When paper beats the screen

You are probably a young person (sorry for assuming)

I didn't get headaches when I was 18 and stared for 14 hours straight at a 1024x768 14 inches CRT monitor at 85Hz interlaced.

p.s.: the term you're looking for is "screen headaches"

p.p.s.: http://oaxis.com/lcd-screens-harmful-effects/

e-ink doesn't flicker.

I know that past a certain number of Hz our brain just mushes the images together and we magically perceive that the motions on the screen are fluid, just like we believe our electric lights are completely on all of the time. But even though our final perception might be continuous, maybe there are steps in the image processing pipeline in our brain where something gets overloaded by the discrete refreshing of the screen.

The race for brightness considered harmful :)

The problem that LCDs have and CRTs didn't is that you lose color reproduction/contrast if you turn down the brightness to healthy levels.

Hopefull OLED fixes that and becomes affordable. But I'm afraid manufacturers will still race for brightness even on a technology that doesn't need it.

> E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the correct brightness for the lighting conditions

Tbh I find eink very readable in bright sunlight and it's all downhill from there, to the point that i prefer reading on a tablet with brightness way down and the lights off to eink with a lamp on. But that may be a consequence of staring into LCDs most of my life.

It doesn't because e-ink is a non-light-emitting technology so has no concept of brightness. Ambient light is what lights it up usually (unless one turns an entirely optional backlight on to read in the dark). So you don't need to adjusts as there's nothing to adjust, it's literally ambient light bouncing back, so is the same brightness by virtue of being the same light source.

Conversely, typical displays (TN, IPS, OLED, CRT even...) being a light emitting technology, one needs to turn backlight up as ambient light increases as both compete. (That is, unless it's a transflective LCD, but even then it's quite dim in ambient light).

> there's nothing inherently less tiring about it

e-ink really is more like paper, while typical displays are like turning a flashlight straight towards your eyes.

For me, the screens I use are always at the brightness where white regions are as comfortable as a piece of paper. Sure, colors aren't reproduced "as the artist/developer wanted" at those values, but neither do I need that, nor do we have e-ink screens that can reproduce color more accurately.

I just want to create software, research stuff on the internet, arrange my music etc. and if I feel like doing that for 10 hours straight, I only want the screen to tire my eyes as little as possible.

I also read a lot of books and research material, both on Kindle and paper. My eyes get tired after hours of doing that as well. Light is not the only factor.

So although it's good to try to be optimal about the light that gets in your eyes over large periods of time, it's best to also try periodic rest and moving some activities to non-screen mediums instead of fretting endlessly over the last 5% of screen light optimization.

I’m used to things calling out to me like that.

As a halfway step, I’ve tried using a Rocketbook and scanning things in, with workflows to file text away appropriately.

I can think of many different reasons for why, but they are all just guesses at best. One that comes to mind is that writing it on paper feels more "personal", as in "i am giving you this piece of my info", and I instinctively know that a human will have to look at it, read it, or do something else with it. Regardless, a human will have to take a look at it before something else happens to it.

While typing it on the person's device feels much more impersonal and more of a "I am entering my email into this digital form, with no expectations of any real human to ever look at it, with my email probably being sent into some database for some automated processing or spamming me or whatever else".

The latter isn't a real objective concern of mine, both typing and writing it out could easily lead to the exact same outcomes (both good and bad). But just instinctively, I feel that this is one of the main reasons for why it feels different for me on a subjective level in the back of my head.

In choosing to reply to this story I had a choice of making my point about the often fragile and ephemeral nature of electronic data and I chose an actual real-world example that involved myself in preference to some hypothetical case which would have been less interesting. The fact was at the time email in this organization was both insecure and often ephemeral by nature in that there was no guarantee that copies of it would be kept indefinitely let alone able to be authenticated at some later date (unfortunately the reasons are too involved to explain here, you'll just have to my word for it).

That and the fact that decisions made by the CEO often turned out to be bad or made inappropriately and that he regularly changed his mind about matters that had already been signed off after being influenced by external voices and did so without consultation with his departmental heads caused serious disruption within the organization to the extent that it became almost dysfunctional—not to mention staff morale being reduced to an all-time low was the reason why I demanded he provide me with written instructions under his signature. That I was not fired both vindicated my stance and showed the true gravity of the situation. (I eventually left the organization of my own volition well after the event. Without doubt it was the worst working environment I've personally experienced).

Incidentally, my staff were always loyal to me, in fact I protected them from much of the turmoil. What I was surprised learned from that and other related incidents was who one's real friends were and or those who held strong ethics and who were prepared to stand up for them. I received support from the most unexpected of people—staff, managers etc. from very different departments to IT, many of whom I hardly knew.

I note you chose to focus on my insubordination rather than the matter of reliability, authentication, paper documents, etc. This is not a criticism given the abrupt way I presented my comment, in hindsight I could have worded it more tactfully but in hurried HN posts that doesn't always happen, as here (that said, I'm usually reasonably restrained and careful about what I post online). It was interesting to note that some voters almost immediately voted the comment down after posting but surprisingly the votes fluctuated either way and are now split evenly—in fact to the exact number.

That work incident wasn't supposed to hog the comment, it was only meant to be a stand-in for cases where it's turned out that physical evidence was either much harder to tamper with and or easier/cheaper to authenticate than electronic counterparts.

First I'll mention a personal case, some years ago I had a contractor with a nice important-sounding name do some work on a property where I was not living at the time, it was substandard and he never provided a proper itemized invoice (and after I forced him to provide paperwork it was obvious that many of the newly listed items were only padding). I disputed the bill and the matter went to court and I lost—in the end a bill of around $2,000 ended up costing me over $10,000. He claimed he sent me email which I never received and stated to the court that his computer later failed so he could never prove it. The judge took his word and not mine, so I lost. Had he said he faxed me the info then the situation would have been very different—the printed log sheet of my fax would have shown that he had not done so and it would have been verifiable as fax logs are notoriously difficult to forge well. (I know, in a much bigger case telco comms records etc. could be subpoenaed, but that's well outside the scope of a petty sessions case like mine where the Beak expects to get through a half dozen cases before lunch).

When working in surveillance and remote monitoring (this time with a decent, professional organization) we switched from film cameras to digital ones and then read them remotely (which we couldn't do with film and inconveniently it had to be collected by hand). To switch over we had to go to inordinate lengths to ensure the data link was tamper proof and the data was properly encrypted and authenticated. On the other hand, the physical film was almost impossible to tamper with without it being clearly evident (but again we didn't have the luxury of remote monitoring).

I've many more such instances but not the time to cite them here. Sure, digital data is taking over the world but physical data is extraordinarily difficult to forge well if subject to proper scrutiny/forensics. On the other hand, digital forensics can be both very expensive and often very difficult to detect and or difficult to detect and apprehend the culprits; if were not fact and it were easy to do then we wouldn't be saddled with the many billions of dollars internet fraud that we see every year.

Honestly, it is the same with notes - as in, lists and things to remember later. I always have my phone, so I always have the grocery list and can write down ideas that I have while on the bus or walking.

If I really want to get work done then I need to make myself a to-do list.