Comment by davidscolgan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidscolgan | Hacker News Reader

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I once was a regular streamer on Twitch.tv and would regularly plug the use of blue light reducing tools. Another fun thing you can do is wear orange safety goggles to completely block all blue light from the room. You look pretty silly, and I'd wear them on stream sometimes. And people would always ask me, "what's with the orange goggles?" There were a few times when I'd get someone to install F.lux, they'd use it for a bit, and then turn it off, and they'd instantly get it. If you try this experiment for yourself, the difference is incredibly jarring.

If you have any trouble sleeping at night, I'd highly recommend trying one of these strategies. My orange goggles made their way into my digital nomad one bag, they were so useful for my sleep. Occasionally I'd actually sleep in them.

If you want to get really crazy, you can order a bit of a material called "rubylith" (just do a Google search for it) and put it over your laptop or phone screen. It makes things really red, but if you are just reading your Kindle books in bed it can really help prevent staying up until 2am on accident.

If you want to get really really crazy, you could stop using your computer at night and try reading (paper) books before bed.

Paper books don't have a built-in dictionary that pops up when I long-press my finger on a word :(.

My ebook reader does something like this.

Now if only they'd stop selling Kindles with awful pure white backlights. You only need it when it's dark, and when it's dark your light should be yellow/orange!

I gotta get me those goggles...

I have Kobo Aura ONE[1] and it has automatic orange backlight. I'm relatively happy with it even though the lighting is slightly uneven and has barely visible greenish hues at the corners...

[1] https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one

They are like ten bucks on Amazon. I have the Terminator UV 400 Orange model and I'm pretty happy with them. They block almost all light below 490nm.

irony == lost

So interestingly enough, wearing the orange goggles or using the rubylith on a device that lights itself can get less blue light into your eyes than reading a book with a lamp on next to you (or of course, wear the goggles with a lamp on works too). Could be a further way to fall asleep faster. I've been fascinated by this phenomenon for a while - the theory I've heard is that humans evolved during a time when the sun was the only source of light besides maybe fire, and so darkness or light the color of fire signaled the time for being sleepy. When you get the blue colored light into your eyes at night the brain gets confused and doesn't know what time it is.

In a nutshell, what normally happens is light decreases, your body releases melatonin, and you feel sleepy shortly thereafter.

With the advent of artificial lighting, we started delaying our dim-light melatonin onset (DLMO). It most strongly responds to blue light, but it does respond to other wavelengths, too, so some people find that any light is too much.

Thanks for a genuine answer to my snarky reply :)

Re fire, another thing that’s helped me is using candlelight in the evening. It keeps things darkish (and of course it’s a warm color of light).

Haha, no problem! And yeah, candles would definitely then work. Some people I've read suggest that if you can don't use any artificial lights at night (obviously kind of difficult), and if you do you'll naturally start getting tired at sunset. Then you get to wake up at 5am! Hard to have a social life though.

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