Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a way to tell if an LED bulb doesn't flicker
Slow-motion video recording.
Technically yes, but unfortunately that means purchasing the bulb beforehand
Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
201–210 of 232 posts
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#202I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…
This is my dream when I own my own home. I want high CRI LEDs with tunable colour temperature. Automated to track roughly the colour temperature of the outside environement. It would be great for those dark British winters
If suffer from seasonal depression, I’d suggest that a couple lightbulbs (household size dependent) and some electrical work are well worth your time, even as a renter. Do it now, while you’re able to take on projects.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#203Dark mode is actually bad for your eyes as it causes more strain. Reading white letters on a black back ground is harder than reading black letters on a white background. F.lux and similar software are a better alternative as they just increase the warmth of the screen, which, at least for me, eliminates that feeling of eye pain when computing at night.
Does this apply to letters of different colors? (Non-white letters on darker backgrounds?)
Yes, although there is a trade-off with respect to the fact that the more vibrant you want your colors to be, the more brightness they generally require (starting from dark colors), which may result in less contrast on a white vs. a black background. On a white background you therefore want to stay with muted/dark text colors.
Another consideration is that screen brightness should roughly correspond to the ambient brightness of the environment. Unless you work in the dark, that basically requires a light background.
Vibrant text colors on a dark background look attractive (like neon signs), but aren’t very ergonomic in the long run.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#204At the risk of sparking some kind of Apple flame war: I went to the optometrist recently and my vision had abruptly tanked, I have a much stronger prescription than a year ago. “Have you been pulling long screen hours?” “Yeah. Very long.” “Well that’s why.” “Outside of cutting screen hours, is there anything else I can do?” “Get the highest DPI display you can afford and crank up the font size. Won’t help much, but i…
As an optometrist with a deep knowledge on this subject, let me first say, the established edifice of eye care and laser eye surgery is an abomination that ruins lives. The advice your optometrist gave you is the information they were indoctrinated with and sadly, it's erroneous. What follows is my best synopsis on what is wrong with the industry, what causes worsening vision, and what you can do to resolve your visi…
Wow, it's the first time ever I see a confirmation that the weird approach I followed (mostly due to mistrust and weird teen ideas that the body might adapt) and worked on me has scientific bases and could work for others too and from an optometrist!
TYSM for speaking out!!!
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can also do eye exercises, like going between focusing on something close, eg a finger, and focusing on something far away.
I try to walk around every 15 30 minutes and stuff. My workflow is especially dangerous in this regard because I do almost everything in the terminal so it’s especially easy to get sucked in. I’ve known sightless hackers who were awesome, it’s definitely not game over, but it also definitely slows you down. For most hackers our eyes and the musculature starting all the way back in your lower spine through to your fin…
> My workflow is especially dangerous in this regard because I do almost everything in the terminal so it’s especially easy to get sucked in.
As someone who also mostly works in the terminal and who has stopped wearing glasses thanks to a weird approach, try a pure white or slightly yellowish background with a black font in the daytime.
Most terminal users will find that weird, but among other weird things I tried it worked wonders for me!
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#206That's an article? A rehash of a handful of common ideas with no relation to the title and no further exposition, let alone some support for the ideas? How does something so empty get upvoted so quickly? Did brightness and dark mode become some kind of belief system?
People upvote headlines these days (as a form of agreement) rather than articles. But you're right. This is on the extreme low end in terms of details.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#207I have worked at home my whole career. It was life changing when I discovered I could aim several LED shop lights at my ceilings (90,000 lumens total, in a vaulted living room) to create a summer day indoors, even on the dimmest cloudiest winter day. When I remodeled my new home, I put 3 dimmable LED light strips around each ceiling, hidden above molding, so every ceiling is effectively a diffuse but high lumen light…
This is called Cove Lighting for anyone wanting to research this.
I'm remodeling a 12'x12' bedroom to be my office and lighting is a huge part of my plan. I'll do cove lighting like this using CRI 95+ LED strips dimmable ~500lumen/ft either 4000K or 5000K. Haven't decided on the color temp. You lose a lot of CRI going to a temp adjustable strip.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't link them because I don't want to get flagged for spam, but I really like the bulbs from cloudfree[dot]shop. They come pre-flashed with Tasmota and take <5 minutes to set up, then they can be controlled directly over wifi, or can easily be connected with HomeAssistant, etc. (Tasmota is open source local-only firmware, so there's no cloud or anything to worry about.) My only complaint is that they're not super…
Is this a self promotion?
No, I'm just a satisfied customer.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even today, as good as LEDs have gotten, their color rendering is still noticeably worse than incandescents. (The highest scores are around 80-90 CRI, an old-fashioned bulb is the standard at 100.) This is false. Good quality LEDs are >90 CRI, and the higher end ones are 95+. These are not common because everyone is busy selling/buying the cheapest crap they can make/get, but they're definitely not hard to get eith…
> This is false. > Good quality LEDs are >90 CRI, and the higher end ones are 95+. High CRI is fine, but it's not something we should be completely satisfied with: > R_a is the average value of R1–R8; other values from R9 to R15 are not used in the calculation of R_a, including R9 "saturated red", R13 "skin color (light)", and R15 "skin color (medium)", which are all difficult colors to faithfully reproduce. R9 is a…
Yep. Take a look at the datasheet for the Bridgelux Thrive chips - they have a plot of intensity/wavelength of the LEDs compared to a black body radiator, it's pretty much identical even deep into the reds. Of course, that means it is also very close to 100 on all the R numbers.
Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an optometrist with a deep knowledge on this subject, let me first say, the established edifice of eye care and laser eye surgery is an abomination that ruins lives. The advice your optometrist gave you is the information they were indoctrinated with and sadly, it's erroneous. What follows is my best synopsis on what is wrong with the industry, what causes worsening vision, and what you can do to resolve your visi…
I’ll agree with the siblings that you’ve made more claims than provided footnotes, but I will also clarify that I left something out (I figured it was assumed) in the dialog I described. My optometrist did in fact put having a current prescription as the #1 thing. I’m a lazy guy in some ways but I value what eyesight I’ve got so I go every year on the dot to get my prescription measured by competent professionals. I…
It's not bad advice to make font sizes larger. You should also be using something like F.lux or night mode all the time. Yellow light is much less straining on the eyes than white or blue light.
Resolution really doesn't matter much when it comes to strain. I have a 2011 2560x1440 27" monitor that I've always used large font on. What's important is being able to see without straining and a larger UI helps. Having higher resolutions is nice but largely unecessary. Blur is not going to happen from making things larger if you do it right. Doing it right means that you shouldn't be changing the actual output resolution of your OS, but rather the interface size itself. On OSX you'll want to use the HiDPI (Retina) resolution options. Enabled through this script: https://github.com/xzhih/one-key-hidpi On Windows you can just set the magnification/font size through the settings panel. This applies to any resolution display -- use the full physical resolution!!
Frame rates are actually more of a factor. 120hz+ is going to cut down on strain. Avoiding PWM [1] on phones, tablets, laptops, and monitors will also help.
But really, the gold standard is for you to wear a different set of spectacles when you do your computer work. You shouldn't need the power of your full prescription to do close up work. It's destroying your eyes.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM...