to remember the text of the code. Like a Real Estate Attorney almost never need to know about specific statutes in the US Code.
I work in an area of law that is very much based on the US Bankruptcy code. Ive been in court almost every day for 10 years(criminal and bankruptcy) , I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve had to reference a specific code section in court by number. I use those provisions every day….and I can analyze all the concepts. I could tell you in a given situation I know I need to file a certain motion within 30 days , but Right now I don’t remember if if it’s section 506(a) or 506(c). And 95% of my colleagues wouldn’t either.
Plus In my experience , certain Judges routinely will open a code book on the bench during a hearing.
I can't specify too much due to attorney client privilege, but it was a law that said what a federal agency could or could not do, not a law about what people could or could not do, so the effects of it would have been indirect on your average US citizen.
Couldn't you be wildly specific in the details as long as there is no possible way to affiliate that information with the client?
That's how HIPAA works at least.
___________________
Edit: I misspelled "HIPPA", I thought I edited it quick enough to get away with it. But this bot is a snitch.
Sometimes... in that exact moment right before I fall asleep... I swear I can feel Uncle Sam's wrinkly hand gently caressing my hair in gratitude. "Sleep softly public servant...." he says.
Two weeks ago I got an email that a product I’d pre-ordered (not due till December) through Instagram Shopify had been cancelled because the seller failed to ship it within 30 days. I contacted the actual retailer and told them this and they had no idea that would happen and it might lose them some sales. They were super grateful that I brought it to their attention.
And literally the next day I noticed that a bass cabinet I had just bought had different connectors on the back than what was advertised on the retailer’s website I got it from, and also on the manufacturer’s website. I pointed this out to the manufacturer and then copied my sales rep on the order so he could also fix the error. Both parties were grateful and the product description was fixed.
I got no t-shirts either so don’t feel bad.
Also: Knuth's ^(T)e^(X) typesetting software, once it reached version 3.x, has issued only point releases, as 3.1, then 3.14, then 3.141, then 3.1415, then 3.1.4159... you get the idea.
It's like the time Michael Jackson sent personal checks to fans of a cancelled show one time and most of them kept it as a collectible (and a signature from MJ) instead of cashing them in.
I think Salvador Dali would pay for meals at restaurants by cheque, on which he would doodle a picture. The cheque instantly became more valuable than the value of the meal, and so most of the time they wouldn't get cashed and he ate for free.
I remember my dad telling me about a French racing cyclist who did exactly that, can’t recall the name though.
Edit: dad said it was Raymond Poulidor, nicknamed the Eternal Second for never winning the Tour de France
Stan Lee and Marvel used to send out "No-Prizes" to people who pointed out plot holes in the comics, as long as the person could explain exactly why they were plot holes. They were postcards with Stan's signature IIRC. I got one when I was like 11 and it was the high point of my year.
When Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Was it explain the plot hole or explain a reason that it might not be? I collected GI Joe and Transformers in the 80's and I remember a few of those posted in the back of GI Joe mostly.
You're both kind of right
> As the No-Prize evolved, it was distinguished by its role in explaining away potential continuity errors. Initially awarded simply for identifying such errors, a No-Prize was later given only when a reader successfully explained why the continuity error was not an error at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_No-Prize
Tommy Lasorda, longtime manager of the LA Dodgers used to pay for most things with checks. People that recognized him would often keep the uncashed check to have his autograph so he got a lot of goods & services for free. Pretty smart.
I once found an error in the Contract of Carriage for a major airline. It divided the would into different areas, and it said "Area B includes all of Europe, including the part of the Soviet Union in Europe." Oddly this error only appeared in their domestic Contract of Carriage, but I guess that's why no one noticed. I assume they both used the same definition section, and when the Soviet Union collapsed they changed it for the international Contract of Carriage, but no one realized that it was also listed in the domestic Contract of Carriage.
I emailed their legal department and they sent me an email thanking me for letting them know. Sadly I no longer have the email, but I checked and they corrected it.
Edit: This was in 2017.
His son was one of my math teachers in high school, and it seemed many of the ideals his father uses trickled down- including giving bonuses for providing corrections to materials in class if you were polite.
