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Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by mopsi on Friday February 14, 2020 @01:19PM (#22328763)
> Turn your wifi off in your house at night and see if you sleep any better.

This needs to be a blind test, e.g. you track your sleep quality over a longer period of time while a script turns wifi off on random nights.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by gus_massa on Friday February 14, 2020 @01:48PM (#22329079)
And you cover the green leds with tape mask, or get version with an accurate fake blinking patterns.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by pbhjpbhj on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:30PM (#22329496)
My ISP supplied router has an option to turn the lights off, which is great as otherwise it illuminates the whole hallway. I don't get why electronics makers think their product needs to have such bright lights.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by dboreham on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:56PM (#22329761)
The worst design is where the light is initially off but turns on when some condition arises (e.g. battery fully charged). You fall asleep in total darkness only to be woken up at 3am by the brilliant light of "your phone is charged now".
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:35PM (#22329544)
Simple. The engineers are working on the product during the day in well-lit spaces. Since the lights are always on, it never occurs to anyone that the LEDs might be too bright at night.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by Shikadi on Friday February 14, 2020 @03:15PM (#22329941)
Alternatively, engineers point it out, and product managers don't listen
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by deftnerd on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:38PM (#22329568)
In a bright environment, a bright LED is useful. Instead they should also have a light sensor used to determine the ambient light level, and then adjust the status LED display accordingly. My Samsung TV does this with its "powered on" light.

Of course, that adds to the BOM and manufacturers love shaving off fractions of a penny. Asking them to add an extra 50 cents of parts for something consumers don't think about prior to purchase is a lost cause.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by im3w1l on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:12PM (#22330440)
Old LEDs are fine in both bright and dark environments, too-bright LEDs are a recent (5y? 10y?) thing. I wonder if LCD could be even nicer... I don't think I've ever seen single-pixel LCD status indicator.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by bgeeek on Friday February 14, 2020 @07:08PM (#22331763)
Any kind of light in my bedroom is deeply annoying to me when trying to sleep. And I have the same problem with sound too. Any kind of high pitch, etc, from a plug, light, etc, really does cause problems with my sleep.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by Marsymars on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:59PM (#22330820)
> I don't think I've ever seen single-pixel LCD status indicator.

I approximate that by using a pin to poke a hole in the electrical or gaffer tape that I use to cover the lights.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by heavenlyblue on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:53PM (#22330764)
It’s much easier to turn off the other lights than to brighten the environment enough not to see the blue lights of your router
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by moftz on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:52PM (#22329719)
In college, all of my electronics were in my bedroom as well as the communal router. I taped off as many LEDs as I could (even the router wall wart had a big blue light) and disconnected any LEDs that had leads (like inside a PC case). There were only a few instances of LEDs that I actually needed so those got white electrical tape over them to diffuse the light or swapped to red if the tape diffused it too much to see.

I don't mind having a nightlight on when I sleep, I think it helps me fall asleep quicker rather than pitch black but bright blue lights that fill the fucking room with light are the devil. I have much less electronics in my bedroom now since I now have personal space other than my bedroom to put stuff.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by hombre_fatal on Saturday February 15, 2020 @01:35AM (#22333700)
I've had a tiny chargeable buzzer that would light up entire rooms when it was plugged in. I started habitually closing the bathroom door just so it didn't bother me when trying to sleep.

I eventually got fed up that I broke the LED with some fingernail clippers. The device never turned on again.

I'm a pretty easy going person in life but learned how mad I could get over time at a pointlessly bright light and the people who put it there.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by JshWright on Friday February 14, 2020 @01:47PM (#22329072)
Does scientific rigor really seem like something the parent comment is concerned with?
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by wizzwizz4 on Friday February 14, 2020 @01:59PM (#22329212)
And make sure that phones aren't getting messages and bleeping during the night when wifi is on.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by notjtrig on Friday February 14, 2020 @08:30PM (#22332360)
When I was mining bitcoin I discovered graphics cards under load mess with my sleep, I would wake up feeling like I was very sick if I slept in the same room as a rig.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by catalogia on Friday February 14, 2020 @10:22PM (#22332963)
Noise, heat or blinking LEDs should be your first suspicions. Maybe transformer whine, with low quality power supplies. EM noise should be very low down your list of plausible causes.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by meekstro on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:39PM (#22329580)
You could just try it. Turn off the electrical stuff before you go to bed but hey everyone has freedom of choice.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by jjoonathan on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:54PM (#22329740)
Placebos work. If that's what you want, cool. If you want to figure out if RF affects sleep, that's cool too, but you'll need to double blind the experiment. Because placebos work.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by meekstro on Friday February 14, 2020 @03:18PM (#22329984)
Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster.

A healthy person can endure a toxic environment. An unhealthy person becomes more unhealthy from increased toxicity.

