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As a software professional handling Infrastructure as Code (IaC), chances are you work a lot with . When helping new clients to use IaC, it is common to simplify things, but managing a Terraform state file is the first challenge you face. Essentially, Terraform state contains sensitive information which shouldn’t be stored by source control but, at the same time,  won't scale if you have multiple users working on the same Terraform state.  The answer to that? Backends. Terraform It is important to note that you could store that state file on an S3 bucket and use DynamoDB to manage the locking state. However, this approach will force you to create additional resources which makes it a complicated option, especially if the client is using GitLab. GitLab recently lowered the entry barrier to integrating Terraform by providing a way to store and manage Terraform state, as well as an easy way to set up a CI around it. In this blog post, we will explain what a Terraform state file is, how to migrate it to GitLab, and setting up a CI Pipeline for it. You can visit our repository . here Table of Contents What is Terraform state? How to get GitLab to manage Terraform state How to get GitLab to run your IaC through a CI Pipeline Bonus Tip:  Infracost Conclusion What is Terraform State? Terraform records any information about the infrastructure defined in your code via a state file. Written in JSON, it essentially records a mapping from the Terraform code to the real resources created. Below is an example of what a terraform.tfstate would look like. Primarily, every time you run Terraform it will fetch the latest status for its EC2 Instance and compare it with your Terraform configuration to determine what changes need to be applied. {
    "version": 4,
    "terraform_version": "0.12.0",
    "serial": 1,
    "lineage": "1f2087f9-4b3c-1b66-65db-8b78faafc6fb",
    "outputs": {},
    "resources": [
      {
        "mode": "managed",
        "type": "aws_instance",
        "name": "example",
        "provider": "provider.aws",
        "instances": [
          {
            "schema_version": 1,
            "attributes": {
              "ami": "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0",
              "availability_zone": "us-west-2a",
              "id": "i-00a123a0accffffff",
              "instance_state": "running",
              "instance_type": "t2.micro",
              "(...)": "(truncated)"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  } By default, this terraform.tfstate is stored locally where you have your Terraform files, plan, and apply your changes. For a personal project where you are just running some tests, it's fine but not the recommended way, here's why: if you were hosting this state file on your local workstation and had to work with another engineer, things would get complicated. Both of you will have to make sure you are using the latest version of the state and you could run into race conditions if you run a Terraform plan or apply at the same time. Stored in a shared location: A generated state file can contain encryption keys and infrastructure passwords. However,  state files aren't encrypted by default, and storing sensitive information in plain text is a bad idea. Protect sensitive information: Most version control systems do not support any form of locking which prevents two team members from running Terraform apply simultaneously on the same state file. This is another reason why we will not see a state file managed by source control. Locking: ‍ How to Get GitLab to Manage Terraform State With Terraform being considered the standard in cloud infrastructure provisioning, it has been a year or so since GitLab began to offer a way to store and manage your Terraform state. For this reason, we wanted to share the migration process with you as we recently started using GitLab to manage our IaC. For this article, we presume that you are using a local state, and have your state managed with an AWS S3 Bucket or another backend solution. Firstly, you will need to change your backend.tf to use HTTP. terraform {