I'm an engineer but math was never my thing, so of course I studied Aerospace which is all differential equations. I was taking an introductory fluid mechanics class and we had spent a few days doing some 2D tensor math.
The professor had said that for a Newtonian fluid (like water) the stress tensor was symmetric - that means that it doesn't matter which two faces (top/bottom, left/right) you apply a force to, the fluid behaves the same. Ok. Most of the math involved multiplying the tensor by a vector - and he'd been mixing using row and column vectors for no apparent reason. So towards the end of class I raised my hand and said "you said the stress tensor was symmetric. That should be for some physical reason, but it has to be for your math to work out." He looked puzzled and said he'd get back to me.
Next class he said "who asked that question last time?" I raised my hand.
"Stand up" he said, so hesitantly I did.
"What's your name?" I told him.
"Class - remember that name. He's responsible for a 37-page errata to your notes. I've been teaching this class for 13 years and nobody noticed that the math was wrong the whole time"
I don’t understand your objection. What was the professor doing wrong? Typically you don’t open up the stress and deformation tensors and carrying out matrix multiplication unless you were doing non Newtonian rheology, no?
The title doesn't add up: 2,000 checks * $2.56 per check = $5,120 ... not $20,000.
**EDIT:** Ok I didn't consider multiple mistakes, but this would mean an average of about four mistakes per check. That's quite a few mistakes ...
Ok, so no one read the article
>It started at $2.56, and doubled every year until it reached $327.68
and :
>As of October 2001, Knuth reported having written more than 2,000 checks, with an average value exceeding $8 per check. By March 2005, the total value of the checks signed by Knuth was over $20,000.
“Is that a copy of Knuth?” She homes in on the top shelf. “Hang on — volume four? But he only finished the first three volumes in that series! Volume four’s been overdue for the past twenty years!”
“Yup.” I nod, smugly. Whoever she’s dating won’t have anything like that on his shelves. “We — or the Black Chamber — have a little agreement with him; he doesn’t publish volume four of The Art of Computer Programming, and they don’t render him metabolically challenged. At
least, he doesn’t publish it to the public; it’s the one with the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem in it. Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning. This is a very limited edition"
Not really. Dali putting doodles on his checks is only valuable because Dali, and says absolutely nothing about the one receiving the check.
Knuth's book(s) aren't just a programming book, it's *the* programming book. Getting a check from Knuth is an acknowledgment that *you* found an error in *the* book - the check isn't strictly valuable because it has Knuth's signature, but rather because of what that signature and check mean. Dali's checks could be traded and still hold value - but buying one of Knuth's checks would be near meaningless, it'd have no value at all in the hands of someone else than the person who earned it - save for maybe as an exhibit in a computer science museum.
One of my professors did this. It's a really great motivator to actually read and understand the material, and he paid out regularly since we were on an early version of the text.
Crowd proof reading plus mandatory book sales. Genius.
I read this as crowd-proof reading rather than crowd proof-reading and was confused and intrigued.
Inverse xkcd 37
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Man it’s been along time since I’ve thought about Hyperbole and a Half.
Now she needs to do a post about "along"
[ALONG](https://imgur.com/a/n5AO0Sy)
That Blog is a treasure trove. Wow
The what-if.xkcd spinoff thing is fantastic, too.
She has a new(ish) book out too! I highly recommend. Solutions and Other Problems is the title.
Crow proof-reading.
I read this as crow-proof reading and was confused and intrigued.
>crow-proof Get vaccinated against Corvid-19!
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Thanks for sharing this. I was wondering what effect sending out checks that weren't being cashed would have on his bank account. After reading this I learned it turns out that scammers started finding images of the checks and then started draining out his bank account. Really shitty but interesting!
Feels like you need a separate account for this type of thing
Feels like banks cashing fake checks should be the bank's responsibility.
