9 ms·
RBA not fazed by Australian $50 note typo
- voltagex_ 7y ago"The graphical software package used by [Note Printing Australia] has no copy-paste mechanism and no spelling or grammar check. The text was manually typed in and misspelt at this point," according to a report into the error from the printing agency, dated January 11 this year."
- pietroglyph 7y agoIt’s amazing how so many issues that are nominally caused by human error are actually the result of bad design.
- jl6 7y agoOf course, bad design is also caused by human error.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoSpecialist software for industry can be absurdly shit sometimes. There are seemingly tons of niche software packages used in business that cost thousands per copy and lack even the most rudimentary features normally found in most software.
- mark-r 7y agoI don't know about other OS, but in Windows it's absurdly difficult to build an input mechanism that doesn't allow pasting.
- NKosmatos 7y agoYou should try using Citrix remote connection software in a business environment :-)
- sverige 7y agoOh man, I just remembered that day ten years ago when I wanted to kill myself because of Citrix.
- bshacklett 7y agoOh the hours I spent on https://www.brianmadden.com/.. https://www.brianmadden.com/...
- fooblitzky 7y agoFor a 3-D modelling course at university we were forced to use software that had no undo mechanism (and only ran on Windows). We very quickly learned to create save files after every single modification, because it was so easy to lose hours of work with a single mistake. In retrospect I wish I had looked for a way to import files from Blender-3D.
- a_bonobo 7y agoIt would be funny if note forgers would use the same software for improved authenticity, re-type the text, and do it correctly - the forged notes could be easily spotted since they use the correct text.
- asperous 7y agoReminds me of: https://www.gislounge.com/map-traps-intentional-mapping-errors-combat-plagiarism/ https://www.gislounge.com/map-traps-intentional-mapping-erro...
- davidkuhta 7y agoMountweazels and Paper Towns! "Fictitious Entry" is a fun read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
- whitecream 7y ago"Easily" is a bit of an exaggeration - the text is so tiny you wouldn't be able to read it without putting it up to your face and you'd run into the other security features first.
- Kwpolska 7y agoA typo in microprint that nobody will notice without looking very hard. So basically clickbait.
- dogma1138 7y agoAnd that’s how a new collectors note is born.
- rebelrexx858 7y agoisn't this why stuff like grammerly was created?
- jamestimmins 7y agoThis is the appropriate response to an error: "nobody died". I can't help but wonder what would have been the response if this happened in the US? I assume a full news cycle would be taken up with opportunistic politicians trying to score points by ascribing blame to their enemies.
- anchpop 7y agoTypogate? In all serious things of similar or greater magnitude than this happen all the time in the US and usually don't get very much attention
- pvg 7y agoI think you have it the other way round. "nobody died" is the pithy and fun response from a politician trying to deflect and score points by being pithy and fun. The standard of error of the part of the government that, you know, prints money should probably be a lot higher than 'nobody died'.
- rabbitonrails 7y agoYou clearly have never been to Australia.
- pvg 7y agoI don't go to imaginary places.
- sorenn111 7y agoI disagree somewhat. US news might laugh about it on morning news coverage. But is it that trivial and a laughing matter? I get it, typos are funny and no one dies. But "nobody died" isn't a valid excuse for mistakes on filing for taxes or legal contracts. Errors do matter, even if no one dies. not to overblow the issue, but governmental trust may require error avoidance for many people.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
- mceoin 7y agoNot nearly as bad as the Canadian $20 note depicting a Norwegian maple leaf (7 points) instead of a Canadian maple (5 points).
- bryanlarsen 7y agoSupposedly that is a stylized amalgam of 10 different native maple trees. The sugar maple is an eastern tree; the amalgam is supposed to be more broadly representative.
- lb1lf 7y agoWell, that one at least makes sense historically. After all, we -Norsemen, that is- were there way before the British and French. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows :)
- umadon 7y agoUhh but weren't the maple trees there before that?
- jesseb 7y agoCanada has 10 native species of Maple, not all have 5 nodes. The Vine Maple can have 7 to 9, for example. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/maple https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/maple
- caymanjim 7y agoApparently they also lacked human editors with grade-school educations.
- Someone1234 7y agoCan you cite something linking education level with an improved ability to spot typographical errors? According to the psychologist quoted in this article[0]/study our inability to spot typos might be an innate limitation of how our brains process information, rather than a lack of intelligence/education. [0] https://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/
- ticmasta 7y agoagreed - as per the original glib response, "nobody died". Life/death situations are the ones where our brains should be finely tuned & trainable.
- caymanjim 7y agoThis wasn't a typo. One person makes a typo. When creating a high-profile physical thing with text on it, there are authors, editors, typesetters (or the digital equivalent), copy editors, and proofreaders involved. If this wasn't reviewed by at least four people prior to printing, and if there weren't then test printings reviewed by additional people, then the entire process is flawed. But it still wasn't a typo. It was a failure in quality control. My dig about education level was too subtle, so I'll be more blunt: too many stupid people were involved. People who don't know how to spell (barring special circumstances like dyslexia or communicating in a non-native language) are stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, but when multiple people whose job it is to produce something like this fail, it's no longer a mistake. It's because they were unable to review it and notice the problem. All it takes is five minutes of reviewing Facebook posts or comment forums to see just how pervasive this stupidity is. Hacker News is one of the few forums I participate in, because most of the people participating are intelligent, and reading comments here doesn't make my eyes bleed. As the sibling commenter stated, no one died, and this isn't a big deal. It's still an embarrassment.