  backend "http" {}
} Next, you will need to set up 4 variables in your terminal: You can find this easily by navigating to your repo on the Project Overview page PROJECT_ID: __ __ ‍ Gitlab username that has access to the repo you're working on. TF_USERNAME: Access token generated from your GitLab user. TF_PASSWORD: URL of the remote state backend TF_ADDRESS: PROJECT_ID="28450092"
TF_USERNAME="florianpialoux"
TF_PASSWORD="123456789"
TF_ADDRESS="https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/${PROJECT_ID}/terraform/state/aws-buckets" You may now run the migration command that will move your Terraform state from his previous location to GitLab with the following command: terraform init \
  -migrate-state \
  -backend-config=address=${TF_ADDRESS} \
  -backend-config=lock_address=${TF_ADDRESS}/lock \
  -backend-config=unlock_address=${TF_ADDRESS}/lock \
  -backend-config=username=${TF_USERNAME} \
  -backend-config=password=${TF_PASSWORD} \
  -backend-config=lock_method=POST \
  -backend-config=unlock_method=DELETE \
  -backend-config=retry_wait_min=5 You will need to provide a confirmation by a “yes” so that GitLab can start managing your state file. Here's an example from a local state to GitLab: __ __ Example s3 to GitLab __ __ Now you can navigate to from the GitLab interface and see your state: Infrastructure > Terraform __ __ I noticed for some of the state files I had from s3 will be blank even after using the migrate-state command ran previously, in this case, you can run this: terraform state pull > aws-buckets.json Copy and paste the content from the s3 state and run a push: terraform state push -lock=true aws-buckets.json GitLab supports versioning for your Terraform state file but viewing/restoring older versions through the WebUI will require you to be using a . If not, you will need to make a GraphQL API . GitLab Premium plan request ‍ How to Get GitLab to Run your IaC through a CI Pipeline GitLab provides that contains GitLab-Terraform, which is a thin wrapper script around the official Terraform binary. Alternatively, you could use the by Hashicorp. You can find more information about the GitLab Terraform Image . a docker image official docker image here Once the terraform apply job runs, you will be able to see when the state was used and with which pipeline. __ __ Learn more about what our looks like . Below are the variables that will need to be defined on the project level: gitlab-ci.yml here __ __ Bonus Tip: Infracost As you might have noticed, looking at our gitlab-ci.yaml we added which allows us to have more control over our cloud billing as it gives you a cost estimate whenever you define a new resource to your IaC. To learn more about Infracost, you can check out our in-depth about what it entails, and our step-by-step on how to integrate it with Terraform. Infracost article guide Conclusion Having your Terraform state and CI running on Gitlab is a great way to follow GitOps best practices. They both make a great combination to develop and deploy IaC. Since most of you might be already using GitLab for your repositories, it becomes much simpler to have your IaC under one roof and let GitLab manage your Terraform state by supporting encryption in transit and at rest, as well as versioning, locking, and unlocking the state. Also published . here

