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Comment by encom | Hacker News Reader

Author never explains what soroban is or how it works, so I really have no idea what's going on here.

They show an image of it, it's that vertical abacus. They say it's popular in Japan. They have made a digital version of it, used a big keyboard as input, and gamified the practice. They also record how fast they can do calculations and stuff like this.

The point is for the author to understand how they learn (how many things become automatic in his brain and when, mental chunk formation, when performance plateaus). They just use the Japanese abacus as an excuse to do it.

You didn't click all the details? The first section describes it in depth.

Aha, I thought they were just bullet points. Terrible UI!

Thank you! I didn’t realize those were expandable until I read your comment.

The black triangle bullets are expandable, folks, and worth expanding.

Thank you. I went back and... never would have guessed in a million years they were expandable.

They just look like summary bullets.

Why would anyone write an article where the first paragraphs were collapsed anyways...? But then later paragraphs are expanded, so you think that's where the article starts?

This may actually win the award for worst UX I've seen this year. Because it never gives any indication there's any UX at all. Just, wow.

thanks, I thought I was just dumb

Click on the bullet points. They expand.

Maybe just happy?

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