(Hmm maybe I should also write a blogpost about this)
That claim goes to the Polish cryptoanalyst Marian Rejewski instead, of course (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski); what Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers did was automate the breaking, which was important because it had to be done again every day (due to the many combinations of configurations of the Enigma).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe cites Turing, Welchman and Rejewski.
I would say he could have even gotten away with “functionally infinite number of alphabets”.
My guess for the top slot off the top of my head was actually #4.
> "These account balances reflect only the rewards for errors reported since the beginning of 2006. Many reward checks were issued during 1968--2005, too numerous to mention here."
There's 20 years on that chart vs 37 not on it.
Also that's "account balance" rather than "the most Reward checks" which I take to mean "the most [number of] reward checks" -- there's probably a correlation, yes, but [0] shows a variety of ways where check values are non-constant.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check#Reward_amou...
You probably have a substantial subset of the people on that list on HN, so it might be possible to recover a chunk of the 'paper era'.
For the record I cashed both and have zero regrets. At the time it definitely felt like the right thing to do as I am not into collecting tokens.
I'm not doubting the authority on the balances; it's the correlation to the number of checks I'm querying - high balance doesn't necessarily mean high number of checks, especially since the checks can have different values.
Udo's knowledge of TeX is absolutely stunning, so I would be very surprised if he weren't in first place. And DRF [0] [1] seemed to agree with the ranking in a sibling comment [2], which is also suggests that it's accurate.
> There's 20 years on that chart vs 37 not on it.
The reward values have increased exponentially over the years (I think?), so the older years should be relatively insignificant to the overall balances.
[0]: https://www.overleaf.com/blog/618-an-interview-with-david-fu...
I only managed to get one check (for an error and a point of improvement) for _very_ minor points in _Digital Typography_ which was facilitated by my having been fascinated by typography since reading Oscar Ogg's _The 26 Letters_ and his cousin Warren Chappell's _The Living Alphabet_ when I was 8 or so.
SFAIK, only Findlay/Watt duo have offered such a guarantee of correctness.
It kills me that I was rebuffed when I asked for copyright permission to reprint the Tolkien text _The Old English Exodus_ on the grounds that I was a "Tolkien Nut" and not an academic, then, then I bought a boxed set (which contained 4 other books which I already owned), reading the book revealed 20 typos in the 22 pages comprised of the Select Bibliography and poem (they really should've just used a scan of those twain as was done in other similar texts).
Similarly, it's hard to take current discussion of _Dune_ seriously when the word "pogrom" is set as "program" in the e-book (and yes, I have reported this as a typo, and no, it hasn't been fixed, even though the publisher did "update" the book to change the cover).
Tolkien was a memorable read. I read it when I was experiencing Covid-caused depression in 2021.
Really need to find another error or point of improvement so as to get the digital account --- I've been reading through TAoCP Vol. 4 Fascicle 7 on _Constraint Satisfaction_, but it's been slow going (though I did find out that it is intentional that he not list beginning of chapter quotes in the index).
thank god it wasn't that lol
https://www.thomas-huehn.com/knuth-reward-check
src="./bug-report-knuth-2006.jpg"
https://www.thomas-huehn.com/bug-report-knuth-2006.jpg
One can infer that the post's URI is like a "directory" of the subresources for the post, including those images; the URL of
https://www.thomas-huehn.com/knuth-reward-check/
https://www.thomas-huehn.com/knuth-reward-check/bug-report-knuth-2006.jpg
If the author is here, you might consider redirecting the non-slash to the slash.
> But why will you find me there with the entry “0x$1.20”, i.e. decimal $2.88?
I know Knuth has his own notation here, (it is clearly noted at the bottom of the BOSS page) but 0x1.20 should really be decimal 1.125.
Apparently some folks actually paid in advance for the full set leatherbound --- it'll be interesting to see the posts about Vol. 4 being delivered....
I had received a check recently and wrote about it too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286258
You missed out on a great time at TUG26 [0], but hopefully I'll see you at TUG27 [1] in Paris :).