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Novel Optical Trick Creates Ultra-Secure Cash
- mhb 15y agoReflective clothing?
- thorin_2 15y agoIt will start with currency and such, followed by clothing (hey, look at me!), then nails, then full body "tattoos". Heck, a couple of decades from now we'll put the city of Panem (from the Hunger Games) to shame. We'll all look like a bunch of human butterflies.
- jackpirate 15y agohey, look at me! For safety, not for fashion. Hopefully.
- spobo 15y agoIt won't be ultra secure if it's cheap to manufacture and used in products ranging from money to even concert tickets. But very cool none the less. I do hope it gets fitted to the next currencies because an extra obstacle for counterfeiters is always welcome.
- dsl 15y agoCheap to manufacture usually refers to per unit costs. If a machine costs 10 million dollars and has an output of 100 million units per year, your per unit cost is 10 cents (plus materials), or "pretty cheap." Only state sponsored counterfeiters would be able to replicate this technology in the next 10 years.
- ljf 15y agoI believe it's the sate sponsored teams that actually get most of the fake money into circulation (in terms of currency value, not units in circulation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar The UK has a large problem with fake Pound coins, which are made at an artisan level, but all the high value note faking, worldwide, of established currencies, is most likely State Sponsored. Which states produce them remains a mystery, though some think it is the USA/CIA: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/01/10/24521/us-counterfeiting-charges-against.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/01/10/24521/us-counterfeitin...
- moheeb 15y agoThat link says absolutely nothing about the US or CIA possibly counterfeiting UK pound coins.
- DanBC 15y agoBut the post you're replying to doesn't claim that UK pound coins are counterfeited by US or CIA, it says that UK coins are counterfeited by "artisans". (http://www.coinauthentication.co.uk/poundfiles-types.html http://www.coinauthentication.co.uk/poundfiles-types.html) Wikipedia says that nearly 3% of pound coins are counterfeit, and that the Swazi lilangeni is minted from the same planchets, which makes vending machine fraud easy.
- moheeb 15y agoHere is the post I am quoting: The UK has a large problem with fake Pound coins.... Which states produce them remains a mystery, though some think it is the USA/CIA After this quote a link was provided. That link did not mention anything about the USA or CIA producing fake UK pound coins. Am I missing something? Why are the two topics in the same paragraph if they are not related?
- ljf 15y agoLooks like you missed the bit in the middle: The UK has a large problem with fake Pound coins,--- which are made at an artisan level,--- but all the high value note faking, worldwide, of established currencies, is most likely State Sponsored. This was to clarify what I had meant above, talking about volume over value. The UK has a large volume of fake coins in circulation, most likely far far more than the number of fake notes we have circulating. BUT the value of the fake notes in circulation far exceeds that of the coins. I was trying to make it clear that yes there is a lot of mom and pop fakery going on, but the real high value fakery comes from the highly technical and sophisticated teams (most like state sponsored).
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoCereal boxes spring to mind. If its popular, then pretty soon you could buy up the equipment at some a fire sale when some local advertising shop went under.
- VonLipwig 15y agoIts very cool, it looks like it would have tonnes of use's assuming there isn't a lower tech method of emulating a similar effect. Counterfeit cash only has to be good enough to trick a human. It is for this reason that I don't think it would be too long before counterfeiters found a cheap low tech method of creating a similar looking effect.
- Jach 15y agoLet's also remember that it's not incredibly hard to trick a human. (One of my favorite videos related to counterfeit currency is Derren Brown paying for things with blank paper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vz_YTNLn6w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vz_YTNLn6w (And if you think he faked it, he's still managed to trick a lot of other people otherwise.)) I wonder how much in total method after method of trying to stay ahead of the Big Money counterfeiters has cost? Mathematical solutions to the problem of forgery have existed for quite a while, I wish there was more a push for those. (And I'm not necessarily talking about bitcoin either, it's just one of many possibilities.) Of course even just going digital for everything would probably solve a lot of problems, and there are math solutions to keeping different types of anonymity as well.
