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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

I'll go against the grain here and say that I see no benefits in Flux. I used to be in the hype train, but I've noticed it annoys me more than anything, and every time when the night would come I would just disable Flux until it just didn't make sense to have it installed on my laptop.

I don't know if it's just me, or if it's just a trend marketed by pseudo-science claims.

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Former neuroscientist here: it's just you. You may not respond sufficiently/differently to cutting out blue wavelengths, but for many people, it helps.

It's not pseudo-science, and I'm not even sure why you said that. There's quite a bit of literature at this point demonstrating that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (the primary timekeeper of the body) is heavily entrained by specialized retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), that are most sensitive to blue wavelengths.

Here's a publicly-accessible review paper if you wish to learn more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254760/#BX1

Increasingly though daylight-frequency lightbulbs are becoming mainstream. Our house has them fitted everywhere, as does a new development of 100+ homes nearby.

I suppose that may affect sleep patterns in the short term but after several years of using exclusively 6500K lighting I don't have any problem falling asleep after turning-off the bedside lamp even though there's no graduated transition from 'blue' light to darkness.

It's probably not just you, but it's more than a trend. I actually found it because I already often turned down the blue on my desktop screen at night using its controls, before I heard of any supposed health benefits, and I was searching for a way to do the same on my laptop.

I can't say I notice if it helps me sleep better, but I definitely find it much easier on the eyes.

I used to get incredible headaches when sitting in front of my monitor at night.

When I found f.lux, those went away immediately.

When I turn it off at night, with as little brightness as possible on my monitor, the blue hurts my eyes.

The scientific ideas behind it regarding sleep sound likely, but honestly if they were all proven to be crock tomorrow I'd still use it to ease my eye strain because it clearly can do that.

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