Ripple co-founder fifth richest person in US, rivaling Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/bitcoin-ripple.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> As said by others, market cap is not enough. There needs to be a better metric that takes in to account "true" market depth. I say "true" b/c the market depth on CC exchanges is generally accepted to be BS due to widespread spoofing/wash trading.

Basically, the total market value of the coin should be the maximum USD (or any other reference currency) that could be extracted by continuously selling (an unbounded amount) of the coin until the price approaches 0.

<comment><USER3> Really ? Why ?

The price for any good is the marginal price. Essentially it's the price that should get paid for having a "single item" of the good change hands. Take a stock. MS stock may be quoted at 80$, but I guarantee that if you want 50% of MS stock, you'll have to pay more than 80$ per share.

So prices for large or much smaller quantities of the good change hands are different, and are not quoted unless required. (smaller than one would be still one, but only selling after the seller has to wait a long time). Since such transactions often substantially change the demand for the good, the fact that such a transaction exists often substantially changes the price.

This is true for cryptocurrencies, stocks, cars, shavers, toilet paper.

<comment><USER2> The point is that marginal price is easily manipulated, when the good is easily electronically traded. Stock trading is heavily regulated (& companies can issue more shares if demand is very high) which prevents the massive amount of manipulation we see in the CC space. Shavers/cars/toilet paper have higher transaction costs and aren't typically seen as assets with which to speculate.

This manipulation makes the marginal price a potentially bad way of ranking different assets, especially when the market depth of the asset is relatively thin (i.e. on many CCs).

The point of the metric I gave was that it is more robust of a measure to manipulation than market cap. What do you think is the "value under liquidation" [0] (VuL) of XRP? BTC? probably significantly less than the market cap. The more interesting thing to do would be to try to estimate it for different cryptocurrencies and compare them (i.e. XRP vs ETH). That would be fairly difficult though, but perhaps an upper bound could be estimated, better than the trivial upper bound of market cap which assumes that the market impact of selling is 0.

[0] - [https://cims.nyu.edu/~almgren/papers/optliq_r.pdf](https://cims.nyu.edu/~almgren/papers/optliq_r.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > The point of the metric I gave was that it is more robust of a measure to > manipulation than market cap. What do you think is the "value under > liquidation" [0]

The market cap of Google is 780 billion.

The value under liquidation of Google is (you can find this in their financial reports) ~100 billion. Even that is a vast overestimation of what it would fetch in a firesale, because it's assuming, for example, that with Google firesaling, the ad "inventory" would sell for what it's currently selling for. (There another 70 billion in "intangibles" (guess how much that fetches in a firesale)).

Granted that's pretty high (a company that pays dividends, like Microsoft, it'd be way less, and for insane stocks like Amazon ... let's not go there).

Which do you think reflects the value of Google ? It's an interesting question, and you can if you like get a bachelor, masters or PhD in various ways to answer that question.

But I would say there is no one good answer. Not for XRP, BTC, or for Google, not even for things like the US Dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this anything but a bubble? I'm a bit of a Luddite on the whole area of cryptocoins, but I literally first heard of Ripple three days ago. I can't fathom how the entire corpus to them could be more valuable than whatever portion of FB Zuckerberg owns.

<comment><USER5> > but I literally first heard of Ripple three days ago.

I haven't heard of nearly 100% of the world's billionaires or many of the top companies by market cap in the world. That doesn't mean they are bubbles. I haven't even heard of many of the world's currencies. They aren't bubbles either.

Ripple is 6 years old. So many other businesses have started and become huge 6 years later and not been a bubble. Was Google a bubble when it was worth tens of billions 6 years after it started?

<comment><USER6> That's the point, with a credible currency you don't need to know the people or companies you're trading with. Instead of peers, you trust that the currency used for trading is somewhat stable — so it makes sense to trade using that currency.

With a single company to trade with, or a tiny cryptocurrency, you are trading with a very, very small fraction compared to an established global currency.

I find it amazing that people are not getting this.

<comment><USER3> Oh if only this were true. Just so we're clear when you say "established global currency", what you're saying in practice is "SWIFT" (and a few "competitors").

Ok, so one of the problems things like bitcoin solve is that trust in the currency really encompasses trusting quite a few organisations, and these being trustworthy is only true up to a certain transaction size, and only on large averages. Basically, the issue is that banks can't be trusted, and therefore anyone big enough to make double-digit million value transactions can't be trusted (because they might be the bank, own the bank, or simply owe the bank a lot of money, ...). There are also more complex cases where governments get involved and muck things up (financial fraud, bankruptcy cases, tax investigations, ...). And there are other cases (terrorist financing, sanctions, ...).

All of those problems should not be the concern of merchants, but they are in practice, because governments have unilaterally decided that interfering without recourse in payment systems is the way they'll police the world. So they change payment streams (which are between 2 parties, say A and B, and they have some problem with A). Issue is always the same: B buys something from A. One of the parties in the chain, or a government, or the police, or ... has a bill for A, and halts the payment. A then claims (truthfully) non- reception of funds and refuses to deliver. B is left without recourse, without money, and without the good they paid for. Needless to say, nobody accepts responsibility for damaging B. But it gets worse.

So in fact this is one of the big advantages of cryptocurrencies, actually. With dollars (or any such currency), even if they're on your bank account they can disappear months later.

Essentially, large banks, judicial system and governments have the ability to impose their losses on others, in the "traditional" currency systems, and they use that ability too much, without caring who else they damage in the process.

When it comes to "if I have the money, I can trust that I actually have it" cryptocurrencies (all of them) are far superior to SWIFT (essentially all banks are part of SWIFT) in terms of what merchants consider trustworthiness.

There are other advantages that they also have. For instance, despite the complaints, bitcoin is still far faster than SWIFT.

<comment><USER7> > Basically, the issue is that banks can't be trusted,...

And crypto exchanges, and all the other intermediaries you'll probably end up dealing with in practice, can be trusted?

I get the usefulness of a decentralized permissionless network for peer-to- peer transactions. But Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies today are looking pretty darn far away from that promise.

<comment><USER3> Comparatively I still believe they're more trustworthy than the fiat currency ones. But that doesn't really matter in practice :

As long as your assets are in the cryptocurrency itself, and you're happy with that, there is no need to trust any intermediaries at all.

You can have local and international money transfer that safe, final and trustworthy. Money, of course, meaning bitcoin (or ether, or ...). That's a valid usecase.

