[HN Gopher] I started a paper website business ___________________________________________________________________ I started a paper website business Author : tinyprojects Score : 972 points Date : 2021-12-14 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (daily.tinyprojects.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (daily.tinyprojects.dev) | georgecmu wrote: | This is really cool. Use of GPT-3 to augment OCR is an amazing | (and, retrospectively, obvious) insight and a great immediate use | case for these language models. | | I wish Remarkable took this idea -- they really oversold their | OCR capabilities[1]. It works great in their support and promo | videos, but I found the actual performance to be absolutely | terrible. | | [1] https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en- | us/articles/36000266143... | visarga wrote: | It's an old idea, using a language model on top of character | level OCR. Works well for general text but doesn't solve random | sequences of digits and letters. So you can't use it to correct | your invoices where you have lots of out-of-dictionary tokens. | einpoklum wrote: | > using a language model on top of character level OCR | | But if you know you're going to use a language model after | the OCR, then you don't OCR to a single character, but rather | to a distribution of character similarity (e.g. the 90% least | similar or clipping at a certain similarity threshold). Then | the language model should have more to work with (although | TBH its work becomes more complicated). | georgecmu wrote: | If a dictionary satisfies your definition of a language | model, yes, with predictably poor results[1]. If I understand | correctly, Google Books approach[2] represented a major | improvement in accuracy of automated OCR (and this is for | _printed_ text!), but I would venture to say that | implementing a language model like this would be far beyond | the scope of a 'tiny project'. | | [1] https://tesseract- | ocr.github.io/docs/Limits_on_the_Applicati... | | [2] https://tesseract- | ocr.github.io/docs/Improving_Book_OCR_by_A... | bloak wrote: | I've always found it somehow ironic that a human can | correctly recognise printed characters even if parts of them | are missing and the word is misspelt or in a language the | human does not know at all, but computers have to resort to | language models because an exact comparison of part of the | image with other parts of the image (where the same letter is | printed in the same font) for some reason is not feasible? | throwawayboise wrote: | Brains do patten recognition much better than computers | (albeit slower) | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | For now. | twic wrote: | What could possibly go wrong? | https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres... | Swenrekcah wrote: | I actually just now bought their subscription with the | particular idea to use it with my reMarkable. | | Then I only now realised I don't actually want my notes public, | I hope there is some form of access control built into this! :D | ineedasername wrote: | _some form of access control built into this!_ | | It would also be great if you could delete a page by taking a | picture of the notebook entry completely scribbled out, or a | video of tossing it into the fire. We need a product roadmap | for this! | kragen wrote: | This is cool, but what's GPT-3's pricing model and roadmap? | appwiz wrote: | Pricing is at https://openai.com/api/pricing/ | codebook wrote: | I like write on paper. I have written journals for 14 years, | which now fill one section of my bookshelves. | | This year I switched from fountain pens and clairfontaine notbook | to E-ink tablet, Supernote A5x. | | the main purpose is to keep the record in digital formats, And so | far I am satisfied. The OCR sucks, though. I hope Supernote may | adopt the GPT-3. | aerovistae wrote: | A lot of this seems manageable to me - like I could imagine | myself being able to build it - but I have no idea how the author | handled the domain names part and hosting all these websites. How | did you just "throw together" a registrar and a hosting service? | Seems like they built heroku and namecheap as side facets to | their "tiny project." I must be missing something. | Graffur wrote: | Why isn't this marked as a Show HN? | | Also this seems like a lot of effort for 4k a year. Of course, | hopefully you get some more subscribers to make it worth while. | folli wrote: | > this seems like a lot of effort for 4k a year | | Is this Hacker News or Get Rich Quick News? | thinkski wrote: | Feature idea: bundle a webring, so when viewing one paper website | can get connected to others. | mbildner wrote: | Can you clarify/ expand on this idea? | nzach wrote: | I think GP was talking about this: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring | [deleted] | anonymouse008 wrote: | Incredibly cool! This should invite a whole new type of blogger | to the internet - well done! | | Curious - I'm looking at your other projects as well and the | design is quite good. Are you using a firm for design, or do you | have any front end frameworks to recommend? For some reason | design consistency the way you have it is extremely hard for me. | cableshaft wrote: | So I diligently kept a pen and paper journal about my game | designs for three years (wrote about 100,000+ words on paper). | Switched to digital for a year, wrote 120,000 words just in 2019 | (starting every morning sitting at a Starbucks and writing it | helped), switched back, then switched back again, doing less and | less words each year (for 2021 I'm at like 15,000 words, so | pathetic, it's only like 12 entries total, need to get back into | it). | | But for the pen and paper I was manually transcribing it to | digital (and still only transcribed about half of it). I didn't | know OCR had gotten that good (and still suspect my writing isn't | clean enough for great OCR). | | But maybe I should give this a try, might be enough to get me | back in the habit. Also trying to avoid doing as much typing | lately (because of some arthritic-like pain in the fingers on one | hand, although it's my writing hand :/) | cableshaft wrote: | So this got me trying out various things for dictation and | transcription, as that would mean I wouldn't have to type quite | as much. | | I tried using Windows Speech Recognition, and it's | unfortunately seems to be pretty garbage. Tons of mistakes I | had to manually correct, couldn't say too much at all without | it being so garbled I didn't remember what I really said to | correct it manually. | | But then I found out about built-in Apple Dictation on Macbook, | which sends it to Siri, and I tried reading some old journal | entries, and it's actually pretty darn good! I might be able to | get through transcribing my other notes using it with minimal | corrections. Just need to make sure you state punctuation, or | else it doesn't really put any into it. | | Still didn't seem that great for programming code though. Would | be cool if I could find something decent for that. | ineedasername wrote: | _Windows Speech Recognition, and it 's unfortunately seems to | be pretty