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Comment by tacos | Hacker News Reader

That reporting starts from the research links on the F.lux site which 1) don't really say what they they seem to think they say and 2) often conveniently hide behind paywalls. The F.lux team genuinely seems to care about human health yet they haven't bothered to write the equivalent of a three page term paper about what they're basing their work on the past 8 years. It's odd.

Even in this thread (as in the other six or seven F.lux threads that have popped up on HN lately) smart people are saying things that simply don't make sense. We're basically dealing with the equivalent of blue-blocker sunglasses from the 80s and it's odd seeing HN commenters spout the same informercial-grade rhetoric I laugh at on late night television.

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Some people, perhaps against their better judgement, like to use screens even as they're getting closer and closer to sleep. Some even use screens in bed. The difference in harshness of a 5800K screen and a 2700K screen is quite easy to feel in an otherwise dark room, late in ones "day", and once you're used to the latter, it is very uncomfortable to look directly at the former. One of them feels better on your eyes than the other. It's that simple! How exactly does this not make sense?

Enjoy your eye strain...? :-/ I find your laughing at our mutual experience and desire to share it with others, so that they may too use screens with less discomfort, odd. And unlike an infomercial, we're not trying to sell anything.

To clarify, I was speaking to broader claims of people saying f.lux puts them to sleep like a baby and the f.lux authors themselves claiming it as a tool in the fight against cancer and acne.

Note that f.lux does not even claim to prevent eyestrain. The closest they come is this: "Our users say that f.lux prevents eyestrain." That's hardly science; in fact it's exactly how shady companies market vitamins.

Also, I don't know what "feels better on your eyes" means but I will point out that if 2700K screens felt better "in an otherwise dark room" then movie theaters would use them. You say "It's that simple!" but like most things, it's a little more complicated than that.

You see no difference between sitting 0.5 meters away from a screen that's projecting its own light or sitting 15 meters away from a screen that has light projected onto it?

A photon is a photon, regardless of whether it's emitted directly or reflected. All that matters is vibration frequency and intensity of the stream of photons.

Do you disagree?

Maybe kungtotte is talking about accommodation or vergence, though I don't see how these are relevant to f.lux or colour temperature.

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