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Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

I very recently thought I might have permanently damaged my eyesight.

I was working from a library, and stood to start closing up for the day. As I started to close my laptop, the screen (hi, glossy MacBook Pro) directly reflected the sun behind me.

For the next 15-20 minutes a significant portion of my vision in both eyes was wavy. I could still safely drive home, thankfully, but it was a severe distraction.

While I expected it to eventually clear up, it struck home how fragile my career is. (I know it's possible to be a blind software developer, but I'm not sure I could afford to take the short-term hit, assuming my employer wouldn't pay me to spend months relearning how to live and work.)

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Glossy screens really ought to be buried in the trash heap of technological hype history. They're worse in every way than matte screens (and dangerous, as you point out) unless you live in a dark cave. It continually amazes me that so-called "high-end" products use them.

I have never understood the shift to glossy screens. And it's funny that matte screens were briefly marketed as "privacy" screens because the angle of viewing was lower.

The matte texture diffuses light and gives you a relatively fuzzy picture compared to gloss. They just don't look nearly as clear and crisp when you compare side by side.

I'd rather be able to see a slightly fuzzy/diffused image than not be able to see anything.

You can still see individual pixels on a matte screen, even high DPI screens. And a little bit of blur is anyway necessetated by sampling theory, to eliminate the high spatial frequency components of pixel edges.

Blur is actually good for your eyes. This is how clear type works in windows. Try turn it off and your eyes will suffer.

> They're worse in every way than matte screens

I was of that opinion until I decided to test it out. It doesn't hold up. Clarity is the main factor, I found. A matte screen must by definition diffuse light, which causes image to become blurry - and visibly so.

A glossy screen, for all it's annoying features, is just clearer and colors have an easier time being represented accurately. And most modern glossy screens now have anti-glare as well.

Pretty sure mine has the anti-glare, so I shudder to think what would have happened otherwise.

Screens should diffuse the image somewhat, to eliminate the high spacial frequency components pixel edges create. Not that a matte screen has ever prevented me from resolving individual pixels in a screen, even high DPI ones.

And sharp reflections on glossy screens make color-sensitive work difficult. Diffuse reflections are much easier to adjust for. Can you better support your claim that glossy monitors represent colors better?

Absolutely not. The vibrancy of the screen colors on glossy screens are noticeably better, even when compared to some of the best matte screens.

I've been working on glossy screens for years and never had a problem. Perhaps people need to change their work environment instead.

No, I refuse to work in a cave. Glossy reflections are bad for color work, and bad for coding. (And even a cave isn't sufficient to prevent glare when viewing bright images which light up my face.)

What do you mean by "vibrancy"? Either a monitor is calibrated to a given color space, or not. And the diffusion of an individual pixel is orders of magnitude too low to significantly affect the color of neighboring pixels.

I had your view until recently.

I got a matte screen for the first time in several years, and immediately had a reflection problem from window light. On a glossy screen the problem is a relatively small highlight, but on the matte screen it was a giant blob that took up a significant part of the screen. The glossy screen is usable, the matte is not.

Anti glare has improved significantly on glossy screens, too.

My biggest fear right now as a developer is losing the ability to work due to an injury. I recently bought long-term disability insurance, which is expensive for sure, but makes me feel so much safer. (what I got - after 6 months of self-covered disability, it'd pay a significant amount every month until age 65)

My main worry is falling while biking or skiing, and knocking my head. But now I'm worried about eyesight, and my hands, and everything else around the modern world.

Max out the LTD insurance and enjoy life. I ride a motorcycle, there's only so much you can control in life. If you're that concerned about the chance of freak-odds events happening in your life, you might as well be buying lottery tickets too.

I know a dev who is paralyzed and types/codes (quite well, too) with a pen attached to his forehead, you'd find a way to adapt.

For sure, I took up skiing this year (I'm so bad at it, but it's so fun).

In no way is what I said meant to be "Crippling worry that affects my life". More of a rational: "this is the most likely way I get really screwed, so I bought insurance"

That much worry speaks to anxiety, in the medical sense, and may cause an injury just by itself. See a doctor, and more than one if you get a run-around.

I don't think that is being overly worried.

They are just talking about long-term disability!? I have it as well, for mostly the same reasons. I worry that if something were to happen to my hands, eyes, or brain that I wouldn't be able to provide for myself or my family.

I don't think having disability insurance is "that much worry".

No objections from me to disability insurance. I was specifically referring to this part: now I'm worried about eyesight, and my hands, and everything else around the modern world. especially after having purchased insurance.