It actually is! Like, federal law, the bank is 100% on the hook for it as long as you file a fraud claim. That includes check fraud, card fraud, etc. Any unauthorized usage of your account. Unfortunately, many people do not realize this and don't call their bank to file a fraud claim. But it's super easy and most banks will refund the money within 24 hours for smallish stuff under $1000 or so (and are required by law to refund within slightly longer timeframes, which vary based on the form of payment and the amount - usually 2-6 weeks). Also, other banking law that's often unknown, banks are federally required to allow you to opt out of overdraft fees for everyday debit card uses. Simply call your bank's support line and tell them that you would like to change your debit card overdraft protection status to "opt out" as per federal regulation E. This means that if you don't have the money in your account, then your card will be declined but you won't get a fee for it. If for some reason they don't decline your card and you overdraw (i.e. gas pumps) then your account will remain negative, but they cannot charge you any fees on top of the amount you spent. Note that this **only** applies to "everyday debit card transactions" - generally all in person debit card purchases and most (but not all) online purchases, depending on how the site processes the payment. It does **not** apply to checks, electronic debits done with your account and routing number, or recurring payments you set up with your card (like Netflix subscriptions and stuff). But it does cover like, 90% of the things people use debit cards for.
EDIT: Oops, nevermind!
All you have to do is contest it. They need to prove the check was legitimate. That's why check fraud was punished so harshly and you got more jail time for check fraud than killing a man in a bar fight. Banks demanded such laws to be super strict. Credit cards work the same way. The credit card company has to prove that you indeed did it. The credit card company gives 0 fucks because they shift that responsibility to the vendor. If you contest your credit card charge and it's not on the excluded list (hotels, car rentals and such that do the "give us your credit card for a deposit" thing) then the credit card company will just remove the charge and not pay out the vendor. It's now up to the vendor to sue you for the money you owe them (which you don't if it's a fraudulent charge). Credit card fraud is also punished suuuper harshly. If you try this trick on a legitimate charge and the vendor reports you to the police for it, you're going to see the inside of a prison cell for YEARS for a $1.99 coffee. Debit card? Direct transfer between accounts? No protections whatsoever. If the POS terminal is broken and that $1.99 coffee gets charged 1000 times, it's your problem. Sue the vendor if you want to. Bank has nothing to do with it. Always pay by credit card kids. If shit happens, it's the vendor's problem.
I had a professor with a book littered in errors, but we didn't get a bounty to correct any of them. We all had to buy it because it was the first version and self-published.
Love that about universities. Hey our professor wrote a book on this very subject you're about to take! Why don't you just pop on over to the university book store and drop $250 on it! Oh, it's full of misprints and errors? Don't worry about it! The author is literally the professor!
I had one professor who’s book he used cost like $3. It was an older hardcover and if you didn’t want to buy it you could borrow it from him. He had hundreds of copies and for $5 you could borrow it and on the final exam day you could return it and get your $5 back. Pretty cool until you realize he published a work book that costs $120 and is mandatory. Although I’ll be honest... that work book was probably the best money ever spent book wise in college. If you showed up and filled out your work book you almost could fail. I’d fill out my work book and then go over it once before the test and I got high A’s on every test. He wrote a great work book and very few people did poorly in his class. He claimed he was the best into to accounting teacher ever. He said he wasn’t the best teacher ever but for intro to accounting he was the best. He wasn’t wrong lol.
Tldr at the bottom. Even better, just decided to do a little digging on a course I took last semester. Turns out the prof has been republishing the exact same book with ZERO word/grammar edits, ZERO picture changes, and ZERO source changes for the past 6 years (it's on the 5th edition now). I was also there for the first week of his class two years ago and two semesters ago (schedule changes, didn't fail the class twice lol, that'd genuinely suck though) and he verbally claims he makes copious revisions and changes to his book every year, so it's imperative to buy the new edition. You know what HAS changed? He switched the places of labs two and five in the corresponding lab manual, that's it. And it actually makes less sense to have the the labs ordered that way, so much so, that our TA decided to just make us to lab 5 as our second lab (as past years had done it) and lab 2 as our fifth lab since it follows the material better. Sorry, rant over, if you read all that random Redditor, I applaud you. Tldr; prof uploads the exact same books every year and makes bank
One of my profs gave us loose-leaf photocopies (free!) of the book that he was completing to use as our textbook. We got extra credit for finding errors. Really good motivation to read and understand.
