THE VIDEO SHELF · postal mail handwriting recognition
How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting
Tom Scott visits the USPS Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, where keyers decipher mail images machines cannot read. It shows the lengths taken to decode bad handwriting.
Why HN readers recommended it
Recommended in address and OCR threads as a look at the last human mail-coding operation.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Tom Scott
- Topic
- postal mail handwriting recognition
- Format
- documentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 4
- HN mentions in dataset
- 8
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2022–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
[VIDEO] might be of interest - it has some of what the machines are trying to read and what accuracy they need.
bombcar on Hacker News · 2023-03
In What Is the Most Minimal UK Address Possible?This Tom Scott video shows some of the surprising (to me) lengths to which the USPS does go to figure out the right address: [VIDEO] Obviously this doesn't apply to your case, but I certainly didn't think they'd have a national center for decoding terrible …
simmonmt on Hacker News · 2023-03
In What Is the Most Minimal UK Address Possible?Tom Scott did a great video showing the last one in operation. They use totally unique keyboards with what is essentially a stenography system: [VIDEO]
LordDragonfang on Hacker News · 2024-04
In Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.