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Comment by timothya | Hacker News Reader

Here's a video of Woz showing his pad of $2 bills and talking about this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ1TIYxm1vM

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In this video, Woz never states that his pads assembled from sheets of legitimate, uncut 2 dollar bills. He implies that he pays a local printer to create the pads from scratch. The reactions from the host and the audience seem to reflect that, as well. What's going on here?

He's trolling. He stresses that he had a "printer" make the pads for him. It is implied that the content of the pads was printed, when it was not. Everything he says is true but you are meant to believe these are fakes that "meet government specifications". Of course they do, the government made them, but that's not what he wanted the audience to think.

He is having fun making literally true, but intentionally misleading, statements. Just like he did with the Secret Service agent.

Trolling an LE agent doesn't seem to be a good thing to do.

It is a very good thing to do in that it restores a balance of power.

I can't help but think restores the balance of power in much the same way that sticking your thumb in the eye of a grizzly bear restores the balance.

Actually that might be a good way to fight off a grizzly bear, so I'll take it.

Grizzlies would often come down out of the mountains where I grew up. Trust me, I advise you not to.

Thanks. The next time a cop is gruff with me, I'll know why he's frustrated.

If it were me, I'd be afraid the security agent would chose to be a dick and put me in jail for 24 hours for whatever motive he could think of. Also, the fake ID thing is pretty risky.

Why? It's his real name and his real picture. What law is he breaking?

Well, I was once interrogated in a very unpleasant tone by a police officer at the airport of London Heathrow because I was carrying an empty baby buggy, since I was picking up my wife and our son from a trip. Basically I was suspected of attempting to kidnap a child, so now I try to make my encounters with police officers as short as possible.

(I agree that he probably didn't break any laws. The ID thing is awesome, really funny.)

"Laser safety officer" is a lie, and lying to federal officials is not legal.

How is it a lie? Poof, I just created "The raldi-DanBC Club" and as President I hereby bestow upon you the title of Laser Safety Officer.

It's generally illegal to impersonate an police officer, or other government official. Laser Safety Officer is a stretch, but consider Food Safety Officer ("I taste everything that comes out of the kitchen!"). This is where those fuzzy "reasonable person" tests start showing up, much to HN's dismay, where every legal problem should be decidable by a python script.

By what logic do you equate "Laser Safety Officer" with "government official"?

The government employs a great many safety officers. I doubt many people know all of them. A "reasonable person" may conclude, upon presentation of a "Laser Safety Officer" ID, that you are there on official business.

Depends on context. It's not illegal merely to carry such an ID. It's probably not illegal to give one to a Secret Service agent, either, unless you're trying to deceive them, but that's likely skirting close to the edge.

>The government employs a great many safety officers.

So do private businesses.

The Laser Safety Officer for Rockwell Laser Industries - https://www.rli.com/resources/articles/laser_safety_officer.... - is an example of a LSO in private industry.

"Certified Laser Safety Officer" from the Board of Laser Safety ("It should be emphasized that a certificate awarded by the BLS does not constitute a license to practice, nor does it guarantee that a CLSO meets any federal, state or other requirements related to the practice of laser safety.") - http://www.lasersafety.org/uploads/pdf/clso_pp_manual.pdf .

In other words, a 'Certified Laser Safety Officer' is not a government-specific designation.

Turns out, there's even a Wikipedia reference to LSO, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety#Laser_safety_offic... . "In many jurisdictions, organizations that operate lasers are required to appoint a laser safety officer (LSO)." with a link to a University of Chicago page at http://safety.uchicago.edu/tools/faqs/laser_safety.shtml which says "only Class 3b and Class 4 lasers are to be registered with the Laser Safety Officer."

(U. Chicago is another non-government organization with a LSO.)

I don't think he implied that he had the printer create them. He mentions that he paid a printer, who he knows through a friend, to cut the sheets, perforate them, and gum them into pads. You can see this better if you watch the video timothya linked.

Woz is a master troll.

I assumed he meant he had a friend at the local mint who could get him uncut sheets and perforate them.

You can just order the uncut sheets:

http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/2currencysheetsbeptestsheet...

The quality of the comments on YouTube? They are really so bad I wanted to puke. They believe Woz is so rich so that he could get over with "illegal tender", even secret service approves "his own printed tender".

Is this really the US general public's comprehension level?

I mostly read HN, but my understanding is in some counties of the US, it's a regular occurrence that poker games at home with money involved are considered contraband and a SWAT team comes and kills the dog (Don't make fun of the detail - The dog story is here because it's the only way to get public emotion about it, therefore newspapers report dog stories first). The SWAT team could even mistake the address and there are no reimbursements for damages, even if no illegal activity was carried. Obviously we only hear about the few worst cases.

Therefore would it be a stretch to imagine that any non-high-profile citizen carrying a pad of $2 bills could be suspected of illegal activities? To avoid a "SWAT inspection" don't you have to be either Steve Wozniak or in the right neighborhoods of US?

It depends on what you mean by avoid. There probably aren't more than 100,000 SWAT raids a year (statistics are thin, but Balko is a loud voice of opposition to them):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/s...

And there are about 120 million households. So even if you assume that all SWAT raids are illegitimate, that 100,000 is wrong by 10X, and that they spread the SWATs around on the bottom 1/2 of households, you are still looking at 60 years between them.

I'm not intending that to be dismissive of the situation, I mean to point out that it gets a lot of attention because many people think it is a significant problem regardless of the frequency, not because it is a pervasive fact of life in the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/01/27/fairf...

Insanity to the extreme. US is really insane on some accounts.

No, someone posted a comment about the abysmal rating system on youtube that promotes crap. There are no downvotes. This imbalance promotes one-sided views because people like to upvote stuff they agree with. The comment section becomes a nightmare of extreme opposites arguing and every sane person is driven out.

But this "people upvote stuff they agree with" is also leads to, upvoted and visible ones (which are over the fold) are mostly agreed with stuff. So general public mostly agrees with that.

Moderate views tend to get a "agreeable nod" and not an upvote.

> Is this really the US general public's comprehension level?

US certainly don't have a monopoly on stupid comments! I believe the more people have access to a platform, and the dumber the comments are.

Actually, I've been using internet for 20 years and I can see how its democratization has also affected the quality of certain services (for the better and the worse).

Actually it provides a very nice image of the pad, I though it was more like a checkbook, but it's 4 bills (cut from a big sheet) with the topmost glued lengthwise (and they probably added perforations to make it easy to tear)

I wonder what's the padding between the notes, not too big I guess

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