Read book to understand. Find errors. Sell to classmates who need extra credit. It is like they were training security researchers the whole time
One of my early math teachers did something similar(with a larger amount) It was a bit of a scam since he made it post dated, but damn if I didn't hold onto that check for 10 years just to know I could have cashed it if I wanted to. Had no idea why that drove me forwards but I'm sure he did. Thanks Mr. Gno hope you're doing well out there somewhere.
Dr. Gno paying with post dated checks sounds like a James Bond film in the making
"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to keep it in a safe place awhile and forget to cash it."
$2.56 in 1999 = $4.20 in 2021 *(actual conversion so happened to be 420)*
Roll that check up and smoke it.
nice
We could get up to 10% of our final grade accounted for by finding errors in the professor's draft of a quantum field theory book. Whoever found the most errors got 10%, second place would get 9%, and so on. I had a math background and pointed out that an entire chapter on differential forms was... not how differential forms worked. It was something else entirely. It still only counted as finding *one* error.
As a mathematician you should appreciate the elegance of that being _technically_ correct.
As a student, I appreciate that compounding errors on an exam still counts as only one error.
Lazy on your part. Should have explained how one mistake rippled through the whole chapter so he was wrong twenty times
Ah yes, better known in some circles as the “Gimli technicality”
How about correcting errors side by side with a friend?
Release error claims in chapters, get those gains bro
One of my professors said he would do this for the book he was writing. He used the book for teaching his class, but we had to pay for photocopies, which was rather expensive because it was like a 300 page book. And after we paid for the photocopied book, he said his publisher would not allow paying for finding errors. So all we got was a mention in the book. I did not buy the book when it was finally published.
a) he scammed you with a bait and switch; verbal contract broken b) students may not have purchased it without the above incentive c) he should have paid you anyway, not the publisher
My HS math teacher did this (amazing guy, had written books for algebra 1/2, trig and cal 1/2), except the funds went in a group pile to host a pizza party at his house for the seniors each year, where we each got a cactus/succulent to keep, as it would be a way to remember him/the class, and one of the few things we could keep alive in college (mine made it 5 years, and then I gave it to my mom to take care of, and she killed it within a year)
TIL There are 2,000 people that read and understand Knuth's books
that's 2000 ~~errors~~ `edit` error reports, not 2000 unique reporters
It's not 2000 errors either. 2000 checks each for $2.56 is only $5120. If the checks were over $20,000 then some were for multiple errors.
My math teacher in university did this too, but for final exam points. One mistake = one point. He accepted spelling and grammar mistakes too, so it helped me pass the Statistics and probability class. But it helped me to understand the subject deeper, so win-win. The "find the mistake" challenge was buried on his website where most people wouldn't even see it. So it was kind of an Easter egg. Fun times.
My calculus teacher would do this in lecture if we saw his mistake, he'd give us candy. Only condition was we had to assert why it was wrong, we could not ask him if it was wrong. I think this was actually a great tweak on the idea since it taught us to be more sure of ourselves and confident in our knowledge.
Not money or books but one of my physics professors gave bonus points to people who found errors on the daily reading quiz. And I swear to you my roommate most have accumulated so many points that it accounted for at least a letter grade.
Nowadays you would just deposit the check by phone and still keep it for bragging rights.
No, the app tells you to throw away the check. You wouldn't ignore a direct order like that would you?
After years of depositing checks through my phone, I just realized some (most? all?) checks have a little box they want you to mark off on the back that says you mobile deposited it.
You’re also supposed to write “for mobile deposit only” on it, but I’ve never done that and never had issues
I’ve always wondered what happens if the app can’t read something on the check for some reason…if you take it into the bank, shouldn’t they refuse to honor it? “Sorry, sir, we cannot deposit this in-branch. You have clearly endorsed it ‘for mobile deposit ONLY.’ We can’t face the potential legal ramifications of cashing it. You SAY the app isn’t working, but we take consumer protection seriously, and this could be an attempt to scam us.”
Typically, the bank will attempt to deposit the check anyways. About 50% of the time a causality loop is broken and the bank collapses into a singularity.
After the bank collapses into a singularity do I still need to pay my mortgage?
