Ask HN: How do you deal with cold fingertips when you code?

I tried googling for this but got mixed results. Shouldn't the wrists be touching/resting on the desk (the piece of desk between the keyboard and me) or are they suppose to float?

If you're going to deliberately make your computer run full pelt for the surplus heat, you might as well do something useful with it - eg, you could run Folding@Home or some BOINC project, burn those cycles for a good cause.

Or, if you'd rather get something out of it for yourself, you could mine cryptocurrency.

Take less adderall.

I have built a tent for my hands and laptop keyboard that works well for me in cooler rooms.

It sounds like room temperature doesn't impact you you, Filthy_casual, much, so I'm not sure how much this will help you. I am posting mainly for others that may be curious.

I've built these tents out of a number of things, but most commonly it's a t-shirt with 2 coffee mugs on either side to prop it a little. Janky? yes. Effective for me? yes.

I dislike typing with gloves, as my accuracy drops quite a bit. Fingerless gloves don't keep my hands warm. I dislike heating the air in a large room to heat my hands, and I have annoying preference for symmetry on my body that is hard to achieve without two heaters.

Hello, fellow Reynaud Syndrome sufferer!

Lots of unhelpful advice in other posts: gloves don't work, because heat is brought to your hands by blood flow. Blood flow is cut off, which is why they are cold in the first place. Exercise doesn't really help, because it elevates your core temperature which your body dissipates by circulating to your limbs... which isn't happening. People won't understand what it's like to be painfully cold in a perfectly normal room.

For immediate fixes: if your skin goes dead white and you lose feeling, immediately do something to warm it up.

http://fupjack.tumblr.com/post/108687833029/note-to-self-get...

Finding a bathroom and running warm water over my hands often fixes it, and certainly feels better - though it can be painful as the numbness wears off. You need an external heat source because your body can't do it on its own.

If your flesh goes blueish-purple, warm it IMMEDIATELY. Extended periods without blood will kill cells and you'll get the equivalent of frostbite and gangrene.

In the long term: It's a spasmodic overreaction to cold, so avoid cold sources. i.e. it can be triggered by air conditioning blowing on you, holding food from the freezer, and so on. I wear a hat into our server room at work for just this reason.

Stress level is related, so exercise may help ... indirectly. I've lost 40 pounds over the past year and a half and walk several miles a day. It has been good for my physical condition and stress, but it doesn't seem to have helped Reynaud's.

It can help to have significantly warm clothing to keep it from triggering; I wear Minus33 undershirts and they help. My wife found a woman who had Reynaud Syndrome who makes her own wool mittens to help, and bought me a pair. (I feel like I have giant fuzzy flippers, but they work.)

I have not tried medication for it; can't tell you if it's worth it.

On the plus side, if you don't like feeling too warm... it may never happen to you again. I felt overheated exactly once this past summer, and my house did not have air conditioning.