Fun fact: Chinese has separate "financial numerals" precisely to prevent one digit being changed to another, the way that could be easily done with regular numerals like turning 一 (1) into 三 (3) or 十 (10). A lot harder when they look like 壹, 叁, and 拾 instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals#Financial_num...

Another fun fact: German registration plates use a font for which it is difficult to change one digit to another, for example by adding a bit of tape. The font is called FE-Schrift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift

Interesting. I’ve heard that in the states, some police department plate lookup software will treat similar shapes the same. So if you search “B5-004” it will also match BS004, B5O04, etc

But they left S, X, and Z rotationally symmetric, so if you choose a non-palindrome vanity plate with only those characters, you can mount it upside-down and fool plate-readers.

But at least in Germany the plates always start with some letters and end in numbers. So mounting it upside down can't result in a valid plate.

Custom ("vanity") plates aren't allowed in Germany?

Neat, you made me one of the 10 thousand today.

Interesting, is there a background to how they created the financial numerals? The standard ones seem obvious.