Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | bensandcastle's comments login

The natural light and diffuse light are good tips.

Next is to get a big screen eg. 85" 4K and put it 1.5m away. That should be your main display. I don't have that all the time, but then I get some variety, 85" @ 1.5m a lot of the time, laptop some of the time, driving/walking etc. for longer range.

1.5m is the midpoint of focus for the muscles in your eyes.

I built augmented reality displays and this was the focal plane we selected for to minimize eye strain and the felt sense of vergence/accommodation conflict.

We could then throw graphics as close as ~30cm, or at infinity using vergence adjustments, even though the accommodation was at a fixed 1.5m. Graphics felt best at that distance, but they also felt ok in the range 0.5-10m, which suited nearly all productivity scenarios.


85" @ 1.5m is insanely big for me, do you not get sore having to dart your eyes about to read the corners?

> do you not get sore having to dart your eyes about to read the corners?

I wouldn't be surprised if this is what makes it healthier. Not only are you exercising your eyes, you're also giving them a chance to let you know when they need a break.


Yep, I set my mouse sensitivity to extremely low as well so that I’m basically “wiping the windshield” of my desk while using my computer

I do almost exactly this, but instead use a cheapish 65" 4k/60hz TV instead. I can see bits of my surroundings with my peripheral vision, but only with the parts of my vision that are already blurry.

I suspect that 85" was chosen to maximize immersion for gamers (cover the entire field of view), rather than to minimize eyestrain. For me doing development work on a 65" from about 1.5m is close to ideal.


I have a 4k projector setup which I use from time to time instead of my regular 27” monitor. It makes a pretty big difference especially as it is reflected light. I can sit in front of it for hours without any noticeable eye strain.

It’s fine for doing graphical work or web browsing but really not ideal for things like code or excel as I lose my place too often with my eyes having to dart around further. Might just be sitting too close though.


Can the eye distinguish between emitted and reflected light?

I made a glasses with the focus optimized for 1.5m. A lot easier on my eyes for working than my progressive lenses.

How did you go about that? Can you just take your prescription someplace and have them made?

Tell your optometrist you want that, and they'll write the prescription.

Last I went, they wrote me two different prescriptions: one with an up-close focal point for books/screen work, and a second one with the focal point further out for driving.


Yes. You can have reading lenses or lenses for medium distance. Measure the distance from your seat to the screen. Get a max, minimum and most common distance in your different seating positions.

Not OP but look into "computer glasses". Usually they're optimized for distances a bit closer than 1.5 meters, but I'm sure that can be changed.

The magic words I think are “occupational multifocals”, which have a small area at the top for distance vision and the remaining 75% set for whatever your occupation is. You need to be very specific on the distance setting

Yes. This is the better solution.

Some expensive lenses like Zeiss, Varilux, and Hoya make you an extra pair when you by one. I tought that the extra pair must be equal the first one, but it isn't necessary. I could have asked for a general one and one with a greater area for medium distance.


I used to work in the optical industry, that's not what computer glasses are, they are just blue blocker lenses.

Any lens can be customized for desired focal length, including distance, intermediate (e.g. computer) or closeup/reading.

Right. It's an industry term though and doesn't have anything to do with focal length.

Consumers develop their own interpretations and usage of industry terms used in marketing to consumers.

I would disagree with 1.5m, but I do recommend checking how close you are to your monitor.

Let's assume you have a reasonably sized office monitor (27" or so). Extend your arm with your hand as a fist, forward. If your screen is closer to you than your knuckles, it's too close.

Now, for the height: all monitor stands are too low. If you keep your head straight and look at the monitor, you should be looking at the upper third. VESA mounting arms or monitor stands solve this problem.


I've always heard you should be in line with the top of your monitor when looking straight ahead. A quick google has says the said.

Either way we're on the same lines - too many people are looking up too much when looking at the monitor. It takes more effort than looking down.


GP said too low, not too high. I'm thinking a typo though because that doesn't make much sense to me and I agree with you - I always have to adjust monitors as low as they can go in the office.

