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Comment by jamestimmins | Hacker News Reader

This 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.

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I tend to think it would be about the same reaction in the United States. "Oh those dumb printers hahaha [cue one day of local news stations across the country having an easy story to take up their air time that night]" and then it'd be over.

Though I won't rule out that someone would probably suggest that the mistyped word was actually a valid spelling, and anyone that said otherwise was fake news.

It’s a nice security-by-obscurity feature if someone makes a counterfeit and doesn’t spot the typo. That would be easy to miss unless you had explicit instructions to spell the word wrong.

I doubt someone would attempt to remake the bill from scratch like that, instead of scanning.

Probably somebody at the US mint would be embarrassed and it would be out of the news cycle in a week.

It isn't like they misspelled the name of their country - they misspelled a word that is in size 1 font as a security feature.

Nobody at the U.S. Mint would be any more "embarrassed" than anyone else over a misprint on U.S. currency.

But these people, part of the U.S. Treasury, might be: https://moneyfactory.gov/

I 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.

FWIW, my reading of the article is that the "nobody died" comment was not made for fun or political points or to deflect blame, but to console the printers responsible who were beating themselves up about their error.

Taxes and contracts can a big impact on the people they affect, though. A typo on a bank note has no direct effect on any users. It's an aesthetic problem, not a functional one.

Really? Isn't it going to throw a lot of false positives when people try to spend them and the cashier thinks that the misspelling means it's counterfeit?

46 million bills were in circulation for 8 months before the first person even noticed the typo, so probably not, no.

I've been a cashier, and trust me, we had more important things to do than examine bills with a magnifying glass looking for spelling errors. If a bill seemed suspicious at a quick glance, I swiped it with the counterfeit detector pen, and if it came out fine, I shrugged and put it in the register.

You really think any cashier is going to read the microtext on every bill they get? You practically need a magnifying glass just to see the typo. It's an absolute non-issue no matter what way you spin it.

Did it though? It's been in circulation for years.

I thought the version with the typo was recent?

Years is probably an over statement on my part. A second read indicates probably a year and half.

An error on legal contract is very different from a typo on something that doesn't matter as it doesn't affect functionality at all.

> But "nobody died" isn't a valid excuse for mistakes on filing for taxes or legal contracts.

I have had a lot of mistakes filing my taxes (Spain) when I was working as a contractor. You pay a small fine (100€ for a yearly report) and move on.

You will be prosecuted if you lied in your taxes. But, mistakes happen all the time and its not big deal.

Do you have to pay backtaxes or is it just $100 and move on?

Yes. I have to pay the taxes. The 100 is a fine for doing it wrong and I guess pay for the extra time that they need to spend.

Nothing would happen. Some currency collectors would want them because they represent a minor variety, but, with 480M printed, they wouldn't even be worth very much. There might be a 1 minute story on the news like "look at what those dummies at the BEP (Bureau of Engraving and Printing) did now," but it wouldn't be news for very long, if at all, outside collector circles.

Typogate? 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

After the two-scoops debacle, I suspect that'll be the case until at least 2024. ;o )

I 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'.

You clearly have never been to Australia.

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