garbage_ | | Dragon Naturally Speaking (a paid product) is pretty good at | normal dictation. My workplace bought me a copy when I was | recovering from wrist surgery and it wasn't bad, especially | since I could still use one hand. I've seen people mention | using it for programming, with a bit of difficulty and a | learning curve. But you can create your own custom commands, | which is pretty much required if with keywords in a language | that don't have a dictionary entry. | atlantic wrote: | I occasionally suffer from arthritis in my right hand. I've | found that regular use of Baoding balls keeps it at bay. | artificial wrote: | Bummer with the hand! Have you taken any supplements or do any | exercises? Not sure if it's an RSI but there's hope out there! | bserge wrote: | Google's OCR (as found in Lens, Docs and whatever) is insanely | good. At least that was my impression based on my own notes (my | writing is horrible and I often add very small side notes). | | Oh yeah, camera quality makes a big difference. | [deleted] | TurkishPoptart wrote: | How do the domains work for this? Are they automatically created? | zepearl wrote: | Excellent idea/project and result, and interesting&funny to read. | And I loved your second-last sentence :D | Gtex555 wrote: | Whitelisting this website on my Adblock cause you opened with a | TL:DR. | arbuge wrote: | It's a wonderful project. There's something romantic about it, | for sure. | | And if I could plug my own project, you could also do it by just | sending emails: https://publicemails.com. | kroltan wrote: | Ironically, it seems like half of the emails there are just | spam. | arbuge wrote: | It's a free service right now. I'm thinking converting it to | a paid one like the one in the article might solve this | problem. | kroltan wrote: | To be clear I did not mean it as a dig on your service! | It's a really cool idea, sorry for not saying it before. It | was just a perfect irony. | | You could also do some heuristics like not accepting emails | with excessive HTML. Though I'm not sure how much it'd | work, since you already require confirmation so presumably | the spammers actually have someone authorizing the | publication. (I didn't test your flow since I have nothing | that warrants posting to say) | robertlagrant wrote: | Neat idea :) | irae wrote: | 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 not be possible for me. | TekMol wrote: | Why would it be a legal nightmare in Brazil? | irae wrote: | Just for starters, every company is a liability for you as a | person. Your "equivalent of credit score" will be forever | impacted by each legal entity you start. | | A company in Brazil needs to fit into categories. So if you | have an e-commerce company that sells food, you can't use the | same entity to provide a service, for example, the email | provider with emojis the original poster did previously. You | need a new legal entity for that. | | If you have one of the companies not pay by itself, closing | it is a nightmare. I have a company that is closed, not | debts, not a single problem, for 15 years already inactive. | That company is considered a liability for my current company | and me as a person. Once you have 3 companies in your name, | you start having trouble in Brazil, as you fall into "risk" | territory for taking credit, opening accounts, renting | offices or apartments, etc. And if one company wants to | receive payment in foreign currency, you also have to | generate quarterly financial reports, and all sorts of | bureaucracy. Each step of the way you find new problems. | | The rules are so extensive and so hard to navigate that you | can't be the only person working on that. If you want to be | like the original poster, you need an accountant that will | charge you per company a fair amount of money, and it will | still give you a lot of work to communicate with your | accountant about each of the issues. | | Yes, it is OK for someone that was always an employee to open | a restaurant and have a living from that afterwards. | Specially since it is a well stablished business category. | But serially opening companies in Brazil is not a good time | at all. | | Disclaimer: I am not a professional in this area, I am a | software engineer and I do have 2 companies in Brazil, one | operating and one closed. Most of my knowledge is either | self-taught or learning through my business accountant. | forinti wrote: | It's not hard at all to open a business in Brazil, unless you | work with things that require safety inspections (food, health, | chemicals, etc). | | Closing a business is a bit of a bother, but it is mostly a | question of waiting. | irae wrote: | No it is not. You might find it simple, if you don't compare | to places that are easier. | | First you need to file all the paperwork. Then you wait. Once | you get approvals, you can't do anything without a bank | account, and opening the bank account is a lot of trouble | too, because they want to triple check everything. | | From zero to operational is a long way, and with lots of | legal liability along the way. I have a company closed for 15 | years that still counts as a liability to me when I try to do | anything, like renting an apartment. | | You might be right in "opening" paperwork only being kinda | OK. But you certainly can't do it like the original poster, | that codes for a week or two, opens a new business and move | on to new projects in series. (Yeah, not every project of his | is a new company, but IIRC the larger ones become new | companies). | bicx wrote: | This is the kind of project that keeps me inspired. Well done! | phantom_oracle wrote: | I like this idea for the very simple fact that I now know its | plausible to write blog content with a pen and paper and then | some GPT-3 AI will scan those words and make it into digital text | for me. | | Sparing my hands from using a keyboard! | | Brilliant idea! | fourtrees wrote: | Aw man, _almost_ did this myself a few months ago when I was down | with COVID. You make me reall want to revisit the idea! Grats on | your success. | didip wrote: | When Pg told people to build a business that doesn't scale, he | meant this. | rkangel wrote: | PG did NOT tell people to build businesses that don't scale. He | told people to OPERATE businesses in ways that don't scale. | That is of course true for this business - the overall model | scales extremely well, but obviously what they're doing at the | moment isn't scaleable. It _is_ however an excellent proof of | concept of the business model. | chinathrow wrote: | Well, this business scales easily, what am I missing? | thepete2 wrote: | I think the point is that him sending out notebooks (he only | has 100 of) doesn't scale. | chinathrow wrote: | Ordering from an established supplier connection (in China) | scales. | jethro_tell wrote: | I . . . Bet he could buy more . . . | tester756 wrote: | just wait 2 decades and maybe he'll be top1 online shop | swlkr wrote: | This is really cool. The idea to separate the writing part from | the computer entirely (not just the internet) is genius. Also, | GPT3 helps out a bit there too. | criddell wrote: | The OCR coupled with GPT3 worked much