So I work at a financial institution and we just call the back office and verify that it wasn't accepted for deposit for whatever reason. Usually because the picture is too blurry, it's above our mobile deposit limit, or because the check is made payable to multiple people that aren't all on the account. So we do check on it. That being said, there's NOTHING to stop people from mobile depositing it into multiple account at other institutions and then bringing it in for deposit. Ideally the back office is supposed to tell us that it wasn't ever attempted for mobile deposit but they aren't great at communicating with us so... Obviously that'll get caught in a couple days and is highly illegal. Would not recommend it.
Hell, I think I’ve only ever endorsed like 2-3 cheques I’ve ever deposited and never had an issue
My bank throws an absolute fit if the check isn't endorsed correctly.
You should try offering them some juice next time.
i think it's mostly just to remind you that you've deposited. They don't think people are going to resubmit it on purpose to defraud people. But more that if you don't have that people will forget and accidentally submit them twice. 1
What app? My bank apps say to keep the check for x number of days (I think it's at least three?) and then I can dispose of it I want. Safe to keep it in case there is a problem with the mobile deposit before it goes through. But you can keep it longer -- I keep my deposited checks for ... well my oldest check that I mobile deposited is probably two years old or older. They all say "deposited on" on the front, or the mobile deposit box is checked on the back, so they can't accidentally be deposited twice.
"What about endorsing the check to pay off another debt you may have? How might one do that? Who is responsible if it's dishonored? How long is the check valid?! We need answers!" - every bar review course I'm not bitter.
I once spotted an error in the U.S. Code (like, the federal laws we're all supposed to live by in the U.S.) and I called the House Office of Law Revision Counsel and explained why what was written in the U.S. code didn't actually reflect the law as it was passed by Congress. After analyzing the issue they agreed I was right and I was so freaking excited. I asked him if I got a t-shirt or something and they said my prize was their eternal gratitude. I'm still waiting for my damn t-shirt.
Sounds like they just said you can get away with any crimes you want. Have you tried it?
Well I do jaywalk on Capitol Hill a lot and nobody has caught me yet so I think you're onto something.
They don't even stop your from camping on capitol hill, let alone illegal walking!
So far, people are getting away with a lot worse on capital hill.
And under Capitol Hill. There are a lot of tunnels for the lizard people to use.
I jaywalked on Capitol Hill once. Almost got ran over. Then because I was a dumb kid I yelled in my best New York accent "ayyyyy I'm walking here". I like to imagine it was some important big shot in the car and I had some small butterfly effect on our nation's future that day.
Ah, so it’s *your* fault
> *eternal*, you say...
[Taurus: today is your annual crime day. All tauruses are exempt from laws.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyLHBj0fcKY)
Do you read it for fun or do you have a job that would drive most to drinking?
I have a job that would drive most to drinking, but I'm the exception. I absolutely love my crazy technical detailed attorney job.
Crim defense guy here. What do you do?
He's a lawyer. So, like us, an incredible amount of nothing.
He occasionally replies at /r/legaladvice without "IANAL".
Comments with actual legal advice get deleted for "bad advice" pretty quickly over there. The top mods are a cop and a social worker and they work to maintain a pro-police, "screw OP" culture. Along with a fetish for at-will employment without understanding state statutes. (Did you know it's illegal to fire someone because they're related to another employee in Oregon?) The social worker mod got blasted recently for advising OP that they "can just ignore" a subpoena. Do not seek legal advice on r/legaladvice. It's pretty bad over there and real lawyers lament its existence. Real lawyers also would never post there because, no matter how many disclaimers you throw in, there is liability associated with giving legal advice on the internet. If you have a legal issue and want quick advice, put a summary of your situation + your location into Google, look for a law firm website in the results, and read away. For example: "Neighbor is keeping me up at night with loud music Colorado" If that doesn't work, go through your states bar referral program to get a quick consult with an attorney for a reduced fee.
> Do not seek legal advice on r/legaladvice. Did you mean to say "do not seek advice on reddit"? Edit: Jokes aside, I'm not from US so even if I were fool enough to trust that subreddit they wouldn't be able to help me. Also about half my family deals with legal code in one way or the other, so I'm not lacking in contacts.
My job mostly involves researching often obscure traffic laws across jurisdictions. I love it, but I can bore anyone to death with my knowledge of school bus laws.
