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I started a paper website business

daily.tinyprojects.dev

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Re: I started a paper website business

#251

Post by IggleSniggle »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #213
Retric wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people use font models rather than just language models. The post office is perhaps the best example where despite a known list of addresses and intended format they still backup OCR with people.

> The post office is perhaps the best example where despite a known list of addresses and intended format they still backup OCR with people. To be fair, the amount of people who write their own address incorrectly is staggering. I'm in eCommerce and easily 70%+ of addresses have some sort of minor error in them. Around 5-10% are just plain bizarre, with things like two suburbs being included or the street name not in…

People do things like include two suburbs because they know that (eg) in order for it to reach their address correctly, it must first reach the human at point A that will correctly pass it to the human at point B, where it otherwise cannot arrive at point B because point B does not receive normal postal service, possibly because of a jurisdiction dispute in 1974 that placed their address in a zip code that’s different from all of their neighbors.

Can you tell that I know a bunch of people with these kinds of issues? You may already know that programmers mess up names all the time, telling people that their last name must be their surname, or that you can’t be an O’Reilly or a Robertson-Peele, or that “Mary Anne” is not a single name, or that your middle name cannot be your “primary” name, or that you must have more than one name, or that your legal name is invalid because it’s not the name you were born with, or that all 3yos have names, etc.

Well, take all of those issues, and add the vagaries of geography, and you’ve got mail delivery.

Re: I started a paper website business

#254

Post by foxhop »

gwern wrote: post #138
foxhop wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are open source "computer vision" libraries which work really well, but, also there is a file on your filesystem with all the words, so you could pass over the OCR'd text to fix "typos". Paper website will likely be cloned if it works.

If you're referring to /usr/share/dict/words, no, you can't just pass over it to fix typos - it doesn't even have the proper noun 'Bel-Air' in it!

Use you imagination.

Re: I started a paper website business

#255

Post by FalconSensei »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #170
FalconSensei wrote: post #149

My main impediment for using anything like that is that my handwriting is incomprehensible to anyone except me. Like, my wife takes some time to figure out what it's written there, and sometimes - after long enough time passes - even myself

Maybe there's an inherent bias that people who prefer to hand write have better handwriting and therefore have a better experience. It's possible that most people with bad handwriting are more prone to want to type.

Yeah, I think it's kind of a vicious cycle: I have terrible handwriting, I'm not used to the movement - my hands hurt more with a pen than keyboard, I'm extremely slow (or the result is unreadable). So I keep typing

Re: I started a paper website business

#256

Post by The-Bus »

Tcepsa wrote: post #231
Super_Jambo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans must be using a language model for image recognition when reading though. Otherwise things like failing to spot the the is a duplicate word wouldn't happen so often.

I see what you did there (and I appreciate it! ^_^)

It took your comment for me to realize what happened

Re: I started a paper website business

#257

Post by eashman »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #236
floatingatoll wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google built their index by externalizing the human cost of curation, aka Webrings. Now all the webrings are dead, because humans are easily tempted by lazy search into not maintaining them. I wish they weren’t. They were a better form of curation than anything since.

I wonder how realistic a hybrid of human and algorithmic curation would be. Obviously the internet has an enormously long tail, but if a company could ‘curate’/rank the top 10,000 most popular sites, that might still be useful.

See if you can find a mirror of Yahoo from 1996.

Re: I started a paper website business

#258

Post by BeFlatXIII »

dylan604 wrote: post #193
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking domains have been a staple of the internet since its inception.

oh the days of the under construction animGifs

I remember one such website that was nothing but a collection of every single under construction GIF they could find.

Re: I started a paper website business

#259

Post by bananamerica »

TekMol wrote: post #165
irae wrote: post #154

That is not the first time I see one of your stories and it always brings me a smile to see your new ideas and how implement them. It also amazes me how some countries make it so easy to open a business. Doing so in Brazil would be a legal nightmare. Your projects are super inspiring and I always have a mind to leave my job and start doing the same. I should probably move to the US or Canada first, otherwise it might…

Why would it be a legal nightmare in Brazil?

Brazil is bureaucratic by default.

Re: I started a paper website business

#260

Post by sombremesa »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #245
sombremesa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the suggested method, but I agree that handwriting can be improved. Someone who writes in prescription cursive isn't going to get better with a new pen and different paper. It takes deliberate practice and attention to detail. This is why "a poor craftsman blames his tools" is an adage.

My handwriting is much cleaner with a fountain pen than a ballpoint pen. Tools matter. It doesn't have to be an expensive fountain pen or paper, a cheap Faber Castell on printer paper works fine.

Of course your voice is going to sound much better on a condenser mic than on a $1 mic from RadioShack, but that doesn’t mean your voice changed. We’re talking about improving handwriting, if you write someone a note illegibly your excuse should not be that you forgot your good pen at home.
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