Monday, January 25, 2016

The Story Behind F.lux

Matthew Braga (via Hacker News):

“We really thought six months after that, that we were done. We had done this app that was pretty baked. And we didn’t really think it was that hard,” Michael recalled. “Now we have this joke that, everyone thinks this problem is easy until they spend a year or two on it, and then they think it’s the hardest problem they’ve ever worked on.”

Developing f.lux, it turned out, was more complex than either Lorna or Michael initially thought. And in the seven years since they started working on the app full time, Michael and Lorna have realized what they’re really on is a mission to change the way that we sleep.

[…]

Michael and Lorna are quick to point out that that brightness also plays a role, as does distance from the source of light. The pair even operate a companion site called f.luxometer that measures the light intensity of various popular devices, and how this factors into your phase shift—the amount of time, say, a MacBook Air might shift your circadian timing if used before bed.

I think I’ve determined that all my Lightroom hangs occur when Flux re-enables itself after being suspended for an hour.

4 Comments RSS · Twitter

Benjamin Esham

I’ve also had problems with Lightroom hanging—I will switch from Lightroom to another application and then Lightroom becomes completely unresponsive and I have to force-quit it. I’ve found that turning off the “Use Graphics Processor” option prevents this from happening. (I have a Mid-2015 Retina MacBook Pro with an AMD Radeon R9 M370X.) I don’t know if it’s the same problem you’re seeing but I also have F.lux installed, with Lightroom on its “disable” list.

Maarut Chandegra

I used to use f.lux, but found that my machine regularly decided to kernel panic. After removing f.lux, the system became much more stable (although I still received the occassional KP). It seemed to me that f.lux was exacerbating whatever the underlying cause was.

Don't have any problem with f.lux and other Apps, even not with LR which is running normally all the day on my MacBook Retina with thunderbolt screen connected.

"I’ve found that turning off the “Use Graphics Processor” option prevents this from happening."

Yeah. That was my strong suspicion when I read Michael's comment on LR hanging: gotta be some issue with the GPU.

"Don't have any problem with f.lux and other Apps, even not with LR"

Strongly suspect it all depends on the particular GPU in your rig. (Well, actually, how well the OS deals with the particular GPU in your rig, to be more precise...)

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