That's the key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think most commonsensical people are starting to realize how big of a bubble this is. I mean Facebook is used by one BILLION people DAILY -- and it literally knows almost everything about its users. To say that XRP is even remotely as valuable as FB is just so trivially untrue, it seems pointless to even argue.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember seeing a bumper sticker in silicon valley that said "Please Lord give me just one more bubble". It looks like their prayers have been answered with cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER10> Is it really a Silicon Valley bubble?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Step Right Up. Everyone can be a winner. Bargains galore. That's right, you too can be a proud owner. For One-tenth of a dollar, one-tenth of a dollar, we got service after sales. You need Ripple coins? We got Ripple coins. How about you sir? Something for the little lady, something for the little lady. Ma'am? We have the best quality Ripple Coins in the world here. Get your coins folks before we run out...

</comment><comment><USER12> Ripple has retained a majority of XRP currency. So at any moment, buyers can unknowingly transact in something akin to an IPO, without actually owning a part of the company, or having voting shares. In such a case, you're just forking over money to the company, not to other XRP owners. Reeks like potential Ponzi.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm fairly sure he wouldn't be able to liquidate anywhere near as many coins as he has without destroying the market

</comment><comment><USER14> the prisoner billionaire: as soon as he starts selling one dollar his wealth goes to zero

<comment><USER15> OTC markets exist.

<comment><USER14> there is no such demand for cryptos i think, since its all speculative

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If virtual currencies are the future and anyone can create his own currency, how does this affect inflation in real economies? these are endless trillions of dollars created out of nowhere!

<comment><USER17> AFAICT it's getting harder to convert between the various forms of play/virtual money and actual money. When the bubble pops, good luck exchanging alphanumeric strings for actual stuff. There's some seriously shady stuff keeping it inflated... [https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed](https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Except he's not because all his coins are vesting. Are Zucks FB shares vesting? Don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER19> So is there a good explanation of why banks would use Ripple and why it's better than their existing options?

<comment><USER20> Yes. From what I understand researching this company and currency for a couple of months, ripple's technology eliminates the middle-man banks that are involved in cross-border payments , thereby eliminating the fees they all charge, and also reduces the time taken for the funds to reach destination from 3 - 5 days or more, down to 3 seconds.

They use XRP, the ripple crypto currency to hold the sender and receivers funds during the transaction.

See also this video that explains it really well => [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2YHhLkOO9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2YHhLkOO9g)

and this one, which is more technical and explains their blockchain technology / xCurrent software. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU79HunxJp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU79HunxJp8)

<comment><USER21> In the video that you have posted, they do not seem to transfer XRP, but USD. In fact, XRP is not needed to use their products (Assuming the video was about 'Ripple Connect')

Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6jd9w6/this_is_the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6jd9w6/this_is_the_difference_between_xrp_and_ripple/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sell!

</comment><comment><USER23> Tulips for everyone

</comment><comment><USER24> Actually I am wealthier. I just made a new coin called "hacker coin". There are a trillion coins, and my girlfriend just bought one of them from me for $10.

It has a 60% premine that I will be using to attract people to the platform (lol).

So my current net worth is about $6T.

<comment><USER5> There are markets with people buying and selling Ripple. This fundamentally changes the situation and makes your analogy not useful. Clearly you're joking, but clearly Ripple has more to it than your silly story, and nobody would ever conclude you are worth $6T. Your math is flawed in that is not backed by a market at all, but Ripple's is.

I'm not justifying its valuation, but your argument is fallacious.

<comment><USER25> No, Ripple's market cap is completely fictitious. The circulating supply is tiny and if this "billionaire" tried to liquidate a significant portion of these ripple tokens, it would crash the market. Look at the 24h trading volumes for xrp.

<comment><USER26> It looks like it's trading around between $1B and $8B a day: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/historical- data/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/historical-data/)

It doesn't seem that difficult to cash out at least few billion with that kind of volume.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier - <AUTHOR> http://www.BeeLineReader.com <comment><USER2> Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...)

It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" \-- I _scan_ content to find the relevant parts, and the color changes are making it difficult to scan (because my eye can no longer use color to determine what is scannable and what isn't), and multiple columns is actually making it even more difficult (it looks like the blue in column 1 leads into the blue in column 2, instead of the blue at the next line of column 1). By trying to force me to read line-by-line, instead of scanning efficiently, it's making me read slower.

But that's just for short-form stuff. It could turn out to be faster for some layouts, and slower for others. But honestly, I've never felt I had difficulty locating the start of the next line... is this a problem that needs solving? But nevertheless, it's certainly a good example of clever out-of-the-box thinking.

<comment><USER3> I normally read around 600 to 1000 wpm (depending on how dense or vapid it is). This speeds up my reading wayyyyy past that. 1500 wpm? And I was barely trying. It does look super fucking ugly, but it totally works for me. They need to bring in an army of designers and make software geared towards legal assistants / lawyers because they need this desperately.

<comment><USER4> I read at 146 words per minute, and that is average text. I probably read slower when the material is hard. Over the past year or so I went through roughly 90% of Plato's work (like, really), The Quran (partially), On the Nature of Things, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Discourses by Epictetus, How to Read by M. Adler, Alchemy of Happiness by Ghazalli, etc.... I also read several short text including James Allen, Xenophon, etc... Currently I am reading Jacques Rousseau, and getting back soon to Adam Smith Wealth of Nations... I also started but did not finish yet the Communist Manifesto, How we think (slightly), Prior Analytics (slightly) and perhaps my hardest read ever, Suma Theologica. I am 100% sure I forgot a couple of books I read. Many of these writings I re-read a few times because they are hard to grasp for me. AT 146 words/minute. I am an inefficient reader, and I never knew it. I am going to thoroughly research ways to improve this.

<comment><USER5> None of those are works that _should_ be speed-read. Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Epictetus, the Qur'an, and (above all) the Bible should be rolled around the mouth, tasted deeply, and either made a part of you or thoroughly spit out if they are found indigestible. If your mechanical reading speed is the limiting factor in reading these works, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER6> Why the Bible above all?

<comment><USER7> Because the King James bible had considerable effort to translate original texts into best possible English, preserving meaning but also creating a suitably "glorious" text.

Very many concepts, words, metaphors, etc come from the King James translation.

Ignoring any religious stuff - it's a good read.

EDIT: corrected my st / king error!

<comment><USER8> Try the Knox bible, ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox's_Translation_of_the_Vulga...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox's_Translation_of_the_Vulgate) ):

"It was my resolve to live watchfully, and never use my tongue amiss; still, while I was in the presence of sinners, I kept my mouth gagged, dumb and patient, impotent for good. But indignation came back, and my heart burned within me, the fire kindled by my thoughts, so that at last I kept silence no longer.