Not a typo. Most monitors are too low. You should not have to bend your neck to look at your monitor.

But some office setups have other issues, such as chairs that are too low, or desks that are too high, in which case your monitor might end up at the right height, but that doesn't mean much if the rest of your setup is wrong.

Begin with the desk+chair: they need to be set up so that when your hands are on the keyboard, your elbows form a right angle, or very close to it. Look at piano players for reference. Most setups fail that test. But once you get that right, you will notice that your monitor is way too low and all the stands are too low, which was my point.

You need to be looking at the top third when staring straight ahead, otherwise you will need to bend your neck to look at the lower part of the monitor and you will end up with neck pain. Top third, ideally around 2/3 of the monitor, so not the very top.


    all monitor stands are too low. If you keep your head straight and look at the monitor, you should be looking at the upper third. 
If the stand were too low and were to replace it with a higher one, you would then be looking at the lower part of the monitor and that is better?

marginally relevant. space based dawn dusk LEO solar infra is the answer. vastly more power than we'll ever get on the surface of this rock and then onto Sol.


was a stated objective before the launch: "faster/harder booster catch" https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858867695233425734


self built runner box how to including overclocked tuned high spec CPUs, and how to deploy self hosted runners.


This is an awesome guide, but with mix dialyzer taking that long I'm curious: are you caching your PLTs? And if so, why not?

I've worked on some pretty huge Elixir apps, and I've seen the dialyzer take that long on the first run, but once the PLTs are cached it usually takes only a minute or two even in GH Actions


how much analysis have you done on this? I'm working on a series around Kardashev II work - space solar, asteroid mining, dyson spheres and the real work that is happening to support this now. contact me if you'd like to discuss - @bensand on X


Sadly I am still at very early stages of this idea. However I will save this thread and contact you if I make progress!


Having built similar tech (Meta, YC S13), it's been a great year with Vision Pro, Orion, Spectacles and more coming out.

Currently at my co, seeing most day to day use out of XReal, and keen for Visor.

AR/XR/MR/VR app I'm most looking forward to is a 360 location share with the sharing user in AR, and the receiving user in VR, with additional virtual objects shared between. Orion would be great for the send side, with a few extra cameras and Vision Pro on the receive side.

The main thing letting down tech today is how open the platforms are for external developers.

The lack of projecting black I don't see as an issue, clip on something for VR (ok 70 degress isn't quite enough but getting fairly close), or just dim and use gradients for day to day work.

I think we're still at the most basic level in terms of understanding optical physics and ultra high resolution much smaller devices will come out, probably not too soon though.


I remember Meta (your old Meta not the new Zuck's Meta) had an amazing section of the site where you could submit and see sort of like Kickstarter proposals for use cases and I always wondered where all that creative devkit type passion went. Probably on a couple hard drives in a lockup.


Ah yes! I remember working on this. It was born out of asking all the YC founders what they wanted to see - and anyone else we met as well. Formed the basis of our second kickstarter which we self hosted and was much more successful.


visor.com is close to shipping too (Vision Pro in a smaller package at 1/3 the cost, aimed at virtual monitors)


Is that the one that had a presentation last week without a single working device?


Yea, they fixed the bug a few days later and posted an apology, analysis, and video of it working


Yes, got my founders ed. pre-order in, can't wait!


Same, I'm coming up on 1 year since my order. Added my IPD recently. Itching to try out 4k immersed


> The main thing letting down tech today is how open the platforms are for external developers.

You mean how closed they are? Apple was bad about this, but I think Meta is pretty good with helping spatial / game devs? Am I wrong about that? I don't work in the space, it's just my impression


Yes, correct. As in their degree of openness (not much) is what's letting them down. I see how you could have read it as I meant their too open, which I definitely don't think is the case!


The Magic Leap headset already uses essentially an LCD layer to add per pixel shading to add darkness.

Even still, modern displays are so so good that an additive display is a massive step down.


