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It is a placebo, it is an aesthetic thing. It is not something that helps anything at all physically.

This was always well known. It didn't matter 5 years ago, 10 years ago, when OS added it. Easier to let it go than argue.

But with HDR, it matters enormously people are well educated on this. Monitors are approximately light bulbs, and we've gone from staring into a 25W light bulb to a 200W one. (source: color scientist, built Google's color space)

> What is the authors problem lol? It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things. Why does he care?

I think it's better to avoid stuff like this. Been here 16 years and a flippant "whats his problem" "lol" and "why does he care" is 99th percentile disrespectful. It's not about what you're arguing, its just such a fundamental violation of what I perceive as the core tenant of HN, "come with curiosity." You are clearly curious, just, expressing it poorly.

 help



> It is not something that helps anything at all physically.

That's a pretty strong claim to make.


It's not a strong claim. It's a settled one. The literature on blue light filters and screen-emitted blue light at display intensities is clear and has been for years, even if approaching it from first principles isn't convincing, or the first principles aren't known.

The thing about color science is that everyone has eyes, so everyone assumes they already have the full picture. One can experience warm light feeling "nicer," and the jump to "this is physically helping me" feels so self-evident that anyone saying otherwise must be the one making a strong claim. But "I prefer the aesthetic" and "this is physiologically beneficial" are two completely different statements, and only one of them survives controlled study.

I don't care if people use night shift. I'm not trying to take anyone's warm tint away. But we are now in an era where consumer displays are pushing luminance levels that are physically, measurably significant - not "I feel like it's bright" significant, but "this is a fundamentally different amount of light entering your eye" significant. Getting the basics right matters now in a way it didn't when we were all staring into dim LCDs and the worst case was people shifting white balance so the color temperature was incandescent, not D65.


so whats the takeaway? just turn down the brightness off your monitors? the blue light option of my benq monitor doesnt help?

Correct - more or less, I love BenQs but haven't had one in a few years. Dunno what exactly their blue light filter does. A software-based nightlight is usually going to turn whites offwhite, i.e. the yellowing you see is effectively darkening / lowering brightness. Its just, its accidentally fixing it and the fix is much less than it would be by directly lowering brightness.

username checks out

Hahaha in my 37 years I don't think anyones mentioned looking it up, cheers. I chose it when I was 8 by flipping open my mom's 2000 page tome of a Merriam Websters, closing my eyes, and putting my finger on the page.



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