"Lord, warn me of my end, and how few my days are; teach me to know my own insufficiency. See how thou hast measured my years with a brief span, how my life is nothing in thy reckoning! Nay, what is any man living but a breath that passes? Truly man walks the world like a shadow; with what vain anxiety he hoards up riches, when he cannot tell who will have the counting of them! What hopes then is mine, Lord? In thee alone I trust. Clear me of that manifold guilt which makes me the laughing-stock of fools, tongue-tied and uncomplaining, because I know that my troubles come from thee; spare me this punishment; I faint under thy powerful hand. When thou dost chasten man to punish his sins, gone is all he loved, as if the moth had fretted it away; a breath that passes, and no more. Listen, Lord to my prayer, let my cry reach thy hearing, and my tears win answer. What am I in thy sight but a passer-by, a wanderer, as all my fathers were? Thy frown relax, give me some breath of comfort, before I go away and am known no more."

-Psalm 38 (39) from Knox's Translation of the Vulgate.

Knox's translation is lucid when compared with the "correct" and dead modern translations of the bible. Try it if King James does not speak to you.

<comment><USER9> That verse is perhaps the clearest explanation I have ever read of why religion exists. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At first glance: wow that's ugly.

Then I read it. Fast. Consuming nearly at a paragraph at a glance when I usually can digest only a fragment of a sentence up to a couple of sentence.

It's not attractive, but it is clever and innovative - well done!

<comment><USER11> It said I had a 15% increase. not too sure about that, but one thing i definitely did notice was that was I kept reading the beeline sentence my brain was 'remembering' what I had just read.

I 'constantly' have to re-read entire paragraphs because I realised I've looked at them without really taking anything in. It was really strange to feel like i was processing the text as I was reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm initially inclined to dismiss this as ugly and distracting, especially with the default colors being very similar to the traditional link/visited HTML colors. It would be worth exploring further if the claimed improvements are true.

I'd especially be interested in exploring ways to incorporate this into better designed color schemes so that it doesn't look so much like a unicorn vomited on the page while preserving the benefits and usability.

I'm also less inclined to dismiss improvements like these after misinterpreting the occasional email from colleagues lately. I don't know if it is assuming I know the full contents from the 3 line summary on mobile devices, processing too much email, or simply not paying enough attention but I've had to slow down and make sure I get things right.

<comment><USER13> An alternative bookmarklet would be to apply the gradient to the line your cursor is over, and just move your cursor at the pace you read lines.

<comment><USER14> For me, that'd be completely unworkable.

Moving the mouse/cursor down the page line at a time to read? _Seriously?_

<comment><USER15> Applying the gradient when you select text might work. For some reason I already have a habit of obsessively selecting text when I am reading, and I've seen other people that do it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >A study designed and carried out at Stanford University showed an average reading speed increase of over 10 percent for first time users of BeeLine Reader. Many seasoned users experience speed increases of 25 to 30 percent!

So why isn't the study linked?

Regardless of whether or not the claims are true, who in the hell decided for red and blue for the demo's default? The blues/grays themes look okay. IMO, saturated red and blue and probably the two worst colors to use together in a design.

<comment><USER17> I took their test and came out 2% faster (likely statistical noise more than actual improvement). Regardless, I attribute the improvement to the obscure content in the non beeline reading passage.

I'm curious what others experienced?

<comment><USER18> I had a similar thought when I read the texts. The first (b&w) text was just harder to comprehend due to esoteric words, lack of thought direction, and several personas. I couldn't understand what author was trying to say. The second (colored) text was about a female teacher and had a common vocabulary and a straight-forward theme with one character.

According to them I read 11% faster. Although I guessed on 2 out 3 questions, compared to knowing all 3 from b&w text.

Thus, I call BS on their testing experience. These two texts are way too different. And picking an easier one for beeline text does a disservice to this hopefully legit fast reading method.

<comment><USER19> Actually, the test randomizes which passage you receive in which color. So if you got the "harder" one in Beeline, you might have the opposite experience. (I've tried it a couple times to see how it works...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was ready to call B.S. on this but after actually seeing it in action, it seems very reasonable. I wonder why this hasn't been done before. I happen to skip lines very often, I'll definitely try this out.

EDIT: Some feedback after reading a Cracked article with it.

First of all, since the inception of the Readability bookmarklet I've always read online articles with some kind of tool (I started with Readability, then passed to the Safari version and now I've been using Clearly for quite some time and I'm pretty happy about it) and now I'm so used to it that if a particular article doesn't render properly, I just straight out don't read it. The first thing I noticed is that the coloration is applied even to single- line titles, I would do away with it and (maybe) apply it only on multi-line paragraphs' titles. The other thing that irked me is that small images are put on the left side instead of being centered, even worse is the fact that text appears on the right side of the images; I would follow Clearly steps in this regard and always put the text under the centered images. Lastly, I would reduce the text area to 600px of width or better yet, dynamically size it so as to accommodate around 60 characters. As far as I can tell, you totally nailed the font size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughtful feedback—we are talking with Evernote about Clearly integration. They have a great platform and we hope to integrate with them soon!

<comment><USER21> I would also love to see Clearly integration! I use it for everything, and you don't need to fuss with background colors or anything.

Please give more options for colors and gradients. I'm sure everyone has different tastes and habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Others have pointed this out but: "BeeLine Reader is a patent pending technology" Well, there goes any respect I might have had for this. It is not obvious in every respect, but this is such a basic idea, trying to control it for 20 years while people perhaps find it useful and build this feature everywhere is absolutely destructive. I hope their patent is rejected.

FWIW, I liked it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Although it is fair to have an opinion about this based on personal experience, remember that performance when reading is a personal matter (anecdotal evidence: the crowd that highlights text for reading [1]; scientific evidence: dyslexia).

So it is good to remember that it might or might not work depending on the way your individual brain works, independently of what the person next to you gets from it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4839436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4839436)

</comment><comment><USER24> Having recently looked into speed reading a bit, this seems to do a quite good job at filling the role of a pacer without actually requiring any manual interaction by the reader. Nice work! Easily beats trying to pace yourself with the mouse cursor or text selection at least, while actually preserving pages mostly as-is.

</comment><comment><USER25> For some reason the color gradients changed the intonation with which I read it--so the whole thing sounded, in my mind's ear, like an eighties valley girl, replete with uptalk, aka the "moronic interrogative."*

"BeeLine Reader is an exciting new technology? That helps people read faster? On computers?"

Maybe I'd get used to it. But if not, a 100x speed increase wouldn't be worth having that in my head. Like, all day?

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal)

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, It feels like the first time I tried glasses. It completely removes any chances of me missing a line. I have a low dyslexia and this just works. Thank you !!

<comment><USER26> I prefer it to the dyslexic font, it feels less disruptive. It should come bundled with every os :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My gut feeling (and the websites I enjoy reading, and what I recently did to my blog) is that line skipping is due to too long lines combined with little font-size and line height. But of course, not all eyes/eye-brain systems work the same, and I'm sure this will be more helpful to some than larger fonts with larger line heights.

