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Comment by -warren | Hacker News Reader

While we're at it, can we do something about the gigalumen blue light every device seems to have to indicate on/charging/charged? My house looks like a dystopia spaceship after dusk.

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It's pretty much never changing.

It's the kind of flaw we don't notice until after we've bought the products and lived with them for a while. Therefore, it doesn't hurt sales and therefore, there is no pressure for manufacturers to change.

It sucks.

As a workaround, these work great. Note that these particular ones are partial blackout stickers. They are 50-80% opaque. You can still see the light, but it won't be bright enough to annoy. If you want to darken even further you can just layer two of the stickers.

https://www.amazon.com/FLANCCI-Blocking-Stickers-Dimming-Bla...

If you need total blackout, there are similar ones available that are 100% opaque, although at that point I'm not sure why a person would buy a specialty product instead of just using regular tape...

> It's the kind of flaw we don't notice until after we've bought the products and lived with them for a while.

I dunno. There is an increasing amount of products announcing "no led indicators" as a feature. And I've seen plenty of reviews with people saying things like "the on led is too bright".

Sure, we eventually react to ubiquitous issues like blue LEDs, but it's been 2 decades since blue LEDs were new/fancy and it's just barely popping up now. It's very reactive and very slow.

Just look at microwave interfaces. They haven't meaningfully changed in function in decades, and yet +30s buttons often don't start the microwave, power level can rarely be set after starting and all sorts of basic responsiveness details.

That's certainly good news.

I did buy some rechargeable fans this year, and they had a very welcome "night mode" that shuts off the blue LEDs.

I'm not sure if they exactly advertised it as a feature. The Amazon product page was kind of a soup of mangled English. I guess it was probably mentioned in there somewhere.

Hopefully it's a growing trend.

I've had to put a layer of electric tape, sometimes two of them, on some of those just to get the bedroom to a level where it's dark enough to sleep in comfortably.

They're so bright, you can see the damn blue circles on the ceiling. Blue moon rising, invited by no one.

My record was 6 layers of duct tape! Didn't have any electrical tape around

A single small piece of aluminum foil under the tape will block all light.

That's exactly what I did on the next one but I think my aluminium foil was cheap because I'm sure one layer didn't do it LOL

It sounds like you might have a diode pumped laser for a status LED too hah

I once bought one of those alarms that brighten along with the pattern of natural sunlight in the morning (and dim in the evening), as I don’t get much natural light in my bedroom. The time display on it was so unbelievably bright at its lowest setting that my sleep was worse until I piled stuff up in front of it. I don’t even bother with it anymore.

A related problem: I do get some natural light, but also a lot of night-time light from the apartment complex parking-lot lamps.

I've been thinking of a time-controlled motor on my window blinds.

Literally same here. Could've written your comment word for word.

That was going to be my DIY project, time to finally do it, I guess.

Renting, I'd want something I can temporarily attach to arbitrary pre-existing blinds. On reflection, there are several types one might encounter but I'm particularly thinking of the "twist stick to adjust horizontal slats" style. (As opposed to "loop of chain controls angle", or "fully unroll from top".)

I think there was a Show HN some months back where somebody 3D printed a mount so that the twist-stick could be slotted in at a slight angle.

Gaffers tape works great. Rips easy and one small piece is plenty to douse the brightest unwanted nightlight.

Yes, seconding this one too. I've opted for ugly black electrical tape squares over the worst offenders in sleeping spaces, but why is that the only option?

Ha, I've done the same. I never thought I'd become like my old grandpa, who didn't like when TV stations started adding crawls to the bottom of the screen for certain news/information so put electric tape across the bottom of the screen.

If they're going to do LEDs, at least do red ones, which don't obliterate night vision. Making them togglable is the ideal unless they're literally a life-or-death piece of equipment.

It used to be dim red LEDs but then in the early 2010s everyone switched to blue to look more fancy and modern. Sometimes really bright ones too, I used to have an ASUS router that had bright enough (blinking!) blue LEDs to light the entire room up. Without any option to disable them, of course.

With all public debate around the effects of blue light on sleep, it's weird more people haven't found that concerning.

> my old grandpa, who didn't like when TV stations started adding crawls to the bottom of the screen for certain news/information so put electric tape across the bottom of the screen.

Your grandpa implemented an IRL Adblock.

He was really ahead of his time.

This is something Eero routers do well: you can turn off the light (which is a more subtle white to begin with) in settings.

Same is true of my Ubiquiti UniFi. You can set the brightness 1–10 and even set times of day when lights and display should be on or off.

Many Linksys routers let you turn off all of the lighting as well

I now have a small amount of electrical tape in my travel bag, and I use it at practically every place I stay. I just rewrapped some around a bit of plastic - no need for it to be very sticky anyway as I take it off when I leave.

I do the same only using some of the 2 dozen spare pillows they put on the beds

You don't want the interior of your home to look like it belongs in a scene from a star wars visual novel? I think that'd be pretty cool actually.

I can recommend a soundtrack for this one: https://youtu.be/DydIK14AvXI

My MacBook Pro's dual magsafe charging lights do this for me. It becomes an issue when I travel so that the MacBook is in the same room I sleep in. Sometimes turing it perpendicular to the bed is enough, at least it's not directly into my eyes even if it is lighting up the room. Other times I have to pile stuff on top

I've always struggled to fall asleep with even a moderate amount of light in the room, and I used to go crazy trying to cover every small led to make things easier for me. It took me far longer than it should have for me to realize that it would be easier to cover my eyes instead, and I bought a nylon sleep mask on Amazon for a few dollars. It's literally been life changing how much my sleep improved after that. If anyone is bothered by this specifically when trying to sleep, I'd highly recommend trying out using a mask to block light when sleeping; it's really cheap to give it to a shot, so you don't lose much by trying, and you might end up winning the lottery like me.

Fun fact, this is why nail polish was invented.

I have a monitor with a bright blue / dull orange LED. I found that stacking layers of kapton tape turns the blue into a dull green, while leaving the orange mostly unaffected.

https://www.lightdims.com/

The worst one of these I encountered was in a USB-PD power supply meant to replace a 12V outlet in a car. It was extremely distracting driving at night. The illuminated area covered most of the face of the device, so I covered it with RTV silicone.

Stick some opaque tape on it. It will still see through but won't project light everywhere.

When my wife moves in her sleep, her watch lights up the entire room for a moment.

yes plz && ty, I listen to audiobooks at bedtime and I can't put my earbuds back in the case without them turning on a super bright blue light that has actually woken up my partner in the past. Why? I can see a little pinhole status light to show me that the connection is made correctly but why outline the whole case in blue and then start flashing the percentage charge remaining in the case while also animating charging bars to show that the buds themselves are also charging? Why turn my bedroom into the landing scene from the movie ET?

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