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.
Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#12Im not totally sold that this is useful, but Im curious. I'll see if I can convert an epub and spend some time reading with their weird font thing on my remarkable. For science!
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#13I tried the samples on the bionic reading website, I don’t feel like this makes me read faster. Am I the only one?
Yeah it makes reading significantly harder for me. I recognize what they're trying to get my eyes to do but they already do that anyways and bolding half of everything on the page makes it harder for me to pick out the bits that matter. Bolding any part of "is", "in", "a", etc. is a hilarious choice to me.
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#14If you want to try it out on a PDF, I have implemented this in sioyek PDF reader:
https://github.com/ahrm/sioyek
You need to enable experimental features in `prefs_user.config` by adding `enable_experimental_features 1` and then enable this mode using `toggle_fastread` command within sioyek.
I also experimented with more sophisticated algorithms, you can read about the experiment here:
https://ahrm.github.io/jekyll/update/2022/04/14/using-langug...
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#15It'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 Text into Better Way to Read Faster"
But, based on what? I don't see any pointers to papers or other academic work or collaboration.
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#16Patents 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.
What if we underline the first character(s)? Can we get specs from those who grant software patents? What is included, what is not?
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#17Patents 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.
What if we underline the first character(s)? Can we get specs from those who grant software patents? What is included, what is not?
_Patented_
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#18It'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…
It makes it harder to read imo. I’d rather the beginning and ending of each word be bold and the middle faded.
Not seeing the end of the words clearly makes my brain only read the bold part.
Since we only need the first and last of a word for our brain to figure out, why not utilize a style that reflects this knowledge?
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#19How the hell did they manage to patent this? At least in Germany it is still "pending". I had the strong impression that you cannot patent software or algorithms (at least in Germany).
From what little I know, in the US you can only file patents for "method and apparatus". I could be wrong but I think this is a very common restriction in patent systems around the world.
Suppose they file this patent for an ebook reader ("apparatus") with this specific feature implemented in a similar way ("method"). You would be in clear violation of the patent if you were to build and distribute a competing ebook reader with a substantially similar feature. But protection drops off rapidly the further you go from replicating both method and apparatus. I.e. if you only work on a piece of software (absent the ebook reader apparatus) I think you should be fine (but IANAL).
Now suppose you were to publish an Android ebook reader app with this feature, and publish it via Google Play. Supposedly this would result in a combined software and apparatus in violation of the patent. I'm not clear on how this is usually regarded (you'd have to at least worry about patent trolls I assume) but I doubt the patent owner has a legal leg to stand on (which won't necessarily stop them from trying).
Re: Bionic Reading – Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
#20I 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: