Live data from Hacker News

Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

lithub.com

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#31

This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.

You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work. After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

How do you personally find the balance between blue light keeping you awake verse mental stimulation keeping you awake? I don't do any math or coding in the ~2 hours before bed, as a general rule.

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#33
Interesting however there is data going back to the 1920's about changing lighting at work (Taylor I think) that shows that the very fact of changing light levels improved output.

However when the changed the lighting levels back output improved again. It looks to me this is based on poorly designed studies, the including of trigger words like "kids" "iPad" is a bit of a red flag.

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#34

This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.

You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work. After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

Your solution to this is just to look at the world through rose tinted glasses?

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#35
Here are links to more concrete studies concerning this effect.

Action spectrum for melatonin regulation in humans: evidence for a novel circadian photoreceptor. Brainard et al. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/21/16/6405.full.pdf

Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock. Berson et al. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/295/5557/1070.ful...

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#36

This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.

Additionally Windows 10 has also introduced this option in Display Settings -> nightlight

ChromeOS supports this as well.

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work. After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

Your solution to this is just to look at the world through rose tinted glasses?

I got a pair of glass that filter some of the blue light for computer screens, it just add a very light brown edge to the colors.

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#38

Interesting however there is data going back to the 1920's about changing lighting at work (Taylor I think) that shows that the very fact of changing light levels improved output. However when the changed the lighting levels back output improved again. It looks to me this is based on poorly designed studies, the including of trigger words like "kids" "iPad" is a bit of a red flag.

There are a whole bunch of effects that you tend to get when conditions change. Same thing happens in traffic where (say) a set of traffic lights goes out, and suddenly there are fewer accidents. Of course, this is because the lights being out puts everyone on their best behaviour and the accident rate goes back up as people get used to it.

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#39

Interesting however there is data going back to the 1920's about changing lighting at work (Taylor I think) that shows that the very fact of changing light levels improved output. However when the changed the lighting levels back output improved again. It looks to me this is based on poorly designed studies, the including of trigger words like "kids" "iPad" is a bit of a red flag.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

Re: Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work. After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

Your solution to this is just to look at the world through rose tinted glasses?

the GP solution puzzles me too. i don't want this to be the solution. i wear glasses and my eyes are already damaged and now i need to filter out the color blue? what about we start making better monitors and screens instead?
Post reply on HN