A Handy Guide to Migrating Terraform State to GitLab CI/CD

Una guía práctica para migrar Terraform State a GitLab CI/CD

Un guide pratique pour migrer Terraform State vers GitLab CI/CD

Terraform State को GitLab CI/CD में माइग्रेट करने के लिए एक हैंडी गाइड

Terraform の状態を GitLab CI/CD に移行するための便利なガイド

Um guia prático para migrar o estado do Terraform para o GitLab CI/CD

Hướng dẫn hữu ích để di chuyển trạng thái Terraform sang GitLab CI/CD

将 Terraform 状态迁移到 GitLab CI/CD 的便捷指南

The Handy Guide to Getting Google's Bard AI to List Your Brand or Business In Its Response

Realization of My Problem I have been a runner since primary school. I exercise regularly and perform well in fitness tests which is something I am proud of. One day when I was 17, I woke up feeling like I was drunk (despite not having drunk alcohol), and crawled out of bed. In school that day, I found myself sleeping in classes I was interested in since I could not resist the strong sleep urge. Although it went away, the next day I thought I was sick again. It stayed with me on and off during my school life. After I graduated, my daily routines went back to normal. I went to bed at 00:00–01:00 and slept for 7–8 hours. But I often encountered “bad morning symptoms,” and I woke up and feel like shit. I was often exhausted and in a bad mood. Sometimes, I felt like I didn’t sleep at all. Often there was a runny nose followed by headaches. I experienced it more frequently. I thought were the primary reasons. Thus, I started investing in pillows, sheets. I even bought high-quality earplugs, the blue light device for waking up, but nothing helped. the bad quality of sleep and pressure from work I was frustrated at my symptoms and did not know WHY they occurred. Definition of Inflamm-aging " ‘Inflamm-aging’ refers to the chronic, low-grade inflammation that characterizes aging. Inflammaging is macrophage centered, involves several tissues and organs, including the gut microbiota, and is characterized by a complex balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory responses. Based on literature data, we argue that the major source of inflammatory stimuli is represented by endogenous/self, misplaced, or altered molecules resulting from damaged and/or dead cells and organelles (cell debris), recognized by receptors of the innate immune system. While their production is physiological and increases with age, their disposal by the proteasome via autophagy and/or mitophagy progressively declines. This ‘autoreactive/autoimmune’ process fuels the onset or progression of chronic diseases that can accelerate and propagate the aging process locally and systemically. Consequently, inflammaging can be considered a major target for antiaging strategies."  -  cell.com Inflamm-aging is the aging of your body due to low-grade and chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation affects many of us, especially in this toxic environment (such as air pollution, radiation, antibiotics, heavy metals…) that we created for ourselves. What I Did and Why I Got Obsessed One good habit I got is reading every day. Ever since 2015, I have started reading one book every week and have completed 200+ books on different topics. The long history of sleeping in classes and needing paper tissues around gave me the determination to learn and help myself get better. Reading books about health and medical journals had helped me. Until one day, I found by . What he suggested in the book was straightforward to follow. So easy that I think it is worth trying even though I couldn’t understand why at the moment. “Own the Day, Own Your Life” Aubrey Marcus And that was how the magic began. What I tried was The first time I tried this, I found instant relief from morning sickness. My headaches were relieved right after I drank the whole glass of water. (I found out later that proper hydration also aids in anti-inflammatory processes.) drinking water with some mineral salt and lemon/ lime juice, first thing in the morning. Just one simple step and I was better. Therefore, I invested in it and started to build up some habits from the book. I did further research and understood the reasons behind the habits. It became one of my new interests and shifted my focus on reading. I learned a lot during my recovery time and used two years in total, trying and keeping different approaches to improve other areas of myself, starting with my body. The first time I heard about biohacking is from . Dave Asprey I find interest in bio-hacking. As an IT security Consultant, hacking is not new for me. But what about hacking myself? Let’s try it. He is the founder of bulletproof coffee and a successful entrepreneur. But before that, he was having severe health problems — worse than me (including obesity