[HN Gopher] Bionic Reading - Convert Text into Better Way to Rea...
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Bionic Reading - Convert Text into Better Way to Read Faster
Author : andsoitis
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-05-22 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| thorum wrote:
| 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
| ushakov wrote:
| there's already beeline that does this
|
| https://www.beelinereader.com/
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Since it isn't mentioned this is inspired/based on
| https://bionic-reading.com/ (discussed in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787290). Note, although it
| has been granted patent only in France, the Bionic Reading name
| is registered trademark. A web extension was made soon after the
| link was posted and can be found in
| https://github.com/ahrm/chrome-fastread (Firefox vers:
| https://github.com/akay/firefox-fastread).
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I've tried it a few times. Does not work for me.
|
| I do not perceive any speed difference, there could be one but it
| would be marginal.
|
| I am a fairly quick reader, I trained to read fast and extract
| content in high school.
| userbinator wrote:
| This definitely does not have the desired effect for me. The
| uneven contrast made me read slower since I found myself re-
| scanning the same words again to confirm their spelling. It's
| only slightly less distracting than reading rANdoMlY CaPitAliSeD
| tEXt.
| EdSharkey wrote:
| I read through the sample and my eyes/brain were able to move
| over the lines incredibly quickly and recognize the words. I
| notice it only worked when my intent and goal was to move my eyes
| quickly over the lines. And, I noticed my eyes could do little
| fast forward skips as they passed over the words, which is not
| the norm for me. I don't think this technology would do anything
| for my retention though, I only skimmed the words. Maybe with
| practice I could read faster and retain the information as well
| at speed.
| onion2k wrote:
| I saw this pop up on Twitter a couple of days ago and made a JS
| version with a variable font.
| https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/qBxmVpR it's a fun idea, but I
| don't really find it helps me read things.
| yarpnird wrote:
| how does someone acqiure a patent for stylistic typography that
| reaches across typefaces?
| ghotli wrote:
| 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.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| What if we underline the first character(s)? Can we get specs
| from those who grant software patents? What is included, what
| is not?
| bozhark wrote:
| _Patented_
| ushakov wrote:
| 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
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| 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
| nobody else would be incentivized to try to create or develop
| something cutting edge, which might have a high risk of
| failure or take a long time to see through.
| [deleted]
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| 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.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| 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.
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| 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.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| 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.
| westcort wrote:
| Try these bookmarklets:
|
| With a peach background color and a pivot character one-third
| of the way through the word (plus one):
|
| javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var
| a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll("p, title"),c=[],e="",
| f="",g="",h=0,k=0,l="",m="",n=window.open("","_blank");for(var
| d in b){var i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+"\n"+i)}for(f=c,e=f.
| replace(/\n/g," <br></br> "),g=e.split("
| "),h=0;h<g.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length/3)+1,l="<span
| style='font-weight:bolder'>"+g[h].substring(0,k)+"</span><span
| style='font-
| weight:lighter'>"+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+"</span> ","."=
| =g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+="<span
| style='color:red'> * </span>"),m+=l;n.document.write("<html><p
| style='background-color:#EDD1B0;font-size:40;line-
| height:200%25;font-family:Arial'>"+m+"</p></html>")})()}();
|
| With a peach background color and no change to bolding for
| comparison:
|
| javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var
| a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll("p, title"),c=[],e="",
| f="",g="",h=0,k=0,l="",m="",n=window.open("","_blank");for(var
| d in b){var i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+"\n"+i)}for(f=c,e=f.
| replace(/\n/g," <br></br> "),g=e.split("
| "),h=0;h<g.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length/3)+1,l="<span
| style='font-weight:light'>"+g[h].substring(0,k)+"</span><span
| style='font-
| weight:light'>"+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+"</span> ","."==g
| [h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+="<span
| style='color:red'> * </span>"),m+=l;n.document.write("<html><p
| style='background-color:#EDD1B0;font-size:40;line-
| height:200%25;font-family:Arial'>"+m+"</p></html>")})()}();
| [deleted]
| amazing_stories wrote:
| Saw this on reddit days ago, still waiting for someone to show
| any kind of scientific evidence for it's usefulness.