<comment><USER28> I very much agree.

 _Line height_ , _line width_ , and _font size_ , are the 3 elements of a body of large text that must be balanced. There is some basic arithmetic to this, and it appears everyone seems to ignore it. (HN's design is a perfect example of the 'meh' attitude toward readability.)

I think this article does a good job of visually explaining this balance and how to accomplish it: [http://www.pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio- typography....](http://www.pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio- typography.php)

<comment><USER27> Heh, read it (it's in my Instapaper for some future referenc since it appeared first heree) But when I did the redesign I just went with the flow and what I saw nice on my screen. After all, what I write in my blog works as future reference for me, too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The testing methodology is quite flawed (at least for the reading speed test on the site). It asks you to read a passage with BeeReader to start out. When you're done, you're presented with questions about the passage before reading a non-BeeReader passage.

The catch is, you will almost certainly read the second passage slower than the first, since you're now looking to retain information for the questions!

The colored passages _feel_ faster, but I'm not sure that counts for much.

<comment><USER30> My test presented the non-BeeReader passage before the BeeReader version, so there's definitely some randomization going on.

Perhaps the aggregate A/B numbers make a more compelling case for using BeeReader?

I wonder if the color combo choice has any affect on the speed/comprehension of the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I read a lot and I read really fast too. So line skipping is a problem, especially on longer lines.

This thing combines the old Readability bookmarklet with the gradient. I saw the improvement right away, following the line is much easier now!

tl;dr - this is awesome!

<comment><USER32> It's ironic, you double spaced your sentences. Maybe, that's the answer; More authors should double space?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "It looks like BeeLine didn't improve your reading speed this time through."

Why not show me the stats? I'd like to know, even if it doesn't confirm what you want it to.

</comment><comment><USER34> > The BeeLine bookmarklets ... may only be used for personal, non-commercial > use. ...available for a limited time ... subject to our privacy policy.

Surely the author is not claiming that putting color on text gives them som sort of patentable intellectual property? If this takes off and people will start incorporating this on their blogs, this company will become one of the biggest patent trolls.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yikes, harsh crowd here. So many people demanding scientific studies to back up the website's claims.

Better idea: Chill out. Then take 1 minute and read some stuff with it on. If you think it feels better try it for longer if not move on with your life.

No has claimed to cure cancer here, just that formatting text differently might give marginal increases in reading speed.

<comment><USER36> It's not that clear-cut. There's a real reason to ask if there's studies here, because it's not easy to self-assess if this actually works. Reading is more than just "how fast can I scan the lines in order" \- it's also about comprehension, eye fatigue, etc. All of which are hard for an individual to assess casually.

I think this is interesting, but I'd want to see studies on what the incremental cognitive load of "color matching" (not something I'm particularly great at) does to reading comprehension, and what the impact of this is on how _much_ I can read in a sitting. It's no good if you read 50% faster but tire out 3X as fast.

<comment><USER35> I totally disagree with this sentiment (respectfully, of course). If you know the numbers it will bias your experience. You need to try it for yourself and determine on an individual level if your comprehension/speed suffers, improves or stays the same.

<comment><USER37> Your self-assessment of your subjective experience is notoriously inaccurate and biased in particular, predictable ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Anyone else the numerous AOL chat plugins that used to do this back in the day? e.g. [http://www.tpasoft.com/fadeit/](http://www.tpasoft.com/fadeit/)

<comment><USER37> Prior art...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _BeeLine Reader applies a color gradient to text that helps reduce "line transition errors" [...] This increases reading speed, particularly on mobile devices that have small screens and short lines_

Err. Line transition errors are common on mobile devices, not because lines are short (the shorter the line, the less common line transition errors are), but because people are usually moving, walking, etc while holding a mobile device.

<comment><USER40> Short could refer to letter height, not line length.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So this is obviously a problem, right? We had MagicScroll [0] which got a ton of positive hits, and now this. I believe there have also been a few other attempts along the way as well. The crux of the issue is velocity+comprehension.

I don't like magicscroll because of the way the lines scroll down; I find it disconcerting. In the case of Beeline, I can't stand the color scheme.

The goals of both software are admirable and I'd love to see more work in this space, but I don't think either of them have it exactly right. If the designer is on here, consider using an interior design color picker website[1] to find a color scheme that works better than the current one.

In short, this is a problem and it would be valuable to somebody like Amazon if it were polished, IMHO.

[0][https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magicscroll-web- re...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magicscroll-web- reader/ecldhagehndokdmaiaigoaecbmbnmfkc?hl=en) [1][http://colorschemedesigner.com/](http://colorschemedesigner.com/) as an example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone! There are two reasons that the color scheme on the front page is so bright (and to some folks, ugly).

First, we wanted to make it really obvious what's going on, and if we'd used a subtle color gradient, it wouldn't have been as obvious. We realize that many/most people won't ultimately use the bright color scheme for one reason or another.

The second point is that people perceive color differently, so what is bright to one person may not seem so bright to someone else. There tend to be age- related correlations/causes here--it's why old people tend to wear lots of bright blues. To them, the blues don't look as bright. What we've found is that younger folks tend like the more subtle colors (eyes are more sensitive) and older folks tend to like the brighter colors (because they can't perceive the color difference in the subtle schemes). We anticipate rolling out our product/feature with a color picker palette so that users can choose the right color scheme for their visual physiology.

Thanks again for all the comments and suggestions, and please feel free to email us through the website if you have an app/site that you'd like to use BeeLine with. We have some code that will make integration pretty easy.

<comment><USER42> Bug report: try using the bookmarklet on this: [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/readme/hss_1112...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/readme/hss_1112200_readme.html)

It shows only the first paragraph.

(I know, I'm a sad person, but that's the sort of text-heavy doc I have to read all day).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I definitely noticed that I could read faster with this. And the colors were super obnoxious, so grayscale was my choice. What I would really appreciate was if it could be done without taking it out of the page I was already on.

I would really appreciate some way for it to automatically do it and not take me to a new page, maybe something I could install into my browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are absolutely working on more native implementations. This is just the first iteration!

<comment><USER44> What about a JavaScript version sites could use as a library? (My personal website is text-heavy and might benefit from a very subtle version of this, but I can't A/B test a browser extension.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Get in touch with me through the email link on the website. We have code that makes this easy.

<comment> luke-stanley Loading external scripts each time isn't secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am a voracious reader and I read pretty fast(never measured it though), and this really sped up my reading a lot. That was impressive. But "patent pending" ? Like someone has already pointed out here, patents like this are destructive and I too hope that it is rejected.

</comment><comment><USER46> You can also reduce line transition errors by increasing font size and line spacing. The font in the "What is it" paragraph is, to my eyes, too small and tightly spaced to be easily readable (perhaps purposefully, to demonstrate their value).