- mpolichette 7y agoI love that the follow up email which is trying to figure out the blame of the misspelling has the word "thru".
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe article's quote of the email is interesting: > "It is spelt wrong all the way thru [sic] microprint!" They'll [sic] the "thru", but the article image clearly shows that the sentence in question says "It is spelt wrong all the way thru the microprint!", which has the added bonus of being grammatically valid, unlike the supposed quote.
- perfmode 7y agoperfect example of a wontfix. the error truly doesn’t matter.
- protomyth 7y agoActually, they are going to fix in the next print run.
- charliesharding 7y agoUnfortunate but at least it's in the minuscule "anti-spoofing" text. Might not even be visible to the naked eye
- Rebelgecko 7y agoUntil some eagle-eyed cashier tries to confiscate someone's "counterfeit" $50 because it has a spelling mistake
- NKosmatos 7y agoThe funny thing is that this typo managed to pass through the inspection/review of so many different people. Related to the “copy & paste” between programs, this depends from which point of view someone looks at it, having to type/input information manually avoids copy&paste mistakes but on the other hand introduces human errors. That’s the reason a good company should have reviews and a clear process for its software and documentation.
- jshowa3 7y agoOnce they correct the mistake, those notes will be worth a fortune to collectors in a couple decades. Collectors love errors. And since the history is well documented online you get a bonus of free provenance.
- dmd 7y agoNot with 480 million of them circulated, it won't be.
- tewarbit 7y agoPerhaps if Australian bills have a similar lifespan to US currency. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/12/how-many-years-do-us-banknotes-stay-in-circulation-infographic/#3e83e7afcf54 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/12/how-ma...
- jen729w 7y agoOur wonderful polymer notes last much, much longer than paper/linen money. Lots of detailed lifespan graphs here: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/sep/7.html https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/sep/7.html
- fooblitzky 7y agoSo the banknote lasts about 20 years, then the plastic takes another 1000 or so to break down?
- cbo100 7y agoExcept, as you can see from the graphs in parent link there's a lot less of them produced in the first place due to lasting longer. And then once they are EOL, they are recycled. https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/production-and-distribution/recycling/ https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/production-and-distribution/rec...
- 7y ago
- vernie 7y agosmh the normalization of deviance
- rongenre 7y agoThis could be easily solved using the blockchain /s
- mrob 7y agoWAToday not fazed about headline typo.
- sverige 7y agoThey also misspelt "emphasize" but no one even noticed. I guess the missing 'i' became the "centre" of attention.
- lotophage 7y agoAre you saying this is a genuine error, or are you making a joke about spelling in American English diverging from British and Australian English?
- red369 7y agoI would assume a joke based on the scare quotes around the spelling of "centre". And at the risk of killing a joke (which I liked), I found the chart of "centre" vs "center" usage interesting: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/87978/how-and-when-did-american-spelling-supersede-british-spelling-in-the-us https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/87978/how-and-wh...
- sverige 7y agoYes, it was a joke. Yes, I know jokes are hard to discern without the "/s". Yes, that's why the scare quotes.
- plink 7y agoThe article mentions that the banknote passed multiple reviews before release, but doesn’t say who had the ultimate responsibilty for its being approved.
- paranoidrobot 7y agoDoes it matter? Who fucked up on a typo of this minor amount isn't a problem - even the Governor of the Reserve Bank (who's signature is on the note) says not to worry.
- nkrisc 7y agoBest method I've ever used for spotting misspellings in what I write: read the words you've written from last to first. Reading in this order breaks the prediction your brain does on what it expects to read next and stops you from filling in the words yourself or simply recognizing them by "shape" instead of reading each letter. Of course this does nothing for grammar or general flow nor does it help you if you've spelled the wrong word correctly.
- underwater 7y agoI have text to speech read back what I've wrote. You'll immediately notice incorrectly spelled words and doubled up words.
- HeavenFox 7y agoIf you have access to a computer, why not just use a spellchecker :)
- shimms 7y agoI print my stuff on actual paper and do a manual proof read when I think I’m done. I’m constantly surprised by how many spelling mistakes I still find during final proof reading that Word isn’t underlying with red squigglies.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Arbalest 7y agoSpellchecking isn't universal, and I've frequently found myself typing completely different words than I had intended, which are not misspellings. That would be picked up pretty quickly.
- hnick 7y agoCase in point, it probably wouldn't have picked up this submission's title if 'phased' had been written instead as I commonly see these days.
- ryanthedev 7y agoI wonder what graphic design app they used. it's such a common problem with these types of apps. they never include spelling and grammar features as default options. I think I lost a job because of this reason. I even had a coworker proof read it. I can't spell :(
- darcys22 7y agoAustralian here: I’ve seen the typo, it’s tiny. It’s part of the anti forgery features where they write large amounts of text on a building in the background of the note. You literally need a magnifying to see this error
- m0zg 7y agoIt could be argued that this is an anti-forgery feature. Or, rather, was, before everyone else caught on to it.