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> I fear that the most probable hypothesis is that nobody has been sufficiently motivated to check these things out carefully as yet.

For some motivation, you might still get a check from Knuth if you find an error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check

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It is not a real check. It is for putting on your wall.

Well, that's because our banking system is terrible and because showing off a knuth check is worth more than cashing it, people shared pictures of said checks which allowed check fraud.

Don't people cash cheques by taking photos of them? Or is that a Canadian thing? (Ie. Can't you do both?)

Yes

You can do both. Many banks now let you take pictures of the check using your cellphone to cash them out.

Few people would cash it, anyway.

That's why he switched away from real cheques.

Uhhh no, he switched away from real cheques because of bank fraud: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html (this page seems to have certificate issues)

https://www-cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html seems to have the desired content, minus certificate error.

I am getting a cert error on this page one would hav ehoped that Stanford would not have problems with certs ;-)

I am pretty sure they get unlimited free certificates from Incommon :D

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