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Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

benkuhn.net

221–230 of 317 posts

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any lamp brands you can recommend that allow me to set the bulb temperature, but that don't require an internet connected hub and app on my phone? So RF or something.

I believe IKEA's smart bulbs are local only, not internet connected: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/smart-lighting-36812/ (I've been meaning to try them out but haven't done so yet, so I can't vouch for the quality in detail. Their stuff is usually solidly mid-range and very good value for money, though.)

Thanks for the tip. I am a big IKEA fan, their value for money is, as you say, good in general.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#223

> For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated] I don't know you, you make a very successful app that people really swear by. I have no qualms about people using f.lux, if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $1…

> if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $13/mo for Netflix to watch shows with multi-million dollar budgets and dedicated colorists, and you start watching Orange is the New Black and you make it yellow,

You're projecting way too much my man. What about the people with 70$ monitors using flux while coding at night to avoid fucking up their sleep cycle ?

> The best way to interpret this evidence is that blue light will not make you sleep less or experience insomnia more.

Type "blue light circadian rhythm study" on google and you basically only find studies supporting that blue light has a negative impact. I got a pair of anti blue light glasses recently and I'm 100% confident they indeed do reduce eye strain and ease falling asleep.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#224
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide specs on this system and clarification on how much use you believe was too much?

It was tens of thousands of lumens, directly next to computer for at least 8 hours a day. Beat the depression, drove me mad.

Would you have any pictures? This sounds fascinating (with the caveats you mentioned of course)

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#225
post #10
post #2

i have seen articles about excessive blue light from led bulbs being bad for your long term eyesight i wonder if this has similar problems

It can't be much worse than being under the blue sky.

Blue sky peaks between 500-550nm, this is 100nm more than LEDs, and much more diffuse.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#226
post #134

(Michael from f.lux): this kind of thing is necessary for most buildings, because otherwise people don't get a "day" signal when they spend time indoors. Most of us spend >90% of our time inside. However, we shouldn't mess with light levels like these (or even somewhat lower ones) without some limits, and the main one is some automatic timing to turn things down after it gets too late. Otherwise you will find yoursel…

Thank you for f.lux, I enjoy coming home early, being with my family then working later in the night. Having f.lux installed on my computer has improved my quality of sleep tremendously

However to tie it to the article : do you know of the variability between individuals of lighting effect on morale ? I know a lot of people getting depressed when winter comes, but it has 0 effect on me

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#227

> For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated] I don't know you, you make a very successful app that people really swear by. I have no qualms about people using f.lux, if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $1…

I am a colorist, working on a very expensive Eizo and I still have f.lux on my machine. Obviously I added exceptions for all applications that are color critical and switch it of for an hour while watching a movie late.

For me it is just a natural sign that I shouldn’t go on forever on the computer. A way to bring the outside night/day cycle onto my machine, you could say.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#229

> For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated] I don't know you, you make a very successful app that people really swear by. I have no qualms about people using f.lux, if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $1…

Well there are several topics here: first, it is not true that people thinking about visual performance will find the right schedule for non-visual (circadian, alertness). The two are simply different concentrations, and we have chosen to focus our research and work on non-visual responses.

Treating sleep-maintenance insomnia is often done by increasing light levels at night to move rhythms later, and seasonality often requires different patterns of light based on the time of year. This is one of the reasons we have been asking people not to copy what we said in 2009 - some people need more light at night during the winter, not less, and timing needs vary greatly.

Our core audience for f.lux is younger people, and on average they need less light at night - the normal distribution of chronotypes has a very long tail in the direction of night owls, and their timing tends to be most at odds with society's requirements for wake times.

So I would say the product as it is today tends to be a better fit for the night owl half of the distrubution, and not extreme early types. But our main area of study is to generalize these schedules and lighting changes to be "right" for nearly everyone. It is rather difficult work, and you have to study the effects over years.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#230

> For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated] I don't know you, you make a very successful app that people really swear by. I have no qualms about people using f.lux, if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $1…

> if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $13/mo for Netflix to watch shows with multi-million dollar budgets and dedicated colorists, and you start watching Orange is the New Black and you make it yellow, You're projecting way too much my man. What about the people with 70$ monitors using flux while coding at night to avo…

> Type "blue light circadian rhythm study" on google and you basically only find studies supporting that blue light has a negative impact.

But the moment you actually evaluate the studies, you'll find that almost all

* don't research blue light specifically, but light at all

* use unrealistic settings, like 4 to 8 hours bedtime reading (really)

* don't properly control for other known sleep affecting factors - and have small sample groups so they can't rely on the law of large numbers to solve that issue

* only measure melatonin, not actual sleep.

If you filter those out, the result ist basically zero quality studies.

I'm aware that many people swear that this works, but there really is not much scientific support for the theory.

Just for comparison: Full sunlight has up to 30000lux of blue light alone, while a very bright phone screen, set to all white, manages to output at most 300lux of blue light. There may be a real effect here, but it has to be weak, else people in scandinavia would have severe problems with their circadian rhythms.

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