and being pre-diabetic). His experience resonated with me. I followed what he said in his book and my body began feeling better. “Head Strong”, The importance of eating is new to me. (I did not know the difference between body fat, calories, and oil at that time). The book is suitable for people with no biology background to read. healthy fat Eating more healthy fat makes sense, but it is contradicted with what we learned from the well-known Food Pyramid. I wanted to give it a shot, and here is what I did: Eating more vegetables is excellent, but fruit is not (Most fruits contain a lot of fructose). The concept of healthy vs. unhealthy fat should be promoted (The Basic: Fat can be categorized by length and stability). Refined Grains and Cereals are not suitable for us and should be avoided. Full Recovery Changing my eating habit was difficult; I like sweets. But if getting rid of them help me heal, I will not hesitate to avoid sugar from now on. My friends often said not eating what they like is worse than dying. The sugar crash (the feeling after eating sweets) feels awful. But by eating more “healthy food” (food high in nutrient density), my appetite changed, and feel full longer. Then I tried intermittent fasting in the morning and broke the fast at lunch (after around 16 hours of fasting). I experienced my first “keto-flu.” It was very similar to the “bad morning symptoms,” haha! Except for one thing, my urine smelled strange. It turned out I was in ketosis (I tested it with the keto testing paper) by eating more fat and fasting longer every day. Two weeks later, I felt less hungry and tired in the morning without food. I learned about the Gut-Brain-Axis and was more conscious of choosing food. I have no more snack cravings when nervous or work overload. I “feed” my gut with persistent starch and fibres. A few weeks later, my skin allergy was gone. Once your ideas change, actions follow smoothly. Hacking required a thoughtful understanding of a target (and in this case, it is me). To reduce inflammation, I needed to understand what and why of the cause of multiple reactions. Just like computer systems, there are many vulnerabilities, known or unknown, to be exploited by malicious attackers. However, not all vulnerabilities are born equal. I started to eliminate the most common inflammatory factors in my body: mainly refined starch and sugar. Refined sugar was the primary source of my allergy response, i.e., running nose, dry eyes, skin rash… I started to remove sugar from drinks and food and reduce the intake of refined carbs — our brain like glucose as fuel. And so we all have experience of sugar craving. But one week later, I no longer had a running nose in the morning. I didn’t notice it until I check the rubbish bin, and there were no paper tissues in it! Sugar, at home (I live in Hong Kong, and it is humid. Most of us live in apartments with 20+ floors). I started by using the mould removing agent and spray it on the wet area at home, such as the toilet and under the sink. Toxic mould Last but not least, from work and life. I did not quit my job, but (e.g., 5MJ) helps. The first thing I noticed was I fell asleep faster. Another useful habit is . I tried the app Headspace and started to do it every day. Meditation does not remove our stress but gives up a moment of peace. chronic pressure writing in a journal meditation Inflammation affects every part of our health, including immunity, digestion, and recovery. People like me may not notice it is a problem, and think it is normal for them to be lazy and tired easily. Once you learn more about Inflamm-aging, every day will not be the same. It would be great to see more people would pay more attention to sickness prevention than treatment. Here are some of the things I also did: Meditation Cold shower/ Ice Shower (usually in the morning) Sauna + near-infrared Bulletproof Coffee Intermittent fasting (One Day A Meal — ODAM if not much physical activity and 18/6 for exercise day) Distance Running (I started running in primary school) 5 Minutes Journal (AM + PM) Supplementation Stretching and Medical Yoga Something I am trying out: Nasal breathing practice Oil Pulling (for oral care) Audio Books when running alone If you have the same problem as me, then you may find it useful or at least understand more and have the confidence to get better every day. Thank you, and , for your guidance. The third “mentor” for me is , as (mentioned in ). Dave Asprey Aubrey Marcus Tim Ferriss my last article about 5MJ (They all agreed on some topics that I follow in the list like cold shower and meditation.) Thank you for reading — happy writing and biohacking. Also published at https://medium.com/runners-life/what-i-learned-about-inflamm-aging-from-my-own-experience-395f3942094a

