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Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

bionic-reading.com

181–190 of 281 posts

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#181
Tbh I scrolled down the page reading (and checked the about section), and am still none the wiser as to what exactly is supposed to be happening process-wise, and - assuming I'm supposed to be reading things more deeply, what the evidence for that is.

At the very least I think that should all be clearer given the primary claim.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great product that might get lost because of overthinking the business model (say that even as a fellow Swiss). Think the giga-opportunity here is for a chrome extension, releasing it for free or freemium won't interfere with your patent (and if you don't, someone else will, regardless of the legal aspects). Either way, congratulations on this innovation, it's elegant.

Ich danke Dir vielmals noeltock. Ja ich hatte bereits zwei Browser Extensions (Chrome, Firefox) als Beta-Versionen. Aber die Erkenntnis war, dass sehr viele Websites — da diese ja individuell erstellt werden — keine gute Experience ergab. Deswegen habe ich mit Silvio Rizzi (Reeder5) getestet, wie es am besten nutzbar gemacht werden kann. Hab aus Fehlern gelernt, aber wir denken dass es viele Entwickler gibt, die BR i…

Why did you reply in Lichtensteinian or whatever this is?

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#185
post #63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree. I guess this technology isn't for everyone. This is a real bummer. They did not have to patent and trademark this method, which in principle is such a basic mechanism. Just had to productize their service really well so they'd take the lead in monetizing.

I disagree 100%. This is amazingly innovative. We have seen letter switching examples and how the brain will try to fill in the gaps. This is superbly unique and justifiably a patent and trademark. The demo works. The rules may be simple. But as the old boat repairman story says, sometimes you need to know where to hit the hammer. Please, please don't use this for evil.

Plus without a patent it would be very easy to capitalize on this without compensating the guy for all the research and tuning his put into it. I think patents are ideal for new ideas that are super easy to steal/copy, right? Sure Academics working at the bleeding edge should patent for example but they're likely to have a little advantage by being the expert and actually knowing how to do the thing. But in this case the result may look simple but took ingenuity and time to produce just the same.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#186
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose I'll have to wait 25 years (or whatever the French patent expiry length is), though. Is that how patents work in general? I always thought (and could be very wrong here) that if a patent exists for something but you've developed an alternative something in total isolation without seeing the patent then you would have free reign on how to design and develop your thing without violating the patent.

The opposite is true, in fact - a patent is a monopoly on the patented technology, no matter where alternative implementations come from. You might be thinking of “clean room” techniques which protect against claims of copyright infringement.

What's the thing where you have to license your patent? Like when it's used in a standard or something?

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#187

> Bionic reading aims to encourage a more in-depth reading and understanding of written content by reading faster? I mean the examples are pretty compelling and it did feel like I was reading faster, but at the same time their goals are at odds - faster reading doesn't necessarily mean more attentive reading, or being able to absorb more information. Still, interesting technique. I just wish they made their examples…

I had better comprehension on the Bionic text right off the bat, personally.

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#189

Cool, here's a quick hack to try a similar technique with the comments in this thread (copy and paste into dev tools: $$('span.commtext').forEach(span => { const frag = document.createDocumentFragment(); span.textContent.split(/\s+/).forEach(word => { const len = Math.ceil(word.length * 0.3); const leading = document.createElement('strong'); leading.textContent = word.slice(0, len); const trailing = document.createTe…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Bionic Reading – Formats text to make it faster to read

#190
This presumes you're scanning lines but if you really want to speed read you should scan whole blocks of text as you draw the eye down, there should be little to no horizontal movement when you're really reading fast.

- - - -

An interesting and effective method of speed reading is Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). These days it's mostly used in the context of psychological/perception studies, but it came about as a I/O method for military machines IIRC. Anyway, the trick is you display text one word at a time, in the same location, so the eye doesn't have to move at all. With a little practice and some tweaking (i.e. slight extra delay after periods and commas, that sort of thing) you can read very very fast. (For me I could read faster than my internal mental voice can speak.)

- - - -

There's an interesting effect where you can take some text and, for each word longer than ~5 letters, you leave the first and last letter in place but scramble all the "interior" letters. The resulting text is still legible!

(I'd give an example here but I'm too lazy. Exercise for the reader, eh?)

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