- cmarshall 15y agoThe polymer notes[1] we use in Australia (and also print for several other countries) have been around for about 18 years now and have very low rates of counterfeiting due to the number of security features built in[2]. The notes do cost more to produce, but the extra durability means that they last about 4 times as long (from memory) in circulation, so overall the cost difference is marginal for the government, but is an additional deterrent for counterfeiters. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_banknote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_banknote [2] http://www.rba.gov.au/banknotes/counterfeit/index.html http://www.rba.gov.au/banknotes/counterfeit/index.html
- GFischer 15y agoI fell for a fake Polymer banknote while on holidays in Brazil (the same Ten Reais banknote seen on Wikipedia). As the top post said, it only needs to fool a human, not be perfect.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- est 15y agoIs it possible to use plasmonics to create vivid color display monitors?
- ck2 15y agoI can imagine advertisers using this to stamp currency with their logo. (however it's illegal to tamper with money like that) I highly doubt it will survive the wear and tear of regular use though - if the microscopic holes become worn and enlarged or filled with dust, the effect will stop working.
- uptown 15y agoI wonder if the information-density could be used to make it extremely fault-tolerant. Even if you had an 80% failure rate due to damaged holes you could still communicate a vast amount of information in the remaining 20% that were unharmed, and just build redundancy into the system.
- darasen 15y agoOh No! Back to storing programs on punch cards.
- powertower 15y agofull-circle.
- DanBC 15y ago> if the microscopic holes become worn and enlarged or filled with dust, the effect will stop working. From the article: > [...] which are typically 100-200 nanometers in diameter 200 nanometers is 0.2 microns. (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/particle-sizes-d_934.html http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/particle-sizes-d_934.html) Dust is much too big, but there are some particles which may be small enough to clog the holes.
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoBacteria. Viruses. Fluids. Yuck.
- dalore 15y ago
- Mordor 15y agoHow about fingernails?
- xutopia 15y agoWhy did they say "thousands of years of evolution" instead of millions?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 15y agoWell, given the earth is only 6,000 years old...
- feralchimp 15y agoSounds like they have a better mousetrap. Should be interesting to see whether they build a successful business out of it.
- maeon3 15y agoId rather see a currency that cant be stolen by governments who print the currency like mad causing hyperinflation. A hyperinflation protected currency where it takes millions of computer-years of time to print more cash.
- peteretep 15y agoAt my house, we have a "no computer programmers talking about economics". One of the biggest problems of the Eurozone is the inability for governments to inflate their money-supply. Also you just described bitcoin.
- GFischer 15y agoI've seen some reasonable responses over here. Also lots of uninformed or misinformed stuff, sure, but I'd rather not limit discussion of economics, law, etc.. just to the professionals. Also, the more I learn about economics (I'm halfway through an MBA program), the less I believe economics should be left to the economists - I do understand that I have only a patina of knowledge, and that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing :).
- peteretep 15y agoI think the key issue is that there's something about computer programmers that makes them think they already understand economics. I'm not sure what. Maybe that it seems like it should be self evident because "it's just numbers" or something. And yet, some of the facile comments you read and hear and I will cut the fingers off the next person who tells me we should go back to the gold standard, because at least gold has a value...
- SilasX 15y agoNo, your problem is that you governments borrowed too much to spend on unsustainable social programs, and reality is finally rearing its ugly head. Printing money will certainly paper over this problem, while screwing over savers and others who were prudent enough not to blow up the bubble.
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- jpxxx 15y agoWho cares about "security"? This is an aesthetic goldmine: the ability to emboss passive no-power fluorescence onto any surface or material permanently is huge. Tattoos, buildings, glassware, bezels, cars, reflectors, furniture... jeez. This is amazing stuff.
- theon144 15y agoI never understood how do those anti-counterfeiting defenses work. How come anybody can't buy the tech and make it at home? Is it because you can't just get the machines, or maybe because they're expensive?
- xorglorb 15y agoIt's much cheaper to counterfeit old currency that is still in circulation than to invest a lot of money in trying to replicate the latest security features.
- rubidium 15y ago"Never before seen optical trick" makes it sound like the company invented plasmonics. This isn't true. Using patterned structures to affect electromagnetic fields via surface plasmons has been around for quite a while in lower frequency ranges. The recent advances in nano-patterning have allowed for access to optical wavelength light. Plasmonics is a very cool field, and is likely to have many more applications. For further reading: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=plasmonics http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=plasmonics
- Wistar 15y agoWhy all the complex names for it? The iridescent color of a butterfly wing has been known as "structural color" for a very long time.