News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later. Parent comment

Re:Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later by toomuchtodo on Tuesday March 22, 2016 @12:15PM (#11337604)
Sorry about that! I didn't assume someone would suggest having a mobile device OCR an ingredients label, versus looking up a UPC code tied to an ingredients list and groking for your allergies.

One is easy, the other is hard.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later by khedoros on Tuesday March 22, 2016 @04:12PM (#11339623)
> One is easy, the other is hard.

There are APIs and libraries for OCR, so that might not be so bad (even on a mobile device). A low-end phone is faster than the first PCs I did OCR on anyhow, and about 20 years more research has gone into algorithms.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later by cbhl on Tuesday March 22, 2016 @02:58PM (#11339013)
OCR isn't that hard, just expensive. You do a first pass with an algorithm, and then use Mechanical Turk to correct for errors.
[ Parent | on HN ]