frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

LED lighting undermines visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6
39•bookofjoe•1h ago

Comments

userbinator•54m ago
Very interesting. I've always thought that there was something a bit "off" about LED torches and car headlamps; the brightness is there, but something about the light just doesn't seem to illuminate as well as an old dim incandescent or even fluorescent tube.
mjmas•46m ago
Someone please tell the Australian government now that we've essentially banned other forms of lighting. (except fluorescent)
novok•31m ago
You can't buy heat lamps? They are even more infrared and last longer.

Also LED lighting can have infrared, have a significantly more smoother spectrum curve and still last +20k hours without burnout. The cheaper bulb spectra that they show is a blue led + phosphor coating, but there are infrared LEDs, UV leds, and more. You can make quite the convincing sun simulation, even better than any incandescent bulb, but there is almost no demand for UV + Infrared super full spectrum lighting unfortunately. Only movie & theater lights come close.

krackers•18m ago
>LED lighting can have infrared, have a significantly more smoother spectrum curve and still last +20k hours without burnout

Do you have a link to a bulb that you can purchase meeting all these criteria? The only one I'm aware of was this obscure "StarLike" that was never actually sold in bulk. LEDs can be made good in theory sure, but in practice they are all terrible in light quality compared to a standard incandescent.

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/sunlike-vs-starlike/64155/7

u1hcw9nx•22m ago
You can buy full spectrum LED lights (99 CRI, or grow lamps)

The article uses LED as synonym for typical LED lightning.

ale42•18m ago
How is "full spectrum" defined in this case? Visible spectrum is not the subject of the paper, as they care about infrared.
krackers•8m ago
Also even limited to visible spectrum, I have not seen any 99 CRI bulbs. The highest one I have ever found are the 98 CRI by YujiLED, but you pay around $35 for a single bulb. It is absolutely not "easy" to get flicker-free high CRI bulbs, let alone ones that cover the infrared range.
noosphr•41m ago
I have incandescent light bulbs at home I have to pretty much smuggle from China. It's amazing how we're replaying the asbestos playbook a century later. Only this time it's government mandated.
AshamedCaptain•41m ago
Why is it that right now there is still on the frontpage of an "article being found flawed after 6k citations " ( https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/01/22/aking/ ) but this random article coming out of nowhere makes the front page on the same day?

People really should get it and stop sharing newly published papers to the general public. The value of one single academic paper is exactly 0. Even a handful of such articles still has 0 value to the general public. This is only of interest to other academics (or labs, countries, etc.) who may have the power to reproduce it in a controlled environment.

Be very skeptical of correlations like this that have dubious or poorly understood causation. Be even more skeptical if they are about day-to-day stuff that would likely have large swaths of people able to reproduce something like it on huge scales yet they haven't. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

novok•29m ago
You can also look at all the papers it's citing too...
HNisCIS•30m ago
No mention of CRI which seems kind of odd. LEDs for lighting are increasingly graded by how natural their emission spectrum is. Older lights are quite bad, newer ones sacrifice a tiny bit of performance for more uniform spectrum.
novok•28m ago
CRI is a pretty bad rating system. They are showing the full spectrum graphs which is what you'd want anyway. Spectral Similarity Index (SSI) is the better number
HNisCIS•4m ago
Sure, but I don't see them mention what they're actually using for LEDs at all. They mention a "colour fidelity index" but I'd expect a manufacturer part number or something so I can pull the datasheet.

Funny enough, the best evidence for this study is that they should probably move somewhere with more sunlight if they can't spell "color" right...

Banjo: Recompiled – Native PC Port of N64 Banjo-Kazooie via Static Recompilation

https://github.com/BanjoRecomp/BanjoRecomp
1•sammyteee•35s ago•0 comments

How I Got a Job at DeepMind as a Research Engineer (Without a ML Degree)

https://gordicaleksa.medium.com/how-i-got-a-job-at-deepmind-as-a-research-engineer-without-a-mach...
1•halcdev•3m ago•0 comments

Don't update to HyperOS 3 until you check these settings

https://xiaomitime.com/stop-dont-update-to-hyperos-3-yet-warning-for-fake-rom-users-84416/
1•sdoering•3m ago•0 comments

The one and only codebase I'm ever going to keep working on

https://arjonagelhout.nl/writings/2026-01-25_the_one_and_only_codebase/
1•arjonagelhout•13m ago•0 comments

From Narrative Authority to Verifiable Science

1•dpforesi•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A small programming language where everything is a value

https://github.com/Jcparkyn/herd
2•jcparkyn•13m ago•0 comments

Fibre integrated circuits by a multilayered spiral architecture

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09974-0
1•teleforce•14m ago•0 comments

Quantum Machine Learning Is Emerging as a Practical Tool for Drug Discovery

https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/01/21/quantum-machine-learning-is-emerging-as-a-practical-tool...
1•brandonb•16m ago•0 comments

Structured methodology for AI-assisted development

https://emanuelcasco.vercel.app/blog/structured-methodology-for-ai
1•gtirloni•18m ago•0 comments

Inna Vishik on X: "Towards room temperature superconductivity" / X

https://twitter.com/InnaVishik/status/2015507327341002857
1•bilsbie•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Meru OS – The First Sovereign AI Stack (<2MB, CPU-Native)

1•akulasairohit•18m ago•0 comments

The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth-Century Venice (2018) [pdf]

https://gwern.net/doc/cs/cryptography/2018-iordanou.pdf
1•simonebrunozzi•19m ago•0 comments

"Sanae Takaichi" 32 times in Unification Church's 3200-page secret document

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/04556a31f6c41b00897854312d6ad1fa46516a13
1•wahnfrieden•20m ago•0 comments

The Future of Programming (2023)

https://signalsandthreads.com/future-of-programming/
1•oumua_don17•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built an app that blocks social media until you read Quran daily

5•kalyfacloud•23m ago•3 comments

Show HN: Simple random access archive format with no compression

https://github.com/sorvi-platform/sra-archive
1•Cloudef•26m ago•1 comments

DDD was a great debugger – what would a modern equivalent look like today?

2•manux81•27m ago•2 comments

The recruitment company training AI to do your job

https://www.ft.com/content/0cab0fcd-e355-40e8-83a3-2ad5066d7b48
1•swyx•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP server that lets AI agents fetch real UntitledUI components

https://github.com/sbilde/untitledui-mcp
1•steffenbilde•28m ago•0 comments

Implementing a Tiny CPU Rasterizer

https://lisyarus.github.io/blog/posts/implementing-a-tiny-cpu-rasterizer-part-1.html
3•PaulHoule•29m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT's porn rollout raises concerns over safety and ethics

https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/chatgpts-erotica-rollout-raises-concerns-over-safety...
7•haritha-j•30m ago•0 comments

Case study: Creative math – How AI fakes proofs

https://tomaszmachnik.pl/case-study-math-en.html
1•musculus•30m ago•0 comments

Gajim 2.4.3 has been released – GTK XMPP/Jabber Chat Client – Communication

https://gajim.org/posts/2026-01-21-gajim-2.4.3-released/
2•neustradamus•30m ago•0 comments

Documentation: Project Continuity

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=102606402f4f5943266...
1•asp1•33m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Do FAANG recruiters look at your personal data when hiring someone?

2•shadowjones•33m ago•2 comments

Science Is Drowning in AI Slop

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/01/ai-slop-science-publishing/685704/
1•ulrischa•35m ago•0 comments

The Star Wars Saga: Machete Order (2011)

https://www.rodhilton.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/
1•binarymax•37m ago•0 comments

A decade of Star Trek-themed fart jokes:The Greatest Generation podcast turns 10

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/01/a-decade-of-star-trek-themed-fart-jokes-the-greatest-gene...
1•ulrischa•38m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zopamind. A B2B Negotiation Sidekick

1•iamasuperuser•42m ago•0 comments

Driving Around New Zealand

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/01/driving-around-new-zealand.html
1•paulpauper•42m ago•0 comments