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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

#41

Post by Dr_Birdbrain »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #27
ghotli wrote: 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 an…

It’s not about protecting their rights, it’s about encouraging corporations to release the processes of their invention. The point is that we provide legally enforced protection in exchange for it entering the public domain after a few years. The alternative is corporate secrets that never become public (unless stolen), like the formula for Coca Cola.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

V__ wrote: post #33
jokethrowaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

I agree that the current patent system is broken, but there are a lot of situations where I think protecting an invention for some time is warranted. Let's say you invest 10 years of your life trying to develop a new cure or drug, but some other company reverse engineers the formula and sells it for cheaper, preventing you from even recoup your investment costs. This might not be a problem for large corporations, but…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by brnaftr361 »

V__ wrote: post #33
jokethrowaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

I agree that the current patent system is broken, but there are a lot of situations where I think protecting an invention for some time is warranted. Let's say you invest 10 years of your life trying to develop a new cure or drug, but some other company reverse engineers the formula and sells it for cheaper, preventing you from even recoup your investment costs. This might not be a problem for large corporations, but…

I think once you've actually sussed out the expenses of patents and copyrights they outweigh the benefits. The system as it stands is a product of the system as it was designed. It's real cute and nice at the outset, but lending monopolies to individuals (corporations or otherwise) means concentration of wealth, means outsized political power, means longer more inequitous parents which ultimately gives rise to inefficient rentiers. This defeats the competitive elements necessary for a free market.

Like have you read about the pharma companies that pay out generic mfgs to not manufacture patent-lapsed medication? This allows the patent-holder to buoy their prices and continue the monopolistic racket for medicines without competition. And pharma is held to a different standard.

If we take your example, we'll assume the competition's process is more efficient, well they can't patent that so the inventor can fund and build a factory on par with the competition. Consumer benefits. As it stands one party could design the drug, the other the process, and they could compete inefficiently with royalty bargaining or some such, ultimately leaving little benefit to the consumer. More realistically a conglomerate buys out everything related and sets the price for maximum ROI - supported by the system which has been driven to the inevitable conclusion of artificial monopolies leveraging their outsized wealth in the political arena.

Mentioning the propensity for larger established companies to buy out nascent companies and strangle their products which is enabled by patent law and has lost the collective a considerable amount of goods.

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

#44

Post by Schroedingersat »

Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #41
jokethrowaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

It’s not about protecting their rights, it’s about encouraging corporations to release the processes of their invention. The point is that we provide legally enforced protection in exchange for it entering the public domain after a few years. The alternative is corporate secrets that never become public (unless stolen), like the formula for Coca Cola.

Copyright explicitly doesn't do this. Try and get source for pretty much any commercial software.

Patents generally don't these days either, the patents are so vague and general that you can't reproduce the device using the patent or even know which of the 50 off-handedly mentioned methods is used to implement a general idea like 'synchronizing some clocks to measure a thing but using radio waves or the internet'

A sane system would require registration andnsource and only last a handful of years.

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

#45

Post by Schroedingersat »

V__ wrote: post #33
jokethrowaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

I agree that the current patent system is broken, but there are a lot of situations where I think protecting an invention for some time is warranted. Let's say you invest 10 years of your life trying to develop a new cure or drug, but some other company reverse engineers the formula and sells it for cheaper, preventing you from even recoup your investment costs. This might not be a problem for large corporations, but…

Except they're never used that way in practise. The small startup or inventor doesn't have enough resources to litigate if someone violates their patent so it only serves as a tax on inventors in exchange for not beingnsued by a patent troll for using their own ideas.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

kleer001 wrote: post #15

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…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by ama5322 »

kleer001 wrote: post #15

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…

This is so simple that anybody can have a go at implementing it in a few minutes. Definitely more productive than a dismissive comment here.

Somehow this has been granted a patent... the way I see it, this needs to have 800 free/open implementations just to prove a point to the patent office that somehow let this pass as "innovative" (_whatever_, like you say).

Aside from various js snippets posted here, a firefox and chrome plugin I also found an emacs mode https://github.com/melpa/melpa/pull/7990

vim _definitely_ needs one too now please

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

#49

Post by dvhh »

loxias wrote: post #29
amazing_stories wrote: post #25

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...

As mentioned in one of the comment this is linked to a certain methodology of teaching reading.

One where the reader is more focused on the overall shape of the word rather than the individual letters (from memory I think it is the "global reading method"). I think it can have great effect on the speed of reading, but downside effect is less accurate spelling. Also when encountering "Exotic" words reading speed can slow to a crawl as to try to memorize the shape of the word.

I have not found study linking the reading speed and the speed of learning, I would theorize that one has no effect on the other.

But recent technologies like auto-correction and word completion have partially compensated these mistakes and recent trend of journalism to "paraphrasing" news cable somewhat amplified its effect.

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

#50

Post by cybervegan »

This simply doesn't work for me. Maybe it's because I'm Autistic, but I can't even read text highlighted in this way. A friend posted up a side-by side example, and I couldn't read the first line in the time it took me to read the whole, plain passage. My eye simply won't follow the line - maybe I am getting distracted by the odd formatting. As a coder - used to syntax highlighting - this was very surprising, but for me, this is absolutely terrible.
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