I’m not saying electromagnetic radiation makes a healthy person unwell i’m saying it delays or worsens recovery of some unhealthy people and there are million different subsets of unhealthy people so which subset are you going to run the double blind placebo on before you decide reduce electromagnetic radiation while you sleep.

It’s a simple experiment anyone can try. Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment as per research which eliminates electromagnetic radiation from the equation. I think its a zeitgeber in subsets sick people but there’s no profit in researching that so the only tools you have are existing research, intuition, self observation and logic.

People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost is the smartest thing someone can do with the available evidence.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by jjoonathan on Friday February 14, 2020 @03:34PM (#22330122)
Placebos in truth's clothing are toxins of human society. Please verify placebo vs truth before spreading, k? Thanks.

> Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment

Or two weeks away from the grind reduces stress. Or getting away from artificial lights/schedules reduces stress. Or it selects for people+times with less stressed. Or more healthy. Or higher SES. Or you're getting away from pollution. Or you need temperature variation to feel healthy. Or any two of those. Or three! Many plausible explanatory factors compete with RF, and you'd have to control for them in order to point the finger at RF. That's not impossible, and not even particularly difficult, but it does mean that you can't go on a camping trip, get better sleep, and then use that as proof that RF was to blame for your insomnia.

> People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial.

The double blind trial is how you establish whether or not something is a placebo.

> Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression.

You need to blind you studies whether or not you have a plausible mechanistic explanation. You don't need a plausible mechanistic explanation to blind your studies.

> Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case

Which one(s)?

> reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost

Foregoing the advantages of technology is not zero cost. If you mean that turning your router off at night is zero cost, go ahead! I don't take issue with that.

I do take issue with spreading unblinded anecdata, because whether or not RF-induced-insomnia is real, RF-anxiety-induced-insomnia is definitely real, and anecdata like your own definetly spread it. If RF-induced-insomnia is real, that's for the best, but if what you experienced was a placebo (and I'd bet a substantial sum of money that it was), then unblinded anecdata literally are the problem. And that's not cool.

In the privacy of your own home: do what works and ignore the haters!

In society: please apply good experimental technique before causing anxiety in others. It's only polite.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by meekstro on Friday February 14, 2020 @05:55PM (#22331261)
I think you are uncomfortable that some phenomena particularly biological don't fit in a scientific experiment neatly and are more comfortable labelling 3% of the population hypochondriacs to alleviate your own anxiety.

What I've stated is that I experienced increased fatigue from exposure to ER while I was seriously ill and had elevated serum ferritin.

Each ferritin molecule has 4500 iron atoms and serrin ferritin increases with acute or chronic viral infections. A healthy level is less than fifty. So a 1150 times increase in iron atoms in someone's blood could plausibly cause fatigue when it absorbs er.

Who does this cause anxiety in exactly?

How is turning off electronic devices going to cause anxiety?

People can turn them off. If it helps great. If it doesn't don't bother.

No anxiety necessary.

You might be better educated than me, better connected than me and more intelligent but there's something to be said for original thought. I'd love to take you up on your bet where you impolitely just called me a whinger. I think I'm smarter than you are just sayin there wasn't one insightful thing in your comment as you tried to apply a method that doesn't really fit the situation. How do we do this? Let's bet our hacker News anonymous reputations on it.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by JshWright on Friday February 14, 2020 @06:34PM (#22331524)
Are you unfamiliar with how powerful the placebo effect is? Totally meaningless "treatments" can have real biological impacts, simply because the person receiving them believes it will.

If you truly cared about this topic, I assume you would want to know if the effect is real, or just your mind playing a trick on you.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by stordoff on Friday February 14, 2020 @08:59PM (#22332548)
> simply because the person receiving them believes it will

Perhaps somewhat bizarrely, maybe even if they know it's only placebo:

> In these four studies patients were randomised to receive open label placebo (pills described as "inert placebos containing no medication") plus usual treatment or usual treatment[...]

> The consistency and magnitude of symptomatic relief across these studies—performed in hospitals on two continents—suggest that open label placebo may have a real therapeutic benefit.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889847/

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by ceejayoz on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:37PM (#22330651)
> Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster.

It's also frequently incorrect.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by function_seven on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:56PM (#22329771)
Right, but you wouldn't know if your sleep improved because the wi-fi is off, or if it improved because you have greater peace of mind just knowing that the wi-fi is off.

These are different things. A blinded test would eliminate the peace of mind component and allow you to determine if there's a physical effect from the wi-fi being on or not.

Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by jjoonathan on Friday February 14, 2020 @03:18PM (#22329978)
Furthermore, if your peace of mind is the true reason why you sleep better with RF off, note that by talking of your experience you could actually be creating the problem that you were trying to solve (difficulty sleeping due to worrying about RF). If RF is really to blame as determined by a blinded test, it's worth talking about, but if not, please exercise restraint.
Re:A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro ex... by taneq on Saturday February 15, 2020 @12:12AM (#22333411)
Sure, but you won’t learn much except how susceptible you are to the placebo effect.