better than I would have | guessed it would. I wonder how much of that is on the device | and how much is in the cloud? | nathanfig wrote: | Inspiring | thepete2 wrote: | Out of curiosity: Is the first OCR example really the best you | can find? Is there no open source solution that outputs good | results for handwritten notes? | foxhop wrote: | 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. | gwern wrote: | 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! | rexreed wrote: | How does this GPT-3 based correction system work on unique names | (last names) or on numbers or on things that can't be learned | from an Internet corpus? | distrill wrote: | Likely not great, if it hasn't seen it before. You could fine | tune it if you had large amounts of data that sat outside of | the internet corpus, but it doesn't sound like that's happening | here. | ricardobayes wrote: | I love this, for the simple fact it's one step closer for me to | be a programmer without needing to sit at a computer or even use | one. It's very far fetched right now, but I would love that. | donio wrote: | We've had that before (mainframes, punch cards), it's not that | great. | allie1 wrote: | There's a "dunder mifflin" joke somewhere in here | dgritsko wrote: | It's actually in the post itself, if you read it! | twobitshifter wrote: | It would be great to see Gpt-3 taken further than this so there's | less need to mess with the layout afterwards. Maybe you describe | a sketch and Gpt-3 draws you their best bike riding avocado? Or | you add something that says "photos from todays trip" and it | spins up the album roll. This would detract from the simplicity | and may not make the product any more successful- but it would be | very cool. | throwaway47292 wrote: | next step, self hosted paper website on a pi zero :) send them | the notebook and the pizero, make dyndns ipv6 only thing and let | people selfhost | | nice project! | helipad wrote: | Fun idea. I have a memory a website from years ago that was | photos of writing on a whiteboard or fridge. I'm certain it | wasn't accessible nor SEO-friendly though it was inadvertently | mobile friendly. | n9com wrote: | How are you handling international tax? | ushakov wrote: | not the OP, but Stripe has a Tax feature (they bought TaxJar | last year) | | https://stripe.com/en-gb-de/tax | [deleted] | maliker wrote: | Reminds me a little of jeffbridges.com/latest. Dude hand letters | and draws his entire website. Might be cool to have an option to | keep the original writing without the OCR? | zeckalpha wrote: | I hope View Source shows an image of the paper using source | mapping | jgtrosh wrote: | I'd prefer the opposite: display the scanned page but with the | OCR'd text virtually placed on the page (and accessible as alt | text or something) like a proper OCR'd PDF. | ComputerGuru wrote: | No, thanks. It's terribly hard to read strangers' | handwriting. | aaroninsf wrote: | This is so much less interesting than I was hoping based on the | title and premise. | | Oh well. | rado wrote: | Awesome. | tmjdev wrote: | Ben Stokes is an inspiration to me. I get excited reading any of | the TinyProjects posts. It's so refreshing to see a solo dev | building and shipping so much. Hoping I'm tracking for that kind | of ability as a full stack dev. | strzibny wrote: | Love it, best of the tiny projects so far;) | throwawaycities wrote: | All his projects are fun...one of his prior projects (mentioned | in the article) is Mailoji. | | I registered a few and messaged him suggesting it would be cool | if I could transfer the Mailoji email addresses with a code so I | could hide them in NFTs only the owner could see...I think by the | very next day he added the transfer code feature (and didn't fail | to give it the attention of his own style complete with an emoji | gift box). | reginold wrote: | Mailoji looks neat! Do you have a link to the gift box feature? | | You and the author might also check out the new ENS (Ethereum | Name Service), it support emojis for use as crypto | identity/wallets. "Triple pures" (three base-level emoji) are | popular as a wallet address. | throwawaycities wrote: | At the time I used the gift feature it was just an option | within the dashboard, but checking now there is an entire | page explaining it (really well done) | | https://mailoji.com/gifts | | And I'm a giant fan of ENS as a protocol. FYI even though | there is a 3 character minimum because they use Unicode there | are a few hundred emojis that are technically 3 characters | allowing for registration of single character emoji ENS | names. Beware though Unicode also allows Zero Width Joinder | characters so there are people who add them in bad faith in | attempt to sell desirable names to unsuspecting buyers that | don't get what they think they are paying for. | | Edit: the link was bad, but example of legit single character | emoji ENS is [pirate flag].eth you can search it directly in | the ENS App | _nickwhite wrote: | I love the ending. Seriously, if you're a TLDR; person and just | here for the comments, go read the article (it's short) and come | back. | slingnow wrote: | OK, I did that. I'm back. Now what? | mikestew wrote: | Spoiler: the author of TFA eats their own dogfood. If you | were looking for a big, M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end, | you'll be disappointed. | | OTOH, the article _is_ worth a read. | enryu wrote: | Best article I read in a long time, kudos | bee_rider wrote: | It would be cool if this could spit out research papers. | | Computers are useful tools but they can be quite attention- | destroying. | johnnyo wrote: | How do you add things like emojis and inline images? | | I don't see anything in the text that maps to either in the | output? | rackjack wrote: | How does it handle images? | SirYandi wrote: | Also how about italics / bold and heading / date subheading | formatting. Perhaps there is a short manual editing step before | publishing? | hyperpallium2 wrote: | Reminds me of David Rees' _Artisanal Pencil Sharpening_ | https://youtube.com/watch?v=KabOfnbS4TQ Hipster co-marketing | opportunity? | ushakov wrote: | i love that it doesn't scale! | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a | traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook | pages into web pages. | | Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, | colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. | | It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be | able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would | be surprised if they didn't produce their own feature to do the | same thing eventually. | | It'd be way cooler if you could draw links on the page and it | would figure that out. Or draw a box with some links in it and | generate a header. Draw a box for a place holder image and | generate that. The next iteration would obviously be using paper | to design the actual site and then using CV to generate the | markup/styling. | closetohome wrote: | Yeah it's integration of OCR and a lightweight CMS that also | conveniently rolls together fees for hosting and GPT3. | | I was a little surprised that the paper part is used _only_ for | plain text. It would sort of make sense to have at least a few | formatting and layout features. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Disagree because: | | * I primarily see this as, not a traditional website builder, | but as a way to take _paper journals_ and transform them into | web journals /blogs. | | * As someone who has tried all manner of tools and software for | journaling (literally like tens of software apps), I've found | that my brain just works best with a nice paper journal and a | great pen (I highly recommend the prismacolor premier fine | marker). It just works far better for me than anything else. | | I'm so glad this project is at the top of HN. It is the | ultimate "hacker project" of someone that scratched a personal | itch, and found out other folks would be willing to pay for it. | noodle wrote: | Wouldn't be HN without the "you can build this trivially" | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224] response. | MCneill27 wrote: | It's pathetic. So many egos that need to be assuaged every | time a clever execution they didn't do is brought to their | attention. | [deleted] | setr wrote: | IMO it's a generally good mentality -- the fact that | dropbox is not _that_ hard for your average programmer to | replicate (by plumbing with existing tech) is exactly why | you have so much variety in the software space. | | Of course, turning a functional program into a function | business is no simple feat, but no one should be looking at | these things and thinking "it takes a genius with a once- | in-a-lifetime idea" -- because, well, it clearly doesn't. | And it's really not the most incredible or innovative idea. | | The intelligence was largely in transforming something you | could do into something you could easily do -- and identify | that it has a potential for profit, and identify how to | extract that profit, and executing on it long enough to | achieve that profit. | dang wrote: | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation | of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to | criticize. Assume good faith._" | | " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the | community._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | No doubt we're all more motivated by ego than we believe we | are, but comments that take a supercilious stance and put | everybody else down don't help--and are not part of the | culture we're hoping for here. | 1123581321 wrote: | I think that's in play either way--people need to tell or | be told that their idea is actually technically | challenging, unusually insightful into business or users, | etc. Critics are silenced because there must be no way | they've read patio11 if they're posting, etc. Capacity for | mutually appreciative disagreement is low on HN. | | The average business is not brilliant and yet is still not | easy to execute long enough to succeed. Life is hard. | [deleted] | Drew_ wrote: | "You can build this trivially" is a fair criticism once you | build your own products and realize how rampant IP theft is. | Aside from that, the infamous dropbox comment you linked | doesn't at all say "you can build this trivially". | habibe wrote: | Not word for word, but pretty close: "...you can already | build such a system yourself quite trivially..." | InGoodFaith wrote: | Wouldn't also be HN without the misinterpretation of | BrandonM's response. | | Here is dang's comment about that topic/meme [1] | | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29178442 | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | I'm not saying it's trivial to build this. I'm just saying | that the "paper website" part is greatly exaggerated. The | real meat of the pie is in website builder which _is_ more | complicated than tweaking some parameters on some off the | shelf OCR/GPT3 solutions. | | It's cool, I've never shipped a project like this, and | probably never will. But I've worked on my fair share of | software so I know what it takes behind the scenes. | option_greek wrote: | You are not looking at this from user perspective. It's | very much a paper based flow for them. Where it wins is | that it lets people forget about digital devices while | creating their content while letting them choosing to share | some of it online post that. There are magic notebooks, | magic pens etc that use ocr to achieve the same but you | still need to do the creation using those devices (which | are at least twice the $99 price). | | Because you are a developer, you are thinking in | gpt/ocr/website building etc. Lot of people especially | older generations eager to share stuff will find this | useful if not amusing. For them its write something on | paper and get a link back. Real users don't care about | WordPress plugins. | cxr wrote: | > You are not looking at this from user perspective. | | They are looking at it that way. Because what you just | described would be great for the user. The only problem | is that what you described doesn't match how this service | actually works. That it should work like but doesn't is | the entire basis for Philip-J-Fry's comments. Both | comments here make it clear enough what he or she is | talking about, so the response admonishing them (to | empathize with the users) is odd. | trulyme wrote: | You both have a point, except yours is a narrow(er) | engineering one. OP solved a real-world problem, and | actually solved enough of it to be useful to many people, | who were thrilled enough to become customers. That is | impressive by itself, but what makes it even more | impressive is that it is a new niche! | | Would adding new features make it easier to create more | complex pages? Yes. Would it improve the experience for the | users? I doubt it. It's like adding full text editing mode | to a chat - technically viable, but takes away the magic - | just give me text and emojis and stop there. | bluecatswim wrote: | That's not what parent said at all, if anything he meant the | very opposite. He was just suggesting missing features. The | site is a nice tiny project but it's not what you'd expect | when you think of making websites from paper, you'd think it | would understand layouts and convert them to CSS or let you | create a sitemap from a tree but as it is it's just OCRing | text and uploading it to a page with an editor next to it. | underdeserver wrote: | A blog is more about the content of a single post than about | the links inside. | | When I'm reading a post, I rarely click any links at all. | claytn wrote: | I completely disagree. No one is ever going to write out a url | by hand on notebook paper. Even in the rare case that a url | would fit on a single line, it's just needlessly cumbersome | work to do. I think the project author did a great job allowing | for further site customization (styles, images, etc.) without | overcomplicating the hand-written portion. | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | I don't mean writing out a URL... | | You could name pages like "Home", "About", "My trip to | Paris". And then write on the piece of paper "[link to My | trip to Paris]" | | Or you could write "[link from Posts]" to add it to a common | listing. | | You'd basically just create a written form of Markdown. | claytn wrote: | Oh I misread. That type of linking definitely feels doable. | Images & styles are a whole other can of worms though | [deleted] | FalconSensei wrote: | 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 | d0gsg0w00f wrote: | 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. | SeanFerree wrote: | Love it! | ineedasername wrote: | I love this. It's hilariously written at the same time that it | shows building something that is useful into a business without | worrying about whether it would scale to Unicorn size. | | On the downside, the Moleskin IDE the custom one the author had | made in China are extremely biased against people with bad | handwriting. More attention to accessibility may be required. | | Seriously though this seems great if you have a bunch of notes | and journals that you'd like to digitize. I have a small journal | with my own recipes from over the years, and digitizing it has | been in the back of my mind for a while-- if Paper Website can | defeat my astoundingly awful handwriting. | TwelveNights wrote: | I like using paper to journal about my day or write about random | thoughts I might have that I'd like to flesh out further through | writing. A few inconveniences of writing it though is that you | might want to selectively share some stuff from time-to-time, | lack of ability to add media (though a portable printer kinda | solves this problem), and having a limit of space, relying on | indexing journals when they fill up. A lot of the caveats are | solved by privately blogging, though I do miss writing instead of | typing everything. | | Something like this is almost a sweet spot of keeping the paper | version as a "draft copy" while being able to enrich a digital | version of your journal. As someone in the thread mentioned, | being able to have private pages would likely encourage people to | try it out for their journalling purposes. Otherwise, the project | looks amazing! | throwawaymanbot wrote: | Humanity can be awesome. I Love the whole spirit of this project. | SCUSKU wrote: | Hey Ben, just wanted to say great post! A lot of these comments | are fairly negative, and I imagine they can weigh on your psyche. | I just wanted to say I am thoroughly impressed with your | execution on the project as well as your ability to market your | product. Really impressive stuff, big fan :) | giarc wrote: | A neat idea would be to allow prisoners that don't have internet | or computer access to publish their own writing in an easy way. | Sure, a family member could take the letters and published | themselves, but it might be neat to see the image of the letter | from prison as well. | mh- wrote: | This was a fun read. Love the twist at the end. | _virtu wrote: | Slightly off topic, but I'm a bit of a paper snob at this point. | While Moleskine is not the bottom of the barrel I still find for | use with fountain pen inks they're not the best. You haven't | lived until you try out some Tomoe river paper. | | Check out TarokoShop's notebooks: | https://www.etsy.com/shop/TarokoShop?ref=simple-shop-header-.... | picture wrote: | The Clairefontaine paper used in Rhodia's Rhodiarama notebooks | are also excellent. The soft cover Rhodiarama are some of the | best paper for really watery inks. Another fantastic option is | Midori's notebook paper, their whole design and the open grid | option are really pretty. https://www.midori- | japan.co.jp/md/en/products/mdnote/ Also if you're willing to | over pay, the Kleid 2mm grid notebook with OK Fools paper are | among the highest quality I've used. It has handy feature of | detachable pages too. | jen729w wrote: | While we're on paper, I have a Field Notes "Expedition" | special edition. [0] It has waterproof paper which is 'fun' | but actually pretty useless as ink doesn't really hold. | | So I had it for years and it went unused. And then I used a | pencil! (Mitsubishi 9850 HB, thanks for asking.) [1] Oh and | it is _the most fun in the world!_ It's like writing on a pat | of butter with the tail of a fox. It's the smoothest thing | you've ever felt. | | Now it lives in the kitchen and I record meat temperatures | and whisky cocktail ratios and it is my favourite book. | | That is all. | | [0]: https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/expedition | | [1]: https://pencilly.com.au/product/mitsubishi-9850-hb/ | noahbradley wrote: | If you want some waterproof notebooks that aren't quite as | impractical as those Expedition ones (they always smeared | for me too), you might try Rite in the Rain. Had a great | time using those over the years. | gcheong wrote: | Fun fact - I worked for a bit in Japan for Yupo (the | company that makes the paper of the same name and used in | this notebook) as part of the project team that was | overseeing the construction of the Yupo plant in Virginia. | I was originally hired through an English language school | on contract to help with editing the English translations | of their technical documentation but also got to do some | things like porting a sheet temperature simulator from MS- | DOS to Windows. | allenu wrote: | I may have to try out Tomoe some time. I used Moleskine long | ago but eventually moved away to Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. I | find their paper works really well for my fountain pen usage. I | even write on both sides of each page, something I avoided on | cheaper notebooks. | martneumann wrote: | I could see a good use case for those planning/kanban/mind | mapping meetings where you plaster a whiteboard with notes and | drawings. Scanning or photographing that isn't so nice. | Formatting it into a pleasant, readable wesbite would be pretty | cool. | asicsp wrote: | Discussion about the site mentioned in this article: | | "Paper Website: Start a tiny website from your notebook" | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29174478 _(32 days ago, 271 | points, 70 comments)_ | abadger9 wrote: | I've done some OCR side projects during hackathon weeks over the | years (with google tesseract). This is a neat idea, I can only | imagine the difficulty with which transcribing the variety of | terrible handwriting will cause frustration and an eventual flood | of refunds. | deegles wrote: | He really glosses over how he uses GPT-3 to correct the text... | poxrud wrote: | It looks like he's first using tesseract to recognize his | handwriting and convert it into text. Tesseract doesn't do a | perfect job so the recognized text is full of mistakes. He | treats the mistakes as spelling mistakes and "asks" GPT-3 to | correct them. This is a very clever idea and will greatly | improve current OCR efforts. | amenod wrote: | That's a really interesting part, and probably why the OCR | works good enough for such case. | | Not sure about legal implications of using it though: | | https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/23/1008729/openai-i. | .. | | EDIT: it seems I have misunderstood the article - OP probably | uses MS API to access GPT-3 anyway, so the point is moot. | jsmith99 wrote: | From the screenshot I suspect the real secret is that it | gives the user a chance to correct errors after scanning. | etskinner wrote: | They might consider it a trade secret of sorts. If I were | them, I wouldn't want someone to just take the idea and | undercut me. | folli wrote: | I think from his explanation in the article it's quite | straightforward to implement it yourself: get a GPT-3 | subscription at OpenAI or MS Azure, use the API as | described in the article, voila. | | But the idea is genius indeed. | gambiting wrote: | Yeaaaah, his handwriting is actual certified art compared to | mine . I can't get _anything_ to recognize my handwriting | reliably, including the text recognition built into iOS with | Pencil - it 's just useless. | tbihl wrote: | To second what the other commenter said to you: I have seen | someone with terrible handwriting fix it. He decided he | cared, found pens and notebooks he really liked, and started | using them attentively. People treat pens like they're all | the same, but the drying time, line thickness, weight, drag | across the paper, etc. all vary enormously, and if you care, | you can probably find the right tool and get your handwriting | to a point where you're happy with it. | sombremesa wrote: | 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. | mprovost wrote: | I have terrible handwriting and have had the idea in the | past to try and relearn with a new style. Like maybe the | way they teach French children in school! But when I | looked online for a book on how to learn handwriting as | an adult they were all for veterans who had lost their | dominant hand and that was incredibly depressing. Anyone | have a good resource? | sombremesa wrote: | Just copy writing you think is good, and keep a daily | journal where you write exclusively in that style. It'll | be slow going at first, but it works. Takes about a year | before it's totally natural. | talor_a wrote: | I decided I hated having chicken-scratch handwriting around | the end of high school / beginning of college. I literally | did writing worksheets (tracing over letters) like I was in | kindergarten. And if I wrote a messy word / letter on my | homework I'd cross the word out and do it again. It made a | huge difference, and I started getting compliments all the | time on my writing. It's slipped back into average | territory since, but it definitely works! | hahamrfunnyguy wrote: | I can't even recognize my handwriting reliably. | rileyphone wrote: | Same - I find I typically use writing as a tool for thought | moreso than a record that I will come back to, though I | occasionally take a pass through old notes to see if I had | any forgotten gems. | criddell wrote: | You can change that. | | After I started using a Palm Pilot, my handwriting improved | significantly and the changes seem to have been permanent. I | get basically 100% accuracy with the Apple Pencil in iOS. | globalise83 wrote: | There is a delicious irony in the fact that you are | training yourself using a reinforcement learning approach | to meet the needs of an imperfect machine learning | application. | criddell wrote: | An inexpensive bit of consumer tech. was able to | accomplish something that years of human teachers could | not. | deepdmistry wrote: | I don't see an issue in that, we can meet machines part | way to make it easier for both of us | Fiahil wrote: | I have the same issue with my remarkable 2 : My handwriting is | not OCR-able | edoceo wrote: | Practice! I found a guide for writing letter like architect, | helped me a bunch, after like 30 days of learning new letter | shapes | fesoliveira wrote: | Could you post a link to this guide? My handwriting while | not horrible could use some improvement, and is not helped | by the fact that I am left handed. | JadoJodo wrote: | I'm uncertain if this is the one parent mentioned, but I | found this guide with a quick search: | https://artdepartmental.com/blog/architectural-lettering/ | edoceo wrote: | This is good too! I got books from the library. | FunHearing3443 wrote: | Trying the free trial - this is awesome! And it actually read my | truly awful handwriting quite well. The website design and the | technology is inspiring. Thank you! | mNovak wrote: | All I want is a dead easy way to make a landing page + account + | payment options for a tiny prototype SaaS like this (e.g. I | supply a few APIs as 'backend' and the rest just works) -- quite | similar to the One Item Store the author made. I can only imagine | how many people have had to repeat all the same boring steps for | some small proto. | rambambram wrote: | Big smile on my face, fun read and nice video. | xwdv wrote: | Wow, the ending of this blog post felt like an incredible twist | in a movie was just revealed. | giarc wrote: | To me it felt more like a magician revealing a hidden twist. | OliC wrote: | What a great idea. We need more of this sort of thing. | einpoklum wrote: | > My girlfriend watched me, puzzled. After convincing her that I | hadn't gone crazy | | Now _there_s a startup idea for you! How did you manage to do | that? Much more interesting story :-P | FarmOfFriends wrote: | whats the input to gpt-3? is it only the text outputted from the | handwriting recognition? | | im just wondering if GPT-3 can be used as a spell check for | speech to text use cases | 094459 wrote: | I am so happy about this site as a few months ago I had a similar | idea after speaking to some relatives who wanted badly to blog | but was just terrified of the tech. After chatting for a while | afternoon in between copious amounts of tea and cake, we came | upon a design that involved pen/paper or a typewritten page, and | an app that would convert this into a blog post. I hope this does | really well and will be sharing this with that group. | dash2 wrote: | Three above this story on the front page is an article called | "The Web Is Fucked", complaining about how there's no character | on the web any more, and lamenting the 90s, Geocities etc. etc. | I'd say this story refutes that one. | jaypeg25 wrote: | I wish Stumble Upon still existed just so I could find the | weird corners of the web again. This site and Reddit sort of | fill that but also don't quite fit it at all. | horsawlarway wrote: | So much this! | | I don't really think it's that the niche stuff has moved away | from the web - it's that nearly every functional discovery | mechanism (that my now 30ish year old self knows about) has | been captured by advertising or killed. | | When all you ever get served up is links to the same drivel | promoted by folks who have no honest interest or curiosity, | but are essentially mercenary marketing/sales (sorry - | _influencers_ blegh...), then the web starts to _feel_ like a | bland wasteland. | | Some of this is entirely related to being older - but I do | genuinely think the current tech powerhouses on the web are | trying their damn hardest to kill off any & all organic | discovery mechanisms they can. Often through completely | disingenuous means. If that fails, they buy them and shutter | them, or roll them into the brand where it becomes the same | drivel again. | aniforprez wrote: | Not to be a downer again but reddit is pretty much dead for | this. It's turning into FB more and more