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Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

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Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#21
post #11

Patents for things like this make me feel like committing civil disobedience. Bolding the first few letters is something that needs patent protection? Give me a break. That's not a thing, man.

no reason for this to have a patent at all

the author could've trademarked the name and sell it as "the original"

personally the only app i know that has the technology is Reeder RSS reader, although i've never found it convenient

Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#23

It's always fun for me to see flashes in the pan come and go. I saw this first on reddit a few days ago and went "hmm, ok, whatever..." And then on HN today. Now I'm saying "Oh, someone's putting real effort into this thing. Shame, really, I wish they'd move on to something more productive or at the least talk to some experts about their goals. Sigh." And it'll be gone in a week, or a month at most. Sorry. "Convert T…

From comments on HN, Reddit and Twitter, this approach clearly does help many people read faster and with less visual strain - just not everyone. Others say they find it harder to read. I looked at a couple of the iPhone apps that integrate the original Bionic Reading tech and they make it an optional feature that can be toggled on by the user based on preference.

It would be very interesting to research what makes it more effective for some people than others. It implies some difference in how their brains or eyes are processing text.

Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#27
post #11

Patents for things like this make me feel like committing civil disobedience. Bolding the first few letters is something that needs patent protection? Give me a break. That's not a thing, man.

Patents shouldn't be a thing full stop.

Why spend my forcefully taken tax money protecting imaginary rights of a few inventors?

I understand the problem of industrial spies and creating something whose recipe is hard to find and easy to make, but I don't see why we should solve it societally for the large corporations which happen to have this issue.

Let them spend money suing their customers who violated some ToS and reverse engineered the formula, let them worry about vetting or doing suing their own employees. And if it's too expensive to pursue, consider it a natural tax of the market.

If they're creating something that will give value over a long period of time, they're already making more than the rest of the population who's paying for their patent bs and their copyright enforcement.

Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#28
post #9

I tried the samples on the bionic reading website, I don’t feel like this makes me read faster. Am I the only one?

Not just you. I don't get the point of this either. I'm guessing it has something to do with your existing reading method? My eyes naturally jump to the first letters and tallest/round characters when determining the shape of a word.

There is an accelerated reader I played with a few years ago, based on flashing the words for you with some letters colored in red. That increased reading speed mildly, but the lack of ability to quickly backtrack defeated any gains.

Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#29

Saw this on reddit days ago, still waiting for someone to show any kind of scientific evidence for it's usefulness.

Agree. Would love to see some text even explaining what this is or why it's supposed to help. I just see a git repo with no explanation...

Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster

#30
post #20

I wonder if the effectiveness of bionic reading would be improved by using a gradient of weights for each character - instead of just bolding the first half of the word, as this extension does. For example, Open Sans has six levels of weight: light, regular, medium, semi-bold, bold, and extra bold: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans

there’s already beeline that does this

https://www.beelinereader.com/

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