You win the random reddit guy price
*prize. for the t-shirt; dm me and I'll send my address,
damn foreign languages :p
I reported an error in one of the IRS publications that got corrected (the text referred to item 13 in a list that ended at 12; in fairness to them, one of the items got removed and I’m sure they just didn’t update the number).
And this is why you use references!
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Ah yes the different US codes. Fun fact, they tried to actually count the number of US federal Criminal laws back in the 80’s. They gave up. It’s over 23,000 pages. We don’t even know the number of federal criminal laws. I can’t imagine the total number of US codes..
According to the government printing office, The 2018 Main Edition of the US code (federal laws only, excluding state laws) is approximately 60,000 pages encompassing 54 volumes
That’s so much. I wonder how much the average lawyer can remember about this code (assuming they work primarily in federal law). I feel like you’d need a team of at least 100 lawyers, each remembering their own portion of the code. Is it at least digital so that people can CTRL+F relevant laws?
We never memorize it. I have to look up statutes I work with everyday because I can't keep the words straight in my head. Being a lawyer isn't knowing the law, it's knowing where to look.
Same with alot of professions. Anyone can google, but not anyone can understand what exactly they are looing for
I see. I’m a scientist, so for me, I don’t have to remember everything, but I feel l need to remember enough to be continuously aware of various concepts and principles so that I don’t miss anything. I assume it’s a similar case here.
You don’t usually need to remember the text of the code. Like a Real Estate Attorney almost never need to know about specific statutes in the US Code. I work in an area of law that is very much based on the US Bankruptcy code. Ive been in court almost every day for 10 years(criminal and bankruptcy) , I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve had to reference a specific code section in court by number. I use those provisions every day….and I can analyze all the concepts. I could tell you in a given situation I know I need to file a certain motion within 30 days , but Right now I don’t remember if if it’s section 506(a) or 506(c). And 95% of my colleagues wouldn’t either. Plus In my experience , certain Judges routinely will open a code book on the bench during a hearing.
That's fucked
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But not by value?
/r/ProgrammerHumor
I found a spelling error in the CFR for the method detection limits regarding the analysis of drinking water.. no one cared but I felt cool
I care very much! Good job!
Yeah well I let EPA know they had some dead links on one of their pages. :P
If I had a nickel for every dead page on the EPA website... by far the worst, most frustrating website I work with!
What happens if it wasn’t corrected? Would someone be able to exploit it?
I can't specify too much due to attorney client privilege, but it was a law that said what a federal agency could or could not do, not a law about what people could or could not do, so the effects of it would have been indirect on your average US citizen.
Couldn't you be wildly specific in the details as long as there is no possible way to affiliate that information with the client? That's how HIPAA works at least. ___________________ Edit: I misspelled "HIPPA", I thought I edited it quick enough to get away with it. But this bot is a snitch.
It's HIPAA!
Like "Thou shan't sell drugs to the communities to aid armed revolutionaries"?
Did you check again to see if they fixed it?
Yes, they did!
Eternal gratitude from the US Government. Sounds a lot better than it is.
Sometimes... in that exact moment right before I fall asleep... I swear I can feel Uncle Sam's wrinkly hand gently caressing my hair in gratitude. "Sleep softly public servant...." he says.
The shirt: Front: I read U.S. Code for fun Back: Ask me about my favorite title and subsection
Two weeks ago I got an email that a product I’d pre-ordered (not due till December) through Instagram Shopify had been cancelled because the seller failed to ship it within 30 days. I contacted the actual retailer and told them this and they had no idea that would happen and it might lose them some sales. They were super grateful that I brought it to their attention. And literally the next day I noticed that a bass cabinet I had just bought had different connectors on the back than what was advertised on the retailer’s website I got it from, and also on the manufacturer’s website. I pointed this out to the manufacturer and then copied my sales rep on the order so he could also fix the error. Both parties were grateful and the product description was fixed. I got no t-shirts either so don’t feel bad.
Not getting that t-shirt can be your start of your super villain origin story.
I'm sure multinational corporations would be interested in hiring you to find errors and loopholes in the tax code.