every day with a lot | of young kids and teenagers filling it with memes and begging | for engagement and such. It's not much of an aggregator | anymore and is turning into more of an actual social network | now except they still have "anonymous" profiles | | I guess it's what the people running it want but I find | myself going there less and less every day and only look at a | few curated subs | rkangel wrote: | I've found Reddit improved by careful curation of my | subscribed subreddits. If I spent most of my time in there | rather than /r/all then it's great. I still feel like | scrolling through memes on /r/all from time to time and | that has the beneficial side effect of helping me add to | those subscriptions. | waltbosz wrote: | This is true to an extent, but I find that reddit culture | seeps its way into all subs. There is a overreaching lack | of seriousness. | | It's my observation that the average redditor is more | interested in gaining upvotes via silly class-clown | behavior, than actually contributing meaningful | conversation. Or interested in upvoting silly comments. | | Even in subreddits where the topic of discussion is | something serious, such as a forum for advice seeking, | people can't help but reply to posts with jokes. | | What is worse is when people are downvoted for a reply | which is intelligent and serious, but is contrary to | popular opinion. | MCneill27 wrote: | It's so bizarre to me that StumbleUpon came from the same | mind as Uber (well one of the minds). | | However true or untrue all of the political intrigue, | journalistic threats, etc., it's just crazy to me that such | an innocent corner of the web that I loved so much in the | mid-late 2000s was sending death threats to journos in London | not 8 years later. | slingnow wrote: | Yeah, you're right. One counterexample definitely invalidates | the entire argument. | amelius wrote: | Uh, this story uses GPT-3 to "improve" content based on a huge | training set. Do you think that this will increase diversity | and bring more character to the web? | dash2 wrote: | What? It uses GPT-3 to improve _spelling_. | duxup wrote: | We remember the fun stuff, but you had to look for it even back | in the day. | dylan604 wrote: | "Back in my day," we had to look for fun compared to the | expectation that fun will be delivered to you at your beck | and call. How times have changed. When you grow up with | something, it's just accepted as normal. You have to have | known a time without it to truly get the difference. | duxup wrote: | "Facebook didn't provide me what I wanted...THE WEB IS | DEAD!" | pkdpic wrote: | This makes me remember that my primary way of finding new | things on the web back in middle school was just typing | educated guess urls in until I found something. | | Makes me wonder how interesting the web might be if I just | started doing that again, and how boring it might have been if | I'd just had a working search engine back then. | | Then again I also seem to remember getting bored enough with | the web to only spend an hour or two on it at a time. Also I | was in middle / elementary school so that might have played a | role too. | reaperducer wrote: | _This makes me remember that my primary way of finding new | things on the web back in middle school was just typing | educated guess urls in until I found something._ | | It was nice back in the early days when you wanted U.S. state | government information, you could almost always enter | something like http://state.xx.us and get the state's home | page, then explore from there. (Where xx was the state | abbreviation.) | | Cities were very often http://city.state.xx.us. | | Now many (most?) states have vanity URLs, and the cities are | worse. I think Chicago's changed its URL at least three | times. | floatingatoll wrote: | 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. | daledavies wrote: | I once made a website called bobswhitetrousers.com, | absolutely noone ever visited. | MMS21 wrote: | If you did that now you'll run into sites with no content but | a banner at the top with contact details so you can buy the | domain. | bckr wrote: | Yep, I got it on the first try. personalrobotics dot com. | Not a neat robot hacker website, not even a company selling | robots. Just a $300k domain squat. | dhosek wrote: | Or a page full of ads. | dylan604 wrote: | or much much worse. NSFW klaxon alarms and visits from HR | for viewing this content at work type situations. | pkdpic wrote: | Thats a good point, I remember a bit of this back in the | day but not sure how common it was. One my best friend and | I still joke about to this day was tree.com, I seem to | remember it wasn't even for sale, just a squat for squats | sake or something. Good times. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | Parking domains have been a staple of the internet since | its inception. | dylan604 wrote: | oh the days of the under construction animGifs | twobitshifter wrote: | This is a great idea and I'd love a future with an explosion of | paper websites. However, I'm saddened that after all the | attention and clicks the annual revenue is only $3600. It really | shows the difficulty of getting someone to pay for your service. | I wonder if an alternate revenue model would have been more | successful? | [deleted] | ushakov wrote: | where is your business based and have you registered an LLC? | | do you make a separate LLC for each project? | | how much did it cost to launch the business and what does is cost | to keep running (lawyers/paperwork/admin)? | | i'm scared of starting my own tiny projects, because of all the | bureaucracy involved to even get started | soared wrote: | You don't really need to register an llc or do any of that for | your projects that are not big. | ushakov wrote: | how do you legally accept money then? | | clarification: i'm in EU | benmmurphy wrote: | If your turnover is low enough you don't need to be VAT | registered in the UK. Also, in the UK you can be VAT | registered and be a sole trader. | ushakov wrote: | do you think as a foreign citizen i'd be able to setup a | UK Limited? | | i'm familiar with Companies House though | marci wrote: | Are you in the EU or the UK? | rosndo wrote: | If you're not on any sanctions lists there shouldn't be | any issues. | | Your residency/citizenship does not play any part in | forming a UK LTD. It might affect your ability to open an | account with some banks though. | | These guys are okay | https://www.99pcompanyformations.co.uk/ The whole process | takes a few minutes and costs almost nothing. | cbushko wrote: | I think you just take the cash using Stripe or whatever. It | gets deposited in your bank account and you claim income | tax on it. | ushakov wrote: | i don't want liability | chinathrow wrote: | What are you talking about? You make revenue, you | disclose the revenue, you file taxes. Doesn't matter if | you do it as a private person or as an LLC. | | You can incorporate to reduce liability easily, it does | not cost a lot of money in most jurisdictions. | spiffytech wrote: | In the US, anyone can sell good or services and do business | without formally registering as a business. You're | automatically classified as a sole proprietorship, with | your legal name as the business name. But there's no | liability protection, since you and the business are the | same legal entity. That's where LLC or incorporating comes | in, along with lots of other reasons to want to formalize | the business as a legal entity. | mwint wrote: | It's not that bad - make an LLC right now (in most states, it's | a single form to start one), then you have no excuse. Taxes are | easy. | | You probably don't even need the LLC, but I like having a bit | of a legal umbrella (though chances are, no one is going to sue | you unless your project gets big) | hahamrfunnyguy wrote: | I have a number of smaller businesses/products that are part of | one business entity: - IT Consulting practice - Eletronic | device business (sells a single product via internet/mail | order) - YouTube channel/blog - Fledgling SAS product that's | not yet launched (consumes money, not makes it) | | I live in the US. To incorporate here, you file paperwork with | your state. You don't need a lawyer, just send in the filing | fee(s) with the completed paperwork. If I remember correctly, | fees were somewhere around $100-$200. I have an accountant do | my corporate taxes. He charges me $400. I file the sales tax | paperwork myself on my state's web site. It's basically: How | much do you owe us? And then you pay it. Most eCommerce | storefronts keep track of the sales-tax stuff for you so it's | easy. | kragen wrote: | I wonder what value you could add to this with a notebook printed | with digitally referenced paper? By printing an unobtrusive sort | of barcode on each page, you could determine which part of which | page of which notebook each scanned pixel came from, and what | lighting conditions it was photographed under. What could you do | with that? | | Well, the simplest and most greyface application is forms; you | can define particular areas of each page as being particular form | fields. If you're blogging, you might have a field for a "slug" | that appears in the URL, for example, or a field for tags, or | checkboxes for some tags (plus a special page to declare the | meanings of the checkboxes). Or, if you're tracking expenses, you | could have a checkbox for each expense category and columns for | the date and the amount. For recipes, you might have a section | for listing ingredients, with a column for unit of measure, a | column for quantity, and a column for the ingredient name. Etc. | | For me, the special feature of paper notebooks that cellphones | and other computers suck at is drawing. If I want to draw a | diagram or illustration, it just works much better on paper: my | pencil point occludes much less drawing area than my finger does, | there's no tracking error where the ink appears 2 mm to the side | of the point, it has much lower latency, and I can draw finer | lines. But scanning those drawings into a computer is a pain, | because I have to illuminate them evenly and hold them flat while | I photograph them, which still probably involves some perspective | distortion. Barcodes on the paper, together with reference lines | and reference color swatches, could solve that problem, as well | as providing information about which parts of the paper are | occluded, if any. | | For a few special applications like numismatics and entomology, | the paper could provide a precise physical measurement reference | for specimens. | | Combining drawing with filling out forms, you can make a font | from your handwriting; this is enormously easier if you can | correct the various distortions. In | http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/ I spent about 24 hours | fiddling with various graphics programs, but there was a website | I found somewhere where you can print out a form, draw the font | on it, upload the scan, and download your TrueType font. This | kind of thing might help with training OCR, too, especially if | you don't have access to GPT-3. (Or if OpenAI decides to | peremptorily destroy everything you've built because one of your | users uses your service to write about their dead fiancee: | https://towardsdatascience.com/openai-opens-gpt-3-for-everyo...) | | Other ways to combine drawing and filling out forms include | sketching orthographic projections to build 3-D models; coloring | a coloring book; drawing maps for Minetest and similar grid-cell | games (especially 2-D ones); drawing heightfields; and sketching | different keyframes of an animation to automatically morph | between. You could even draw a 2-D continuum of keyframes, thus | providing an animation character that's continuously variable | along two different axes; you might put time on the theta axis | and some sort of emotion along the radius axis. | | (You can also apply these ideas with drawings that are input via | other media, such as touchscreens, Wacom tablets, and mice, not | only scanning paper. When you're scanning paper it's hard to get | feedback as you're drawing, although you could maybe glance at | your cellphone screen periodically, or use a projector like | DynamicLand, or have a continuously updated monitor using a | webcam feed. It could even use the occlusion information from the | barcode to patch in remembered images wherever your hands were | occluding the paper.) | | What should the barcodes look like? | | In 02001 Anoto announced their "Digital Paper" approach: | https://www.wired.com/2001/04/anoto/. As explained in | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_paper this uses an | unobtrusive 2-D barcode scanned by a camera in a "digital pen" | (later called the "Fly Pen", 02005) to locate the pen in an | enormous global "virtual desktop"; I think the NeoLAB "Neo | smartpen" works the same way. This was all before cameraphones | went mainstream and high resolution. They got 300 patents but | fortunately everything they filed in 02001 expires this year. | Anoto's barcodes use a grid of slightly displaced grid dots. | | The Fly Pen provided a sort of graphical user interface on the | paper, using audio for output. It was sort of aimed at kids doing | schoolwork and playing games. It failed in 02009. The founder | started a new company called Livescribe focusing on notetaking; | the Livescribe smartpen allows you to spatially organize and | annotate a continuous audio recording. It has been more | commercially successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livescribe | | Tiny unobtrusive dots might not reproduce reliably on a cellphone | camera, though having been published in WIRED in 02001 means the | technique is in the public domain (or will be next year). A | better idea might be to use thin horizontal and vertical grid | lines whose thickness varies slightly, perhaps in a pastel | subtractive primary like cyan, magenta, or yellow; then you can | optionally remove them in software after scanning. Scanning a | whole page at a time, instead of a tiny area around a pen point | like the "digital pens" described above, gives you a great deal | more space for redundant page ID data in the barcode; probably 48 | bits or so is sufficient. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-14 23:00 UTC)