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Comment by srigi | Hacker News Reader

With W10 you must enable location service to enable "sunset to sunrise". If you keep LS disabled you can only mechanically set up & down times, which slowly drifts by seasons.

With f.lux you can insert your location manually.

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Frankly: why would you want to follow sunset to sunrise? That's clever and all, but not useful. What matters is your sleep schedule; just because the sun doesn't set until after 10pm doesn't mean you monitor needs to be on it's bluest setting until then; similarly, even when the sun sets at 1630, I really don't need my monitors to start putting me to sleep yet.

And in general, if I need to wake up early, I'd rather the monitors be at their bluest immediately, and not wait until sunrise.

A fixed schedule is better than the fancy sunset times.

It matters if you are in places with windows and/or tend to take breaks from your computer - in general, you'd want the "white" on your computer to be comparable to white materials in your surroundings, or the colors will be weird. There's no point making your computer already "red" if your room is lit by sunlight.

having used these programs for many years: the color casts caused by f.lux don't typically match surrounding light, even when everything switches roughly simultaneously (which is rare, because of all kinds of artificial sources that are on/off unpredictably to f.lux). I regularly set my night schedule well in advance of sunset, and it's not a problem; you always keep screen out of direct sunlight, and so far I've also managed to avoid direct sunlight in the visual vicinity simply because the contrast is too great. And that means that even in well-lit rooms, it's fine to have a screen slowly turn red. While it takes some getting used to - the same can be said of f.lux in general.

To each their own of course - if it bothers you, don't do that ;-). But from personal experience I can assure you that not everyone minds a reddish screen before sunset (honestly, many visitors don't even notice unless there's some other screen right next to it).

What is the difference? You're still revealing where you are--although of course if you enter it manually you can enter random coordinates in the same timezone.

The difference is giving it to the F.lux team specifically vs giving it to MS and other supported programs on your PC.

I'd rather just give it to F.lux. MS will use it to sell me Bing search results.

Ah, ok, it's a global setting.

I thought it was something like when websites ask for your location temporarely.

In the case of redshift, the location is only used locally so it's not sent to anyone. The concept of having to send a company your location information just to dim your screen strikes me as insane.

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