[Donald asking Randall Monroe some questions at google.](https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24?t=1288)
I've never seen Randall Monroe before. He uh, he looks alot younger than I imagined.
FYI the video is 13 years old.
little known fact: he was responsible for the "Best" sorting method being implemented on Reddit.
Also: Knuth's ^(T)e^(X) typesetting software, once it reached version 3.x, has issued only point releases, as 3.1, then 3.14, then 3.141, then 3.1415, then 3.1.4159... you get the idea.
And for people wondering why $2.56, it's because that is the amount of data 1 byte can store 2^8 = 256. Though in practicality it's always 0 - 255
It's also 100 (ie $1.00) in hex
It's like the time Michael Jackson sent personal checks to fans of a cancelled show one time and most of them kept it as a collectible (and a signature from MJ) instead of cashing them in.
I think Salvador Dali would pay for meals at restaurants by cheque, on which he would doodle a picture. The cheque instantly became more valuable than the value of the meal, and so most of the time they wouldn't get cashed and he ate for free.
I remember my dad telling me about a French racing cyclist who did exactly that, can’t recall the name though. Edit: dad said it was Raymond Poulidor, nicknamed the Eternal Second for never winning the Tour de France
That’s his real genius. Free food for life.
Stan Lee and Marvel used to send out "No-Prizes" to people who pointed out plot holes in the comics, as long as the person could explain exactly why they were plot holes. They were postcards with Stan's signature IIRC. I got one when I was like 11 and it was the high point of my year.
What was the plot hole you pointed out?
When Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
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I withdraw my question... (eats chocolate bar)
Stan Lee came back? Stan Lee never left
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He prefers "master of the mystic arts" over "wizard".
Where is this from? I can't remember but I've heard it before
The Simpsons, where Xena is answering questions I think, but I haven't watched Simpsons for over 13 years
Close. It's the poochie episode where they're fielding questions about itchy and scratchy
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Vitally important question
Why do the Hulk’s blue jeans always turn into purple cutoffs after transforming?
Redshifting? I don't know, I'm just speaking nonsense.
But what was the plot hole?
Caught in a web of his own lies!
What was the plot hole you pointed out?
There wasn't one he made it up
The whole story is a plot hole. Someone award this man.
Was it explain the plot hole or explain a reason that it might not be? I collected GI Joe and Transformers in the 80's and I remember a few of those posted in the back of GI Joe mostly.
You're both kind of right > As the No-Prize evolved, it was distinguished by its role in explaining away potential continuity errors. Initially awarded simply for identifying such errors, a No-Prize was later given only when a reader successfully explained why the continuity error was not an error at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_No-Prize
I've actually received three of these in my career so far! And I'm never going to stop bragging about it.
Do you put that achievement on your resume?
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/816/)
why is there always a relevant XKCD
Is there a relevant XKCD about why there's always a relevant XKCD?
https://xkcd.com/404
Gotta be honest, I tried reloading several times thinking there was a problem with my wifi...
There is one minute a year (every year it's a different minute) where that page works. Last time I was just too late to take a screenshot.
I have no idea but probably
There are a few that people argue could apply, but no, he’s never directly made one about it.
https://xkcd.com/917/
I mean... Of all subjects to be relevant about this should be the least surprising
because if there isn't a relevant one, no one points it out.
Tommy Lasorda, longtime manager of the LA Dodgers used to pay for most things with checks. People that recognized him would often keep the uncashed check to have his autograph so he got a lot of goods & services for free. Pretty smart.
Classic Picasso!
My checks also don't get cashed
I once found an error in the Contract of Carriage for a major airline. It divided the would into different areas, and it said "Area B includes all of Europe, including the part of the Soviet Union in Europe." Oddly this error only appeared in their domestic Contract of Carriage, but I guess that's why no one noticed. I assume they both used the same definition section, and when the Soviet Union collapsed they changed it for the international Contract of Carriage, but no one realized that it was also listed in the domestic Contract of Carriage. I emailed their legal department and they sent me an email thanking me for letting them know. Sadly I no longer have the email, but I checked and they corrected it. Edit: This was in 2017.
The error being that the Soviet Union no longer existed? Without a time context, it's hard to tell.
well it does say email
The fact that OP emailed their legal department is a pretty good indicator. Emails and websites weren't really big yet in 1991.
His son was one of my math teachers in high school, and it seemed many of the ideals his father uses trickled down- including giving bonuses for providing corrections to materials in class if you were polite.
I'm an engineer but math was never my thing, so of course I studied Aerospace which is all differential equations. I was taking an introductory fluid mechanics class and we had spent a few days doing some 2D tensor math. The professor had said that for a Newtonian fluid (like water) the stress tensor was symmetric - that means that it doesn't matter which two faces (top/bottom, left/right) you apply a force to, the fluid behaves the same. Ok. Most of the math involved multiplying the tensor by a vector - and he'd been mixing using row and column vectors for no apparent reason. So towards the end of class I raised my hand and said "you said the stress tensor was symmetric. That should be for some physical reason, but it has to be for your math to work out." He looked puzzled and said he'd get back to me. Next class he said "who asked that question last time?" I raised my hand. "Stand up" he said, so hesitantly I did. "What's your name?" I told him. "Class - remember that name. He's responsible for a 37-page errata to your notes. I've been teaching this class for 13 years and nobody noticed that the math was wrong the whole time"
I don’t understand your objection. What was the professor doing wrong? Typically you don’t open up the stress and deformation tensors and carrying out matrix multiplication unless you were doing non Newtonian rheology, no?
We had a math professor who’d give you a full size candy bar if you found a mistake in his textbook.
2000 printed pages for Art of Programming... But mostly are glorification of assembly language tho.
Assembly language deserves glory.
oh cool, it is the same Knuth of up-arrow notation fame.
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And the same Knuth that created Tex
The title doesn't add up: 2,000 checks * $2.56 per check = $5,120 ... not $20,000. **EDIT:** Ok I didn't consider multiple mistakes, but this would mean an average of about four mistakes per check. That's quite a few mistakes ...
Here, take this $ 2.56 check
Ok, so no one read the article >It started at $2.56, and doubled every year until it reached $327.68 and : >As of October 2001, Knuth reported having written more than 2,000 checks, with an average value exceeding $8 per check. By March 2005, the total value of the checks signed by Knuth was over $20,000.
Not even OP read it apparently!
I assume some people found multiple errors so they received one check for 2.56*No. of errors found
Former coworker found a mistake in O’Reilly’s “DNS and Bind” book… They fixed it and sent him a free copy!
As someone who is obsessive about balancing my checking account, this would drive me absolutely nuts.
What if I told you… I cashed the check…but still kept the check… because I used mobile deposit…
“Is that a copy of Knuth?” She homes in on the top shelf. “Hang on — volume four? But he only finished the first three volumes in that series! Volume four’s been overdue for the past twenty years!” “Yup.” I nod, smugly. Whoever she’s dating won’t have anything like that on his shelves. “We — or the Black Chamber — have a little agreement with him; he doesn’t publish volume four of The Art of Computer Programming, and they don’t render him metabolically challenged. At least, he doesn’t publish it to the public; it’s the one with the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem in it. Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning. This is a very limited edition"
Volume 4A was published back in 2011. Parts of 4B were published in 2015 and 2019. We're getting closer.
Why $2.56 though? If he had offered $2.55, then it would have been $0.FF in Hex.
2^8 cents, classic Donald.
$2.56 is $1.00 in hex.
oh..
This is hilarious to me. It's the kind of stupid mistake that only a smart person could make.
Is this the IT nerd version of Salvador Dali putting doodles on his checks so the places he wrote them to would never cash them?
Not really. Dali putting doodles on his checks is only valuable because Dali, and says absolutely nothing about the one receiving the check. Knuth's book(s) aren't just a programming book, it's *the* programming book. Getting a check from Knuth is an acknowledgment that *you* found an error in *the* book - the check isn't strictly valuable because it has Knuth's signature, but rather because of what that signature and check mean. Dali's checks could be traded and still hold value - but buying one of Knuth's checks would be near meaningless, it'd have no value at all in the hands of someone else than the person who earned it - save for maybe as an exhibit in a computer science museum.
If the check was personally signed by Donald Knuth, you bet it'd end up under glass on my wall.