Hacker News Reader

Comment by ane | Hacker News Reader

Plus, the article gets it wrong: the Paperwhite screen isn't backlit, the leds are oriented perpendicularly from the reading angle, so there is no direct light shining your eyes. Add that to the automatic dimming, the Paperwhite isn't going to keep you awake.

As an anecdote, I am immensely susceptible to falling asleep when reading in the dark with the Paperwhite.

View on HN

I don't understand your point: the orientation of the lighting is irrelevant with respect to suppressing melanin production. The cold temperature of the Kindle LEDs, ostensibly selected to make the screen appear white in the presence of warmer ambient lighting, is likely to have enough of a blue component to disrupt sleep. Total luminescence isn't a factor in suppressing melanin production either, as someone else has posted in this thread, so automatic dimming doesn't help either. The automatic dimming, if it worked well (it didn't in my case) would help reduce eye strain by matching the Kindle screen brightness with the ambient light level.

Yes, you're right. Perhaps my original statement was a bit too extreme in that sense. I'd wager, though, that having the screen not be back lit at least reduces sleep disruption, that is, it fares better than backlit screens in that regard. I don't know if there are any studies that have proven this to be the case though.

I'm not sure what the mechanism would be here? What are you proposing?

The lighting is indirect and not as strong as in a backlit display. That could affect the amount of melanin suppression going on. That is to say, it could very well be considerably weaker than in backlit displays.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com