
Is your iPad keeping you up at night? - stevewillows
http://networkworld.com/news/2012/082712-ipad-261956.html
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ben1040
I really wish there was something like f.lux (<http://stereopsis.com/flux/>)
for iOS, or at least without having to jailbreak and do whatever else, because
then I might be able to use my iPad in bed to read a bit before sleeping.

Having it on my laptop had made a big difference -- I "felt tired" when the
display temperature was adjusted at nighttime. Before that, I could happily
stare at that blue light and stay awake as long as I wanted, at the expense of
my productivity the next day.

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melloclello
I gotta say I reckon f.lux is the only thing on Cydia worth jailbreaking for.

~~~
joshschreuder
There's a lot of other tweaks which make iOS a much nicer place. More
recently, Nitrous is a pretty amazing tweak which enables the Nitro JS engine
for non-Safari apps. Speeds things up big time.

Aside from that you can have a way of having a particular browser open besides
Safari, scrobble your iTunes tracks automatically, password protect apps, have
a much better lockscreen experience, much better folder experience, theming,
retina-fy low res apps, have a download manager, etc.

For me personally, there's plenty of reasons to jailbreak.

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etherextraction
What I do is invert the colors on the iPad at night and turn the brightness
all the way down. The screen on/screen off button can be programmed to be the
trigger. When I press it 3 times quickly it inverts the colors. No need to
jailbreak for this hack.

~~~
lparry
Nice tip, I'll give it a shot. It's in General -> accessibility -> triple
click home in case anyone's wondering

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lathamcity
The article just says "electronics with backlit displays". I'm surprised it
singles out tablets, because unless I'm reading it wrong, that includes
laptops, or even television sets. Strikes me as untrue, since almost everybody
has these and stares at them all day and not everybody has sleeping problems.

~~~
gwern
Sleeping problems is a pretty extreme case. If the tablet or laptop pushes
your sleep time back to midnight from 10 PM, that could be a large and
significant effect even if one doesn't consider it 'a problem'.

(In some groups, this might be a problem, and the paper specifically mentions
them: adolescents already have a sleep schedule that has been pushed back by
puberty, love their gadgets, and have hard and early wake-up times. The
result: highschoolers spend the first few classes half-asleep.)

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gwern
The paper: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-wood.pdf>

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blvr
For those that aren't aware, there's tools to help with this.

    
    
        f.lux    | Windows, OS X, iOS (jailbreak needed) | http://stereopsis.com/flux/
        Redshift | Linux, Windows (experimental)         | http://jonls.dk/redshift/
        Lux      | Android                               | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux
    

Lux isn't as nice as the others because it doesn't change colour temperature,
it just puts a red/brown overlay over the screen. AFAIK there's no way to
change the screen's colour temperature in Android.

~~~
polshaw
I was literally looking for flux on linux just before coming to HN to read
this, so i can tell you flux is available for linux[1], although there can be
issues; which prompted the creation of redshift.

1\. see <http://stereopsis.com/flux/linux.html>

~~~
chrishenn
I used xflux when I used linux a while back, it worked very well.

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bryanlarsen
I personally switched back from my nexus 7 to my galaxy nexus for night time
reading just for this reason. It's not just the size, the darker blacks of the
oled screen also help.

It also helps that the size of the phone is better for novel reading, in my
opinion. It's worse for practically everything else, but the ability to fall
asleep quicker more than makes up for it.

~~~
polshaw
This is one of the reasons i want OLED screens on everything. I would find it
very hard to go back to a non-oled phone, too.

If you need darker-than-minimum setting then check out 'screen filter'.

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hnriot
There's an app to 'fix' this, called Flux, but it's only for jailbrokn iPads.
Pity, the Mac app is great.

~~~
stevewillows
F.lux is fantastic. I've been using it on all of my systems.

Are you aware of an equivelant for Android?

~~~
bhousel
I use the Chainfire 3D driver + CF.lumen plugin. You need to have root though.

~~~
sigkill
Fyi, you need the CF3D Pro driver.

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polshaw
Does anyone know of an extension for firefox (or chrome) that replaces white
backgrounds (or even better all light colours) with darker shades?

Flux and co are all well and good, but large areas of white (even when orange-
ish) are still a strain, and it seems fairly simple issue to solve (at least
in the most simple case; replace #ffffff backgrounds).

Also as a tip for anyone with a windows laptop; you may find, like me, that
linux allows your screen to be set much darker than the sparse intervals in
windows allow (maybe there is a windows program that allows fine brightness
setting?). Macbooks seem to have a very low brigtness setting, although i
can't say i've used one in the dark.

~~~
mixmastamyk
On windows I use a combination of flux and prefbar on Firefox to turn toggle
the standard colors on and off, with a custom windows color theme.

On linux I use the "negative" plugin to compiz, with a keystroke (win+n) the
whole window goes negative. Great for reading hacker news at night.

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Encosia
Most nights (and when I nap in the afternoon) for the past couple years, I use
an iPad to read websites and Instapaper saves for 15-30 minutes in bed before
I go to sleep. After that ~15 minutes, I'm out like a light. I've never
previously been able to get to sleep as quickly, reliably, and easily.

Sample size of one and all, but I definitely haven't noticed any negative
impact on my sleep. If anything, I'm fairly confident that my newly-backlit
reading habits have actually helped me get more sleep.

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sgdesign
I use the lowest brightness setting for the iPad, doesn't mess up too much
with my sleep that way. But I'm still thinking about getting a Kindle for that
reason.

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egypturnash
f.lux[1] is pretty much THE main reason I jailbroke my iPad.

[1]<http://stereopsis.com/flux/ios.html>

~~~
guiambros
Likewise. I started using f.lux a few months ago, and now I can use the iPhone
at night without getting fully awake.

I'm still getting used to it on the main desktop monitor, though. Installed,
uninstalled, now trying again for a 2nd time.

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mecredis
I have found turning my brightness all of the way down (more accessible by
double clicking the home button), and turning on white on black text in
Settings > Acessibility helps. It inverts the color palatte but produces less
light so it's easier to read in the dark.

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Void_
Anybody experienced sleep problems caused by using internet right before
falling asleep and the first thing in the morning?

I've stopped doing that recently, and it does feel liberating, but I still
have sleep problems... (Such as waking up every night, sometimes twice.)

~~~
shashashasha
That's interesting. Kind of off topic but there is literature to suggest that
biphasic sleeping was more normal before:
[http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...](http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html)

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phildeschaine
The sample size for this study is 13 people. I can't take it seriously. In any
case, I play Asphalt7 on my iPad in bed before sleeping and haven't noticed
too many problems.

~~~
tzs
> The sample size for this study is 13 people. I can't take it seriously.

Why can't you take it seriously? Whether or not 13 is a sufficient sample size
depends on factors that were not given in the article, so I don't see how you
can so easily dismiss it out of hand.

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electic
I don't get it or is it just me? I never have this problem and I think our
society keeps inventing all these gadgets and pills to solve problems that are
not really problems.

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manaskarekar
I find the lowest brightness setting on my Nexus S not dim enough for bedtime
reading/browsing, anyone know any good apps?

~~~
Off
You might wanna get Lux :
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux> There is a free
version with limited functionality if you just want to try it.

~~~
manaskarekar
Thanks, I'll try that out. :)

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firefox
That's what my mom has been telling me for the past 3 years, with the most
recent reminder over the phone tonight.

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biot
Has anyone tried a manual solution such as a red cellophane screen protector?