| loxias wrote:
| 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...
| spencerchubb wrote:
| I trace with my finger while reading. It's a super simple way to
| improve focus and speed.
| muhehe wrote:
| Algorithm of this version seems brutally simple.
|
| const mid Math.floor(preElem.length / 2); > <span className="bio-
| letter">{preElem.slice(0, mid)}</span>{preElem.slice(mid)}
|
| I thought the original was more complex a nuanced than this.
| kleer001 wrote:
| 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 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.
| b1n wrote:
| > But, based on what? I don't see any pointers to papers or
| other academic work or collaboration.
|
| Do you only experience things once they have been thoroughly
| peer reviewed?
|
| Why not quickly try it out for yourself and decide.
| bozhark wrote:
| 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?
| kzrdude wrote:
| I agree with you - I only see the bold part. In some cases
| that makes it feel faster- but if you don't "guess" the word
| correctly from just the bold part, then my reading stutters.
| thorum wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Im 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!
| vimy wrote:
| I tried the samples on the bionic reading website, I don't feel
| like this makes me read faster. Am I the only one?
| Arubis wrote:
| Nope. This does nothing for me.
| loxias wrote:
| 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.
| iamevn wrote:
| 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.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Interesting. There's probably still more that could be done.
|
| I'm probably weird but since I was a kid through high school
| (1960s-1970s) I was a subject of various research studies and
| advanced learning techniques. I don't exactly know why I ended up
| in these but it's probably "right place, right time".
|
| A lot of these involved "speed reading" as well as "speed
| learning". What this code does definitely broaches some of what I
| was taught and what was at one time more widely known. There are
| other aspects that are missing that relate to typography and
| dynamic reading.
| sdze wrote:
| How 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).
| nadavwr wrote:
| 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).
| bogwog wrote:
| This is patent encumbered, so if you use it for a product, you're
| setting yourself up for trouble down the line.
|
| The project page should be updated to mention the patent
| situation IMO. The license is MIT, but that doesn't mean you can
| use this without paying the patent holder whatever has asks.
| westcort wrote:
| Kind of similar to this bookmarklet:
|
| javascript:(function(){var q="p, title",e=document.querySelectorA
| ll(q),o=[],str1="",str0="",str="",j=0,pivotchar=0,finvar="",ans="
| ",d=window.open("","_blank"); for(var i in e){var
| t=e[i].textContent; if(t){o = o + "\n" + t;}} str0 = o;
| str1=str0.replace(/\n/g, " <br></br> "); str=str1.split(" ");
| for(j=0;j<str.length;j++) {
| pivotchar=Math.floor((str[j].length)/3)+1; finvar = "<span
| style='font-weight:bolder'>" + str[j].substring(0,pivotchar) +
| "</span>" + "<span style='font-weight:lighter'>" +
| str[j].substring(pivotchar,str[j].length) + "</span>" + " ";
| if(str[j].substring(str[j].length-1,str[j].length)=='.') {
| finvar=finvar+"<span style='color:red'> * </span>"; }
| ans=ans+finvar; } d.document.write("<html><p style='font-
| size:40;line-height:200%;font-
| family:Arial'>"+ans+"</p></html>");})()
|
| https://www.locserendipity.com/Hyper.html
| hexomancer wrote:
| If 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...
| kristiandupont wrote:
| This reminds me a little bit of the free Spreeder app
| (https://www.spreeder.com/app.php). I used it quite a bit at one
| point but forgot about it and that was that.
| aritmo wrote:
| It is obvious that the improvement to this, is to highlight just
| the key words of a paragraph and not all words. Requires a way to
| figure out which words are the important words. Use some AI tool
| that understands a language.
|
| It's too much clutter to highlight all words. No need for the
| connective words, etc.
|
| Many have been doing this manually for a long time.
| high_byte wrote:
| this is really cool. I wonder if it's possible to create a bionic
| font such that you could get system wide support, well for the
| most part.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787290
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