<comment><USER19> That's probably the point: Beeline makes it easier to read more text on a small screen. Increasing font size and line spacing doesn't work well on a smartphone, much less a smartwatch.

<comment><USER47> I think the line spacing and line length matter more than the font size. With these high-resolution displays, the fonts can be pretty small, and they're still readable, but you then need to make the column narrower and add a couple pixels to the line height.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am dyslexic. I just used the screen reader on the iPhone to read to me the challenge text at full speed. It told me that I read 4% faster with BeeLine on :) apparently the iPhone cares, because I wasn't even looking at the screen.

Insidently, the speak function of iOS is amazing for people with dyslexia. I use it all the time to listen to text at speeds of 300+wpm. I know many of my friends can read at 600+wpm my them selves, but not for a few hours on end. In any case, if you are dyslexic and use iOS, check out the read function under accessibilities.

</comment><comment><USER49> I find this incredibly hard to read, my eyes feel like they're being pulled to sudden colour changes. I find this extremely difficult to scan, as well.

</comment><comment><USER50> I could see people licensing this as a mode in apps, that is ... you hit a button and all the text changes to use this color mode to allow you read through things faster. Then you can turn it off if you want to read things a bit more leisurely ... and yes, it did speed up my reading, not sure if that's a placebo effect or actual.

</comment><comment><USER51> Isn't that why proper typography establishes line width limits and a bit of space between each line? That always made it a lot easier to "know where I was"...when I could see the beginning _and_ end of a line of text without having to move my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER52> The bookmarklet wasn't working for me on Chrome (permission errors), so I threw together a Chrome extension with the highlighting code: [https://github.com/egonSchiele/beeline](https://github.com/egonSchiele/beeline)

<comment><USER53> There's already a Chrome extension from the Box.net 2012 Hackathon:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline- reader/lca...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline- reader/lcacgebkomahcbghabmikokgjkflmlko)

<comment><USER52> I tried it but it didn't work very well for me. It tries to do some readability-esque stuff and doesn't do a very good job. I'd rather just have the coloring with the rest of the page as -is, which is what my extension does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> A big pet peeve of mine has been the trend to forgo black fonts for lower contrast grey, and it appears this developer is doing that as well (#333 instead of #000 when "Off" is selected). My hunch is that low contrast text (I've even seen medium grey on light grey!) comes from designing on a fantastic display with 100%+ color gamut and great accuracy and viewing angles. Take a phone/tablet/laptop with an average (lousy) LCD into a brightly lit room (or God forbid, outside) and the contrast goes in the toilet. Is black on white that hard?

The other problem I see (mostly on Chrome) is that headings are anti-aliased, but the body text is not. The difference is subtle, but still noticeable.

</comment><comment><USER55> When speed reading, this doesn't seem particularly effective. Perhaps a dot at the end of the line with a particular color that corresponds to a dot of the same color preceding the following line would be better for those who minimize eye movements.

</comment><comment><USER56> Installed, tested with a couple of articles. It does the job it claims to do.

A few things: it would be nice to be able to configure the plugin to limit the color variations. I'd like to try with only 2 colors and with less drastic contrasts. I suspect that only a slight transition between two close colors would already be helpful enough for me.

Now, I'm afraid to get used to the crutch and find it harder to read books after. After using vim to edit almost anything, I have developed the bad habit of pressing ctrl-[ to go in normal mode any time I'm in some text editor, be it in the browser, email client, word processor, whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> We absolutely plan to make configurable versions available—this is just the first iteration. As for your concern about extended use: the only thing we've heard so far is the precise opposite. People have contacted us to say that they experience a "training effect", so to speak. Apparently reading with the color gradient helps them read in black for some period after. Would love to know how it works for you—feel free to contact through the email address on the website!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I find myself selecting text every now and then to make it easier to read. On the examples on BeeLineReader's website, I was surprised I didn't have to select text to read it.

The examples in the bottom of the page really helped me realize how much this helps. Seriously, I read those paragraphs with the "Bright" theme and then I read them with BeeLineReader disabled ("Off") and I could notice my brain working harder.

I realize it looks ugly as other commenters have posted before, there's probably another method that doesn't make the text look so "ugly".

</comment><comment><USER58> That page physically hurts my eyes to read.

<comment><USER59> Anecdotal, but I also got started to get a headache reading that page. Had to close it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I would pay to get a PDF version of this. I read PDF documents all the time.

<comment><USER61> This. I am a lawyer. I read hundreds of lines of dense fine print every day. It is quite possibly the worst part of my job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Interesting concept. Do they have a research paper out describing the results in more detail?

A couple of problems: 1) beelining doesn't work well with links in text 2) Doesn't work on Hacker News at all.

<comment><USER63> I tried it on HN as well and the same issue. Otherwise looks as a great idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> BIG thanks for not lying to me after I didn't perform any better reading the colored text. I would definitely consider showing the colored text first for some others, and second for others. Once I knew that you were going to ask questions about the text, I became more attentive. Nonetheless, I tried to read as if I didn't know there would be questions afterwards in hopes of not skewing the results.

Once again, thanks for being honest in your test and not convincing me to use something that might not actually help me.

</comment><comment><USER65> Any plans to make this available as a plugin for ebook readers?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're in early-stage talks with some companies in the ebook space—DRM obviously forces us to deal with the owners of various walled gardens. We'd love to find a popular, DRM-free, ebook platform. Suggestions welcome!

<comment><USER66> Is this based on open research or is the idea of gradients over text itself the patent-pending invention?

I'd love to integrate this with my iOS speed-reading app ([http://velocireaderapp.com](http://velocireaderapp.com)). Any interest in collaborating on a spin-off iOS app, to read, say, DRM-free ePubs? My contact info is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> 2 Suggestions:

1\. It'd be _very_ nice if you had a version that tweaks text colors and doesn't touch anything else, i.e. just like on the demo page. When I tested your bookmarklet and it tore up the page I thought something was broken. I only found out that it uses readability because I started digging when it 'broke', you never mention 'readability' in your copy.

2\. People will want it enabled by default. You can't do that if you use readability.

<comment><USER68> For your first suggestion, I dusted off some old code and modified it slightly:

[http://pastebin.com/qV8fU1a4](http://pastebin.com/qV8fU1a4)

It should keep the layout as is, while only adding color, but I have only tested it on wikipedia. The color period is wrong, but it will show you some approximation of how sites will look with a non-interrupting beeline bookmarklet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I find it awful, as my eyes keep jumping to the color changes, assuming them to indicate some kind of emphasis. Then I have to stop and go, "No, that's not a particularly important word, it's just the Time Cube style they're pushing."

Looking at the text on their site, I suspect (aside from issues like dyslexia) that the real problem is that a lot of people are reading text that's too small and probably has overly-wide lines.

</comment><comment><USER70> I tried it out for awhile, and it did seem to help me read faster, but I felt like my brain was been strained. If I started doing this all the time, I'm wondering if my brain would freak out reading regular black on white text.

I'm wondering if just adding reference points along the margin or between lines could accomplish the same thing without having to change the text color. Something similar to the tick marks along a graph axis.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is surprisingly effective and awesome.

I created a (very hacky) style sheet to do this in calibre: [https://gist.github.com/osuushi/6456804](https://gist.github.com/osuushi/6456804) . It gets a bit out of alignment when a paragraph wraps to a new column or page, but over all it gets the job done.

Edit: I fixed it to do one color transition per line, like the original.

</comment><comment><USER72> One tiny bug: in the survey after the reading challenge, I was unable to change the number of hours I read per day. I tried to enter 1.5, but it won't take the decimal and I was unable to backspace to delete the 5.

Overall, a very cool idea, I was surprised to find that I read faster. It said only 3% faster, but I searched for an event mentioned in the first set of text which slowed me down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It's not just about speed, it's about reading ease too. We hear great things from people who read while on public transit. All the movement makes line transitions (and staying on the same line in general) more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> WOW, I just tried this on some text and although I think I'd need some more objective tests, it FEELS faster, like significantly so.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've just learned something about how my own vision works.

Apparently, when I'm reading on screen, somewhere towards the middle of the line, I switch my focus from my left eye to my right. This makes it obvious, because with the color at the end of the line, I switch too soon, and miss the third of the line in the middle.

Possibly this is a consequence of wearing glasses.

</comment><comment><USER75> I really enjoy using this. While people seem to dislike the red and blue default, I enjoy it. I am not a big fan of the colors working together but I feel like it works the best for it's intended functionality of the choices you made available. I think this might make reading some things considerably more enjoyable for me. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER76> Also check out [http://www.spreeder.com](http://www.spreeder.com)

A different approach but also bookmarklet

<comment><USER77> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> This has been around for a little while, hasn't it? Like, a year or two at least? I'm reasonably sure I've seen this website before...

Not to say it's not interesting / not a valuable submission. I love the idea, and it seems like it might help me read faster, which is always cool. Just wondering if my memory is correct.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good memory—we have been around for a little while. I waited to do a Show HN until we got the website revamped earlier this summer. The web work was done by a couple of freelancers that I met through a HN freelance post, as it happens. The HN community is awesome, and it's great to bring it full circle!

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Hmmm. Is it possible to try this: Make a version that creates a black to grey gradient for every sentence. The beginning of every sentence starts out black and gradually turns grey at the end of the sentence. Then try it switched. Make it start grey and turn black. Test both.

Just wondering what the result would be. Out of curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER80> Personally, I am not a fan of this "reader". The changing color is a distraction to my reading experience. The scheme I found the least distracting was the "Gray" scheme. But, I am not someone who would use it. Interesting concept though - I hadn't thought about it earlier.

PS - I am a voracious reader.

<comment><USER81> I completely agree. I tried the test in dark and then grayscale, neither time was an improvement over black text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I was really surprised to find myself enjoying using this. Great work! Taking the test really emphasised that it's not only faster, it's also "easier" to read. I used the Dark colour scheme, as it was less distracting than the bright default one for me.

</comment><comment><USER83> I learned to speed read years ago, and this breaks that for me. One of the keys with speed reading is that you don't read every single word. With this I was reading every word. It felt slower and tiring.

The test said that it did not improve my reading but didn't say why.

<comment> qu4z-2 I wonder if the test tells you when you read faster without it. Subjectively I feel that I did, but the test just returned "No improvement with BeeLineReader"

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I suggest avoiding bright blue in your default colour scheme for beelinereader.

The reason is because it matches the default colour for links. I wouldn't be surprised if many people tend to read linked text a bit differently.

Have you thought about using colours like orange, green, purple?

</comment><comment><USER85> I did History, used Bright, and got a 43% improvement.

Then I got suspicious. I thought that I was subconsciously affecting my own behavior. (Anticipating a test, for instance. Expecting Beeline to speed up my reading, for instance.)

So I did Nature, used Bright, and got no improvement.

...I need a better blind.

</comment><comment><USER86> Could work. Look at how kids read initally, they use a ruler to keep track of what line they are at. Even some teenagers do this or adults with dyslexia.

I wonder if it would hamper your normal reading abilities if you start reading like this most of the time from young age.

</comment><comment><USER87> Colored text is often associated with links in the context of HTML...what about striped backgrounds, as is commonly used for table rows?

[http://alistapart.com/article/zebratables](http://alistapart.com/article/zebratables)

</comment><comment><USER88> I don't know about you, but I'm really reading faster. And that's because I'm only reading the red text. I just realized I skipped all the blue content, and don't have a clue if anything useful was written there.

</comment><comment><USER89> I like this a lot, but unfortunately going to various news sites (NY Times, Slashdot, etc) it seems like the bookmarklet failed or complained it wasn't designed for the home page (in cases where it wasn't a home page).

</comment><comment><USER90> I find it counterintuitive that this helped experienced readers more. It didn't make a difference for me in their test, and I read constantly. I would suspect this line coloring would help a less experienced reader more.

</comment><comment><USER91> I... I wasn't aware this was a problem.

Huh.

<comment><USER12> It is a problem, especially for beginning readers who struggle to comprehend as they're reading and don't have the 'bandwidth' to parse the incorrect sentence and find their place in the text on the fly. Stressful situations (tests, public reading in front of the class, etc) likely make this worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Well, this looks interesting, but doesn't work with HTTPS. Which is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER93> Add underline to links (many sites identify them only by color, link "disappears" with beeline).

Awesome marklet! Is the source available? I'd be happy to fix this issue up myself if it's in VCS somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER81> I tried their test and had no improvement in reading speed. I also use my mouse to read on a desktop (highlight end of one line and start of the next) as I go, so I think this product is just not made for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ever try reading on a phone/tablet while riding on a subway car? Might be worth it there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> For some reason i found myself calculating the patterns of blue, red and black and if words like 'the' 'and' always fall on black or red highlights. I guess that slowed me down big time.

</comment><comment><USER95> I could see this working, I tend to read slower with black text maybe because I lose track of where I am during the page. The downside is this hurts my eyes and makes me dizzy because of my computer screen.

</comment><comment><USER96> It's funny that so many commenters are complaining about the lack of a linked study. It's as if people are incapable of independently analyzing the claims and reaching their own conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER40> Easier to read line by line, perhaps. But certainly much harder to skim. If you wanted to skim a paragraph at a time as I often do, the artificial emphasis created by the coloring throws you off.

</comment><comment><USER97> well, it significantly mangles things on The Guardian. basically, all of the little "NSA" tags in this article: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/governm...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government- betrayed-internet-nsa-spying)

get wiped out, making the text difficult to understand.

Also, be careful to wait for it to work. I didn't think it worked and clicked it a second time. I ended up with funfetti colors, not smooth gradients.

<comment><USER98> Also doesn't work on the NY Times. For example, none of this article's text displays after clicking the bookmarklet: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/americans-go-to- gre...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/americans-go-to-great- lengths-to-mask-their-web-travels-survey-finds/?ref=technology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I was skeptical, I took the test, it said I was 23% faster on the fiction, so as much as I think it looks a little ugly, if it really is that much faster, then it's worth it and clever.

</comment><comment><USER100> Have anyone viewed the generated DOM tree? It looks like every single letter has a tag around it, which will make it painfully slow on older computers if you have a pretty long blog post.

<comment><USER101> It already makes their homepage very slow on my Surface RT. Colors appear only after several seconds and IE 11 is asking if it should continue or stop the long-running script all the time.

I like the effect, though. I hope they can optimize it technically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> It's iOS 7 for text!

Seriously though, it would be interesting to see this as a feature in new e-readers. I have a feeling that if the e-ink could support it, the effect could be better than books.

</comment><comment><USER48> I would like to see a version that does selective highlighting. So it would highlight verbs and nouns, maybe bold famous names and dates, and gray out slightly transition words.

</comment><comment><USER103> Does the research provide any info about fatigue after using it?

</comment><comment><USER104> Can I make the obvious comment: it's not how fast you read text, but what text you choose to read.

Reading super fast over the National Inquirer is not likely to be an overall win.

</comment><comment><USER105> There's one problem I have with it. This afternoon it triggered a migraine.

I just came back just now, just in case it was a co-incidence, and yep, it was not a co-incidence.

<comment><USER106> Me too, maybe it is the color (blue / red contrast), I know that ~black background with ~white text is an instant trigger for me, always immediately close the tab when I visit such website. Do you see the words kind of "vibrating" when it triggered your migraine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Just a counterpoint to all the negativity: The increase in speed was instantly obvious for me. Will be giving this a try for a few weeks at least.

<comment><USER108> For me as well. I'm actually very surprised by all the negative reactions.

FWIW, when I looked the demo, I thought to myself, "Ok, I'm going to try to read this quickly." What was so impressive was how _easy_ that was to do. Total comprehension, less eye strain. Sold.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the positive feedback—glad to hear that it works for you! Follow us on twitter to keep apprised of new content/product integrations. There are a couple deals in the works now.

<comment><USER107> Oh you're the creator? cool. A word of advice: work out a way to sell this to doctors and other people who need to keep appraised of massive amounts of info. They have the money and the motivation to be your primary customer base.

<comment><USER109> He is. Also, I'm his friend and the original coder of the bookmarklets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> It's very distracting for me personally. I'd prefer a subtle gradient on the margin to help me keep track of the area where I'm at.

</comment><comment><USER111> Is it just me or is anybody else thinking that just making lines alternate between colors (think of tables) would do a better job.

Why do we need fancy gradients?

</comment><comment><USER112> I'll be testing this with different color schemes, but yeah, works!

Addition: for eink readers, would underline or italics work in place of color gradient?

<comment><USER113> You could accomplish something like this the same way with a "green bar"[1] style of background. That is, the background of every two (or three... I think two would be better but you could test it) lines having a light green (or blue, or since you mentioned eInk, grey) background and then two lines with a normal white background.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_printer#Paper_.28forms.29_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_printer#Paper_.28forms.29_handling) "The paper was usually perforated to tear into cut sheets if desired and was commonly printed with alternating white and light-green areas, _allowing the reader to easily follow a line of text across the page_. This was the iconic 'green bar' form that dominated the early computer age. " (emphasis mine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an academic who has to give a lot of conference papers I bet this would be great for reading off an iPad or laptop without losing my spot.

</comment><comment><USER114> Aside from the bookmarklet, I love it. Without an extension, though, I don't see myself using it. Hopefully we'll see one soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, we're working on it. We have a couple of deals in the works, and we are hoping to get on major platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Interesting. Line skipping is by far the most annoying problem that I face when I have to read after a long day; especially on a screen.

</comment><comment><USER116> Hideous, but I'll be damned if it didn't allow me to read that page extremely fast. Wonder where this could be used...

</comment><comment><USER117> Not worth the trade-off, if you ask me. I would never publish something that looks like this. It is very distracting to me.

<comment><USER118> It's probably not a technology to be used by publishers. It seems like more of a reader-level technology. A browser or ebook reader/app feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> The examples are a bit short (line length). It seems to be more useful with longer lines, and confusing with short lines.

</comment><comment><USER120> I remember seeing this at the Box Hackathon a year ago but couldn't find it online. Thought it was neat. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER121> It doesn't make me read any faster and I have the feeling I pay less attention to the content. Am I the only one?

</comment><comment><USER122> As an author/programmer I would love to see a LaTeX implementation... (If only there were more time in the day)

</comment><comment><USER123> Let's say it this way: If you actually profit from a 20% increase in reading speed, then you read way too much.

</comment><comment><USER124> Totally reminds me of the days when Yahoo messenger was used, and they had that fading, gradient text. Super cool.

</comment><comment><USER125> Nice! Can BeeLine be made to work with MagicScroll? Currenly if i click one bookmarklet the other one breaks.

<comment><USER126> I created MagicScroll.

BeeLine doesn't detect line breaks.

Instead it puts a span around every character and sets its color manually.

Anyway the individual spans cause issues for MagicScroll but it should be relatively easy to retrofit MagicScroll to add the beeline gradient to each line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> Very interesting. Gave it a bit of a test run and it felt good. I'm definitely going to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER128> I'd be interested in something like this being used in a e-reader app like Kindle or Aldiko

<comment><AUTHOR> We're talking with Amazon, and we'll get in touch with Aldiko! Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Love it.. Never install extensions, but will install this one.

Not usable for sites, but very much so for articles

</comment><comment><USER130> This actually strains my eyes quite a bit, but that's just 1 personal sample.

</comment><comment><USER131> I tried it and it actually felt quite easier to follow along a line of text.

</comment><comment><USER132> I wonder whether this has an effect on eyestrain or reading longevity.

</comment><comment><USER133> Red & Blue are sure good for your eyes! Professionals at work.

</comment><comment><USER134> Wow why don't they use this idea in printed books as well?!

</comment><comment><USER135> Is there any scientific evidence supporting this?

</comment><comment><USER136> Note to author: does not work on medium.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks—the bookmarklet is just a first step. We are looking forward to integrating with lots of platforms, including medium.com, which we read all the time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> I actually read everything on that page.

</comment><comment><USER138> can i get this as a firefox extension?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on native integrations, and we realize the bookmarklet is a somewhat kludgy first step. Thanks for your interest!

<comment><USER139> I can't believe it but it is faster and more enjoyable to read with the gradients. I can't get the bookmark to work with firefox. Extension would be great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER140> Where is the link to the evidence?

</comment><comment><USER141> Works for me. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER142> Wow! thats so cool!

<comment><USER143> Very cool. I just wish they called this "The Reading Rainbow" ;).

<comment><AUTHOR> The original name was Read the Rainbow. Turns out there are still trademarks on Reading Rainbow (also, advisers said the name should communicate the benefit, not the appearance), so we changed it. How funny that your first inclination was the same as mine!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> Ok, this is awesome

</comment><comment><USER145> Wow.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think it's a great idea. Every technical book should start using it immediately. There's nothing more depressing than cracking opening a computer book that 500 pages of block typing. I've never known how you guys get through some of those phone books?

It might be great for some fiction?

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems like most technical books are filled with a lot of extraneous material. Could you imagine an author who used a certain color, like green to highlight the important sentences?

</comment><comment><USER146> I see an iOS app, but nothing for BlackBerry 10 users. Please consider us as well. Thanks!</comment>


A Readable Specification of TLS 1.3 - <AUTHOR> https://davidwong.fr/tls13/ <comment><USER2> To be clear, it doesn't look like this is written any different from the actual RFC, just formatted and organized more nicely.

For actually understanding the RFCs, I've found it useful to crack open wireshark and then look at an actual TLS connection, and then cross reference the RFC to figure out what's going on. It makes everything more concrete in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> "The Illustrated TLS 1.3 Connection" [https://tls13.ulfheim.net/](https://tls13.ulfheim.net/) does this in web page form which saves you the effort to go make a connection and try to puzzle it out as an introduction, but your process is fine too -- especially when debugging a concrete problem.

<comment><USER4> If you want to augment that website, the captures used to generate it are available, so you can reference them in Wireshark as wekk [https://github.com/syncsynchalt/illustrated- tls13/tree/maste...](https://github.com/syncsynchalt/illustrated- tls13/tree/master/captures)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this is something you are interested in, but you are looking for a slightly higher-level intro to TLS, albeit TLS 1.2, I highly recommend reading through [http://blog.fourthbit.com/2014/12/23/traffic-analysis-of- an-...](http://blog.fourthbit.com/2014/12/23/traffic-analysis-of-an-ssl-slash- tls-session).

<comment><USER3> Although TLS 1.3 deliberately looks like TLS 1.2 (eerily like it in "compatibility mode" because that's designed to cause stupid middleboxes to not even realise it's a new protocol) the fundamentals have changed, so this isn't very useful.

Most importantly TLS 1.3 _always_ starts by the two parties setting up a secure encrypted connection, and only then is any effort expended on trying to figure out who anybody is, whereas in earlier versions these elements happen somewhat simultaneously.

A TLS 1.0 guide was pretty helpful in understanding TLS 1.2, but a TLS 1.2 guide is probably just misleading for TLS 1.3

<comment><USER6> _Most importantly TLS 1.3 _always_ starts by the two parties setting up a secure encrypted connection, and only then is any effort expended on trying to figure out who anybody is_

I wonder what the motivation behind that was --- I'm no cryptographer, but setting up what is effectively an anonymous (EC)DH session first seems to provide no extra protection from an active MITM because it's unauthenticated. The only other protocol I've seen do this is obfuscated BitTorrent, using a deliberately short keylength and RC4, where the goal was not protection from MITM but to resist traffic analysis and blocking by making essentially _all_ of the traffic look completely random. Meanwhile, TLS 1.3 still retains the plaintext record headers and framing from previous versions.

(One thing that I've always wondered about and never gotten a good answer is the fact that as far back as SSL 2.0, and presumably 1.0, there seemed to be no attempt to make the _whole_ protocol encrypted, but instead the messages were very identifiable. Why not? One would think that a protocol designed to conceal data should itself be hard to distinguish from random noise.)

<comment><USER7> > I wonder what the motivation behind that was

Middleboxes.

While the Internet is supposed to be end-to-end, there's no shortage of intermediate systems that pretend to understand the upper-layer protocols being carried, and that act on that what they think they see. Every single change to the visible parts of a protocol, no matter how small, risks breaking when one of these observers are present. TLS has been hit particularly hard by that; TLS 1.3 was delayed for many months while the protocol designers tried to figure out how to change the protocol without it being rejected by these interlopers. In the end, the solution was to make all TLS 1.3 connections pretend to be TLS 1.2 session resumption connections, and hide the real protocol negotiation within the encrypted session.

> setting up what is effectively an anonymous (EC)DH session first seems to > provide no extra protection from an active MITM because it's unauthenticated

It's actually authenticated with the server certificate (and client certificate if one is being used); the authentication covers the whole protocol negotiation.

Since with active MITM the intermediate box has to be one of the ends of each half of the connection (otherwise the authentication will fail since the ECDH keys won't match), the protocol negotiation protects against misunderstandings: if the MITM box does not understand TLS 1.3 (or any future version), it will negotiate TLS 1.2, instead of getting confused by all the changes to the protocol in TLS 1.3.

> as far back as SSL 2.0, and presumably 1.0, there seemed to be no attempt to > make the whole protocol encrypted

The goal back then was to protect the data, not the metadata. Only recently have the bad experiences with protocol ossification caused by broken middleboxes led protocol designers to also protect as much as possible of the metadata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll never understand why rfc's, arguably the underpinnings of internet technology, are styled to appear as TYPEWRITTEN pages in HTML. Seriously. Literal pages of typewritten text, on the web.

I mean, they take significant effort to devise these standards and write them up, presumably with modern tools, AND THEN force weird typewriter CSS upon them? It looks awful. I can't understand it.

<comment><USER9> I assume this is because they're published as plain text files. The HTML is styled to look the same as the plain text versions, including diagrams made assuming a fixed-width font.

[https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt](https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt)

Plain ASCII text is a very compatible format, and probably will be for a very long time. For example, if you were to pipe this to a TCP socket on modern printer on port 9100 unchanged, it'll likely print out roughly correct.

<comment><USER8> OK, I see, but they provide three different formats: ASCII, PDF, and HTML.

If there's a zombie apocalypse and we end up raiding the computer history museum for 80 column line-printers, sure, it makes sense to select the ASCII version to make print outs so that we could rebuild the internet.

But for the HTML version? Come on! Freshen it up a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this is a good reference.</comment>