Hacker News Reader

Comment by mojomark | Hacker News Reader

I think these are wavelength based filters vice polarized filters (see below). However, if they are wavelength based you might have a hard time determining whether a stoplight is red or green (yellow would be OK), so I agree - probably not a good idea to drive with.

View on HN

If you look at Kickstarter:

By flattening and rotating the polarized lens 90 degrees, light emitted by LCD/LED screens is blocked, making it look like the TV or computer in front of you is off.

These won't work on phones nor Billboards.

These may well work on some (cheap?) phones, I've had phones not display properly through polarized sunglasses before.

They would work for sure with my LG G4.

Sadly, I can not use the phone on landscape while wearing polarized sun glasses. Something very annoying when trying to take a photo on a sunny day.

They’ll also be damned disturbing if you tilt your head at all, and screens start fading in and out of existence.

Exactly as disturbing as regular sunglasses, not very disturbing at all.

No normal sun glasses doesn't have any phasing they are just tinted.

Sorry, I obviously meant regular polarized sunglasses.

They certainly would work on most phones in one of the valid orientations.

Yeah, most phones are not OLED (yet?)

I don't think that's true. Apple has been the major holdout on OLED for a while, and they're now into their second year of using it.

The vast majority of people don't have a year-old phone, never mind a flagship model.

That's true, but the Galaxy S series has used AMOLED since it was introduced in 2010.[0] Looking in more detail my guess is it's not majority market share but it's definitely significant.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series

Granted, my 2011 Nokia N9 also had an OLED screen. But they became unfashionable for several years due to (then) poor color rendering (although their contrast, naturally, was and is top notch). Currently they've been making a comeback.

Perhaps by LED they're referring to LED-backlit LCD displays. There's pretty much full coverage of the visible spectrum across different LED types, so the only way to block them is with completely opaque lenses.

> Perhaps by LED they're referring to LED-backlit LCD displays.

That's conventional for how LED-backlit LCD displays are marketed to consumers.

That isn't how polarization works. It isn't about the spectrum it is about how it travels or is reflected in a more uniform way (normally horizontal. So if you block out horizontal light you get rid of glare or in the case of panels you stop seeing the screen.

Right, well we aren't talking about polarization since LEDs don't emit polarized light, so you'd need notch filters to block the wavelengths LEDs emit, but the notch required to block all LEDs would be entire visible spectrum.

No idea why this was downvoted - the article explicitly says "Their IRL Glasses, which launched on Kickstarter this week, block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD screens." This implies wavelength-based vice polarized filters. More halfassed Wired reporting I guess.

I love you too, HN.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com