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I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the calculator security check. What an ingenious solution! It's not the most robust "hash", but it's no more than what he needs for the purpose. It really puts things into perspective when people are talking about how one technology is "better" than another. Pragmatism over pedantry.

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It's also a lovely case of someone working out the principal of something. The hash is, as you say, lacking but the mechanism is not that different to digital signatures.

The "checkmark" was pure genius.

It does look like he had a flash of insight about the usefulness of a digest function. And maybe the "checkmark" symbol suggested a security check to him.

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