How I Hacked My Own Body to Beat “Inflamm-aging”

Biohacking is one of the top buzzwords right now. People like Dave Asprey and Tim Ferriss, who through their books and podcasts shared pioneering biohacking ideas, popularized the term. Nowadays, especially in technological circles, improving your performance is a must. When you don’t optimize your sleep, take supplements, and do specific physical exercises, you’re likely to lose your competitive edge. As one of the writers on this blog said: “We are (complex) robots. Robots can be tuned and improved.” (who spent over $200K on biohacking) This statement rings true for many technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, poker players, sportspersons and even students who want to increase their productivity, health and performance by the means of biohacking. In this article, we’ll look at some of the best (and most straightforward) ideas in the biohacking department. I implemented most of them myself, and they changed my life for the better in many ways. Simply Take a Cold Shower (Or an Ice Bath) If you’re into biohacking at all, you must have heard about Wim Hof, also known as “The Iceman.” This modest Dutch guy holds 26 world records, including the one for the longest ice bath (1 hour and 52 minutes), climbing Mount Everest in his shorts and running a full marathon without a drop of water in the Namib Desert. In a recent interview on “Impact Theory” by Tom Bilyeu, The Iceman said that we grossly underestimate the amount of control we can exert over our minds and bodies. He claims that by using his method, you can decrease inflammation, have more energy and never get the flu again. Besides specialized breathing techniques, he recommends taking at least one cold shower a day (and an occasional ice bath). : Flickr / CC 2.0 — Photo Credit Wim Hof is one of the top biohackers on the planet. Go Full Keto and Drink Coffee with Coconut Milk and MCT Oil “Going keto” is about inverting the traditional nutritional pyramid and enjoying a diet consisting mostly of fat (70 percent), a bit of protein (25 percent) and a negligible amount of carbohydrates (5 percent). The aim is to switch your organism from carb dependency and let it get energy by consuming ketones (byproducts of breaking down fat for energy). This type of diet has been studied extensively, as it offers many impressive health benefits. These include: ● Weight loss ● Increase in “good” cholesterol ● Reduced sugar and insulin levels in your body ● Lower blood pressure ● Increase levels of energy and mental performance ● Improvement in brain disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimer’s As you can imagine, there’s more to it than eating only fat. It’s about eating the right fat as well as combining the diet with intermittent fasting. One thing that may help here is a caffeinated concoction famously developed by Dave Asprey, who dubbed it “bulletproof coffee.” Instead of eating a normal breakfast, you can blend your coffee with two tablespoons of coconut oil and one tablespoon of MCT oil (a concentrated compound derived from coconut oil). This mixture will keep you alert for hours and prevent hunger like nothing else. : Flickr / CC BY 2.0 — Infographic Credit A quick breakdown of the foods you can eat on a ketogenic diet. Take Care of Light and Sleep Hygiene In today’s high-achievement-oriented culture, it’s easy to overlook sleep as a waste of valuable time. Nothing can be further from the truth. Getting seven to eight hours of bedtime is essential to mental performance. That’s why biohackers work hard on optimizing every minute of it. Many top performers use the Oura Ring, a high-tech sleep tracking device to see how much time they slept, in which stage of sleep and how this changed over time. Other ideas for improving your sleep include blacking out your bedroom to help you produce melatonin (the sleep hormone) and using blue-light blocking glasses. These simple glasses, which cost $20-$50, will block the blue spectrum of light emitted by LED lights and computer screens. In turn, you’ll be able to fall asleep more easily. And when you wake up, you can turn on one of your light-therapy devices to help you wake up. There’s much more to sleep-optimization than that, but these are the basics worth keeping in mind. Now let’s look at two examples high performers who use biohacking every day to outperform their peers. I hope their stories will inspire you to start experimenting more with your mind and body. Jason Koon — Biohacking and $22 Million in Poker Earnings Biohacking infiltrates all kinds of discipline, including online poker. The human brain consumes , more than any other organ, and “firing” signals throughout millions of neurons is not an easy task. The activity, especially in the prefrontal cortex is vastly increased during demanding mental tasks. That’s why many poker players look at ways they can improve their brain machinery to outwit their opponents. around 20 percent of all of our energy One of the pioneers in this department is Jason Koon, who through his participation in live as well as gathered over $22 million in earnings. He’s not even in his mid-30s yet, so he must be doing something right. Koon has been focused on maximizing his mental performance for years. In 2017, he even organized a biohacking seminar focused solely on improving the game of poker. online poker tournaments Rick Roll — 5 Ironman-Distance Marathons in Under One Week Biohacking continues to permeate the world of sports, and many top athletes use it to complete extreme feats of endurance. One of them is Rich Roll, one of the , who completed the EPIC5 Challenge. It means going through a triathlon five times in under a week, hopping from one exotic island to the other. top biohackers in the world And that’s only one of the achievements on Roll’s resume. What’s even more impressive is that he’s following a strict vegan diet, which demonstrates clearly that you must follow keto or paleo diets to reach top performance. What are you going to do about it? As you can see, there are many ways in which you can take your performance to the next level, with the use of biohacking. It doesn’t matter if you’re into crushing your opponents during the next bout of Texas Hold ’em, an online FPS game like Counter-Strike or a business project that’s going to change your industry: the simple tricks mentioned in this article will help you improve. Do you have any other biohacking routines you’re using on a day-to-day basis? Please share them in the comments below.

