Arbitrary deadlines are only valuable as checkpoints to review work done and plan ahead. Using them as a timeframe to finish some tasks shows that you don't really understand estimates.
I'm browsing HN everyday, but only once. I look at the first page, open the titles that seem interesting in new tabs and that's it. Sometimes I go into the comments and read some opinions about some topic.
I also read the good titles I missed during the week in the newsletter on Saturday morning.
I keep up to date about new technologies and directions, I think that helps me adding context to my managerial decisions.
Of course we are trying to promote our business, writing some case studies is one way to do it.
But I shared this here not because I thought we will get clients from HN (probably we will be getting some competition instead) but because I thought it's an interesting application of technology that people would enjoy reading about.
Maybe we don't see things the same way but even learning about the manual process of counting pearls was interesting for me.
I'd well believe it. I used to write computer vision applications for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and there we were able to strictly control the distance from camera to object, lighting etc. and even still getting necessary reliability was not simple. When a failure could lead to damaging a whole wafer, i.e. hundreds of thousands of dollars, 99% accurate is not good enough.
It would be very questionable to use this in production, especially as pearls are very glossy and costly, without the error matrix being provided. It would seem more reliable to use the camera as a blocked / non-blocked sensor with what would amount to a cheap coin sorter.
For some reason it's very common here on HN to trivialize the difficulty of automating tasks. But you're not new here so you probably are familiar with it!
Wasn't trying to trivialise your work! Just offering some ideas of the basic ways this could be tackled. Sorry if you thought I was trivialising it, the intent was more to support the idea that modern DL can still provide solutions with relatively simple methods.
Besides the cost cutting, keep in mind that the employees that don't have to manually count are not getting fired. They are providing more and better client services.
I think this is an important point. It doesn't have to be "machines took my job". When I helped automate/streamline a government welfare program, it didn't mean case workers suddenly were without a job. It meant they could spend less time clicking on a computer, and more time doing the important human to human stuff and provide better care.
It doesn't have to, but eventually it will. At the first inevitable downturn, jobs that get cut in a newly-automated field will never come back.
People are creative, we will find new things to do (particularly as more and more people will get taught automation and coding in school, making them tech-adaptable for life, as opposed to the "boomer" generations who were often fundamentally tech-averse), but let's not kid ourselves that technology isn't burning away a bunch of jobs.
It really depends how much time they are losing while manually counting. For most, the price is not high, the employees doing the counting can now focus on other more valuable tasks.
We also have pack of 24hour licenses that they can activate when it's inventory time, for example.