That sounds like a person who is on a lookout for something to be worried about, pretty much the definition of anxiety.

on one hand 'biggest worry' - your biggest worry, statistically speaking, should be driving to work, as a young person, and eating cheeseburgers, if you are older. If you're more afraid of other things, like crime or whatever, than you are of driving to work, yeah, that's not rational.

On the other hand, i think disability insurance is not even a little bit crazy; Of course, know that if you use it, you'll probably use it because you got screwed up in an auto accident (few people carry enough insurance to cover lost work for a software engineer for very long) but I think auto accidents are common enough to want to hedge against it.

> it struck home how fragile my career is.

This is what long term disability insurance is for.

If you don't have it through your employer it can be pricy, but it it's a very small cost if you're concerned about becoming disabled.

If you have it as a group plan through your employer it's either employer paid (free for you) or incredibly cheap.

You described similar symptoms to 'arc flash' (brief exposure to welding arcs). While its obviously best to avoid this, a decent first-aid measure is to set a 15-30 min timer and keep your eyes closed. That can help, and while it isn't always an option (driving/etc) it can help.

Thanks, that makes sense. I probably should have delayed my trip home but there’s a clinic along the way so I figured I could stop there if it persisted.

I've had occasional ocular migraines for about 20 years. They aren't painful. They show up as golden, wavy distortions in my visual field. I can't work or drive when it's in effect. Typically triggered by staring at a screen for a long time without a break.

Interesting. Definitely in my case it was an afterimage, but my family is prone to migraines.

I've had ocular migraines for many years as well, maybe 10-15 per year. No pain either, but I've been unable to correlate their occurrence with any specific activity. They just (seemingly) pop up out of nowhere.

I may be biased since, honestly, I'm never not staring at a monitor.

I get those as well, usually no pain, but definitely some discomfort and nausea.

I still haven't been able to identify a clear trigger, though I think it may be dehydration.

I have spent a lot of time flameworking 2200 degree glass on a giant flame right in front of my face, and also staring at a monitor... the monitor makes my eyes more bloodshot and sore.

As a kid, I really loved focusing a magnifying glass on pieces of wood to burn them, without eye protection obviously.

I haven't had any noticable problems because of it, but I do kinda wonder if it didn't cause a bit of damage.

I did that all the time as a kid too! Funny that I don’t think of it much, because now I work in a oddly similar field - melting glass with a torch.

A magnifying glass produces a small point of heat, with fairly low temperature and area. Many people in history have worked glass with no eye protection without serious consequences, other than cataracts perhaps (many older Italians still do not wear didymium glasses, much less the ones with welding shades).

There is this story about Feynman looking at the explosion of an atomic bomb from behind a car window. He reasoned that visible light alone can not hurt eyes, only ultraviolet, which is filtered out by the glass.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/04/what_its_like_...

I don't know what's the truth.

That’s a good point. Maybe the temporary afterimage was the worst that could have happened to me.

I work in a field where we are continually concerned with filtering light emissions (flameworking glass), but I don’t know the answer to that, either, whether visible light can cause permanent damage.

I do know that infrared can cause serious problems, such as burns and perhaps macular degeneration. It is mainly what welding shades and our glassblowing glasses filter.

^ I should have noted that welding shades and glassblowing glasses also filter visible light heavily, of course (>90%). But what distinguishes them from sunglasses is the IR filtration. Glassblowing lenses also filter sodium flare, a glaring orange (visible) light emitted by some glass in a flame.

IR drops off adequately at spectating distances, and when I am at a demo, watching other people work, I don’t wear my glasses. Not sure about at a nuclear blast though.

Feynman also advocated for not brushing your teeth. He wasn't really any kind of health expert.

And even if he reasoned UV light wouldn't hurt him, he still had to duck to avoid the exposure. So if there's anything to take away from his story it's that he didn't know what he was talking about.

Stop worrying. You are way more fragile than you think. That's why humanity created 7 billion people at the same time and around the world. Decentralization is important.

On the other hand, it is bad news for you. You can catch a naughty bacteria and die. You can slip by the door step and become paraplegic. If you are concerned about your family, get insurance. If you are concerned about your life (paraplegic or blind is not fun) then... tssk... bad luck. There is no insurance for that.

ps: I'm not suggesting you go do irresponsible things but worrying beyond reasonable yield no better results.

Astonishingly patronizing, but...thank you I suppose.

I'm not sure which part sounded patronizing. I actually wanted to make sound rather re-assuring.

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