How Biohacking Can Help You Reach Higher Levels of Performance

The body clock is influenced by changes in light throughout the day. Photo by . Den Heslop Edison’s commercialization of the electric light bulb quite literally changed the world. His technology helped enable the power grid, modern transportation, and ultimately the lifestyles we enjoy today. Lighting improved gradually over the last century until the recent mass adoption of LEDs. As LED lighting goes mainstream, we face new challenges. You can no longer buy a 60 Watt bulb. Instead, you have to dive deep on CCT, CRI, lumens, and other jargon. There is an increased awareness of the risks of blue light coupled with unwarranted demonization of the new technology. The lighting industry as a whole faces stagnation. How do we get out of this mess, and where do we go from here? The LED Revolution Red and green LEDs have been around for about 50 years, mostly confined to use as indicator lights in electronics. In the early 90s, three Japanese researchers at Nagoya University and Nichia Chemical created the first blue light emitting diode (LED) from gallium nitride (GaN). One of the blue LED inventors, Shuji Nakamura. Photo by . Ladislav Markuš The discovery by Nobel recipients Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura was significant because blue light can be converted to white light by means of a phosphor material. The phosphor material, for example yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG), is generally yellow in color and sits atop the LED die material. In the mid-2000s, companies started packaging blue LEDs and phosphors into bulbs and other light sources. These early products were expensive ($20-$50 for a bulb) and largely had problems with color consistency, heat, and lifetime. Today, you can buy an LED bulb for about $1.50. The cost of components dropped, along with increases in performance. According to , the cost per lumen (an amount of emitted light) decreases by a factor of 10 each decade. Haitz’s law Today, you can buy an LED bulb . That bulb has better color performance than its swirly compact fluorescent equivalent, and lasts 10,000–20,000 hours. Other LED sources can last significantly longer (50,000–100,000 hours). By contrast, an incandescent bulb may last 1,000–2,000 hours. for about $1.50 LED lamps are not far off in price from incandescent lamps at the point of sale. But their long lifetimes and low power usage mean you can save significantly more. Over the life of a cheap LED bulb, you will pay about $12, including the purchase price and energy. Five 60 Watt incandescent bulbs would cost about $78 over the same period of time. And don’t forget that you have to change the bulb five times instead of just once. You probably wouldn’t know it, but this trendy is LED. Photo by . Edison-style bulb IKEA Efforts have been made to phase out the sale of incandescent bulbs . Even though legislation has not passed in some places, the lighting industry has largely moved on to LED anyway. IKEA became in 2015, and others are making similar moves. in numerous countries the first large retailer to sell only LED lighting The efforts are working. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, LED market penetration in 2016. That’s up from just 3% in 2014. was 12.6% Massive Choice, Massive Confusion All is not well. LED had its moment of differentiation, but now it’s largely a race to the bottom in price. That $1.50 bulb purchase will happen one-fifth as often, breaking old business models. The old stalwarts struggle to compete with new discount-oriented brands. General Electric, the company Thomas Edison founded, its bulb business due to low profit margins. plans to sell People just want their 60 Watt bulb back, energy savings be damned. It’s not even all that great for consumers. That LED bulb is cheap, but you probably don’t really know what you’re getting. The Home Depot and other retail outlets don’t do a good job of explaining color temperature (CCT), lumens, and color rendering index (CRI). Manufacturers fuel the confusion with misleading terms like “soft white” and “bright white.” Early LED products were plagued with reliability issues and ugly color, further contributing to the stigma. Oh, you want to use that bulb with your existing dimmer? Forget about it. All of this leads to mass dissatisfaction. And dissatisfaction results in returns, which does not help the already low-margin consumer lighting business. People just want their 60 Watt bulb back, energy savings be damned. Things are a bit brighter in the commercial sector. LED fixtures are available in a million shapes, sizes, and colors. Energy and maintenance costs are drastically reduced, improving a building’s bottom line. Most commercial LED fixtures have no lamps to replace. They are intended to last until the next renovation. Barring any electronics failures, LEDs don’t “burn out.” They just get dimmer over time. The Lighting Facts label is now found on most lamps. But it is still not clear enough for the everyday user. Image by . DOE But the B2B sector also has its issues. Lighting controls are increasingly requested, and in some cases even . Very few manufacturers make all the components of a lighting system, leading to incompatibilities. Even when the stars align, it can be extremely costly and time-consuming to commission the system as intended. required by law The focuses so much on energy efficiency that it may ultimately impair quality of light. California, historically the most progressive state in energy regulations, , putting a higher emphasis on color performance than energy. LEDs are efficient enough, they say. But the state is now for overriding federal energy efficiency regulations. DLC standard has fought back under scrutiny Blue Light Blues At the same time, we have become aware of the effects of light on the human circadian rhythm. There’s debate about the nuances, but in general, you can sleep better and perform better when there is significant blue light during the day and very little at night. In addition to the rods and cones, there is a of photoreceptor in our eyes that is only sensitive to blue light. Instead of contributing to vision, these cells tell the body clock when it is daytime and when it is not. third type This mechanism worked well up until the last 150 years or so, before electric lighting became ubiquitous. The same lighting found in our homes and electronic devices can trick the body clock into thinking it’s daytime when it is really not. It’s not like the issue is limited to academics. People are aware of the effects of blue light, and want solutions. Circadian rhythm disruption may seem like a first world problem, less important than public health issues related to malnutrition and poverty. But it has been linked to , , and other conditions. Additionally, shift work and frequent time zone hopping can contribute to accidents on and off the job, as well as inconsistent menstrual cycles in females. breast cancer Alzheimer’s disease Apple is the only household name to have taken a significant stance on this problem, with the introduction of on iOS in early 2016 and on MacOS in 2017. Night Shift changes phone and computer screens to an orange hue at night, reducing the blue light content. Even then, the feature is not enabled by default and not widely advertised by the company. Night Shift Anecdotally, I was in an Apple Store recently. A little old lady came up to one of the employees and asked how to get the orange light back on her phone. It’s not like the issue is limited to academics. People are aware of the effects of blue light, and want solutions. Usage of blue-light emitting displays at night can disturb the body clock. Photo by . KristopherK The lighting industry, in general, has made little progress in providing straightforward products that address circadian disruption. The specification community, which includes lighting designers and architects, is begging for systems that support their latest human-centric designs. But their pleas mostly fall on deaf ears. The industry’s arguments du jour against human-centric lighting circle around: not enough research, disagreements on the spectrum of light, and complexity of integrated systems. In my opinion, these are excuses to avoid pioneering in an unverified market. The lighting giants are blind to the potential of human-centric lighting to differentiate their businesses. There is room for someone to come in and make a big splash. Circadian Lighting Several upstarts have created a category that I call circadian lighting. Broadly speaking, circadian lighting shifts in color and brightness automatically throughout the day. The morning begins with a warm, dim glow, giving way to cool, bright light during working hours. In the evening, the lighting shifts back to a warm glow. It’s a lot like and Night Shift, but for your environment. f.lux One of the most notable startups in this category is , which makes a circadian lighting system that can be installed in the home and commercial environments. It’s not particularly affordable, but the Ketra system is the most complete and ready-to-go out of the box circadian lighting solution at the moment. Ketra Not only does circadian lighting match the science, but it also just feels right. Cool, relatively bright lighting during the day makes the indoor environment seem more like outside. In the evening, dimmer, warmer light promotes relaxation. Waking up in the middle of the night, only very dim light is needed to guide the way. Otherwise, the light would startle. , a health-focused fast casual restaurant in New York City, featuring circadian lighting by . Honeybrains Ketra Ketra’s offering is by far the most impressive, but there are signs of light from other manufacturers. Philips offers an LED bulb that can change between three color settings (dim and warm at night, normal bright incandescent, and cool, bright white for the day) simply by flicking a switch. IKEA has something similar but with wireless remote controls and dimming . for about $6 for $27 These products can only be controlled manually, and thus are not true circadian lighting. But they are something you can buy today for not a lot of money to get a glimpse into the future. Light Tuned to You Circadian lighting sounds great, but what about all the other factors that can influence the circadian rhythm? What about food, social events, caffeine, alcohol, stress, and travel? A lighting system is unlikely to counteract circadian disruption completely. However, if it knows about your circadian state, the lighting could help normalize the body’s cycle of sleep and wake. The lighting in your environment would always be the right light for you. Let’s say you’re traveling to Tokyo in a week. Your destination is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. Instead of throwing your circadian rhythm into a complete 180 upon arrival, circadian lighting could help you shift to the new time zone in the days leading up. Or you’re a shift worker on the night shift. But you also have weekend activities planned with your family, most of which take place during the day. Circadian lighting could help reduce the grogginess associated with rapidly changing sleep patterns. Circadian lighting could reduce the symptoms of jet lag. Photo by . Jon Tyson What if the lighting in your home, car, office, and gym was tuned to your circadian rhythm? What if the light at your desk was different from the light at your neighbor’s desk? What about the lighting in your airplane seat and the hotel room or Airbnb thousands of miles away? What if the lighting system knows not only that is present in a room, but also that happens to be? The lighting in your environment would always be the right light for you. You never would have to do much more than dim the lights, and maybe not even that. someone who Building the Killer App LED lighting quickly moved from an expensive toy for early adopters to a cheap commodity. Now there is room for a killer app, and I believe advanced, connected circadian lighting is the answer. A great product is simple, understandable, and affordable. The pieces of the puzzle already exist to make all of this happen. A combination of GPS and an can pinpoint your precise location anywhere in the world. Info about your could come from a Fitbit or smartwatch. A would be applied to shift your circadian rhythm by the amount appropriate at any given time. indoor positioning system sleep hygiene phase response curve Estimote sells an indoor positioning system solution that could be integrated with lighting. Whoever builds a circadian lighting solution will recognize that it is no easy feat. It takes an understanding that a great product is simple, understandable, and affordable. It takes the right people working toward a uniform, opinionated vision. We’ve seen the potential of circadian lighting to positively impact people’s lives. The awareness is there, and will continue to grow. Now we’re just waiting for the right solution. Thanks for reading. If you found this article interesting, please hit the clap button above and share with your friends. I also encourage you to leave a comment or directly. contact me

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