Hard edged, per-pixel light blocking is impossible for the foreseeable future. What's possible today, and what Magic Leap has, is diffuse dimming of large areas of the display.

The problem with light blocking is that when the blocker is millimeters from your eye it is completely out of focus. Unlike for the display, you can't use optics to make it appear farther away and in focus because the direction of the light it needs to attenuate can't be modified (or else your view of the world through the glasses would be warped).

For a near-eye light blocker to work, it would need to be a true holographic element which can selectively block incoming light based not just on its position but also its direction. Each pixel would essentially be an independent display unto itself that selectively blocks or passes incoming light based on its direction, instead of indiscriminately like a normal LCD. I have no idea how such a thing could ever be fabricated.


True, but sharp edges are much more of a nice to have than any dimming at all. The magic leap dimming goes a long way.

Forcing the industry to redesign visuals for additive displays is a huge uphill battle.


That's fair but what if you could estimate the direction of incoming light with other sensors? Using inverse diffraction etc. Just a thought


I'm not sure what you mean. Light is coming in from all directions simultaneously.


Sorry never mind! I wasn't thinking at all when I wrote that thought, but that obviously doesn't make sense :)


Damn! That's a throwback. I remember reading about you guys in an airplane magazine once and getting hooked on the concept. I always wondered where y'all went...


a bunch at Vision Pro, some at Zuck's Meta, some at Hololens, some doing other things. Meron is doing BCI, I'm doing AI infra - strongcompute.com (YC W22)


This strategy makes sense when the odds of winning are known, and the jackpot is not shared.

The powerball jackpot is shared so you would need to factor in the likely number of people you would share with which would be complicated to figure out.

There are cases in gambling where the jackpot is not shared, for example poker machines.

The odds of winning remain fixed, yet the jackpot slowly increases, moreso when there are many machines linked to build the same prize.

At a certain level of jackpot the math works out and it's a sound strategy to pour money into the machines.

See: break even point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_jackpot

Here's a person who's written about dedicating their life to this approach: http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Slots-Peter-Liston/dp/0...

If you were going to invest in lotto with shared jackpots I've heard anecdotes that choosing numbers 32 and higher is a better way to go because people tend to pick birthdays. I think looking at past drawing results and whether there was a winner or not you could analyse if numbers are picked disproprotionately, but I'm not sure what sample size would be needed to generate meaningful results.

All that said, I can think of many things I'd rather develop expertise in than reverse engineering the payout odds of poker / progressive jackpot machines.


There are no gates. There is a sign. http://travel.jeffersoncampervan.com/Pictures/PixoriginalSit...

Cross border travel within the EU is like moving between states in the US, easy to miss.


What about airports?

I'm very positive that they check people's passports and papers in airports.


Only if you're arriving from outside of Schengen. Within Schengen, there are only ID checks if the airline themselves have them there to avoid ticket resales.


The vast majority of European travellers use trains or roads, not air travel.


Actually, air travel is the most common mode of transport in intra-EU travel.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

Trains are a tiny 6%.


Sometimes. About 5 years ago, I walked off a plane from Baltimore to Rome and out of the airport like it was a domestic flight. No stamp or anything.


Is it possible to get videos of the battles?


On http://codecombat.com/play/ladder/ace-of-coders#winners, there's a column of links which say "Watch the battle."


Hey, I made two videos for both sides of the finalists matches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVGbLH3P2j0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPzEfJpfPY

Working on getting the quality better.


xkcd store has some good ones,

Here's a few I've been planning to have printed:

Human Spaceflight, everything to scale http://theorysend.com/uploads/bdcffe08190411f5095eabcc8860d3... from: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/2niljz/human_spacefl...

Tree of Life, over time: http://e.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/codesign/slideshow/...

Evolution of US politics: http://xkcd.com/1127/large/

I was planning to get most of these printed on a board of some kind, so they be more durable than posters, although I haven't chosen a supplier yet.

Depending on your use of the poster and the printer you go with you may need a rights release from the artist, so often it's easier to find a commercial print and get it framed, if you are willing to have all that glass.


Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: