"He recommended I use a hot compress at least once a week for 10 minutes and to look away from the screen in a method called the 20-20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes take 20 seconds to look at an object at least 20 feet away and blink 20 times."

Is there any evidence that this treatment actually works?

I can give only anecdotal evidence. I do this reasonably regularly. It's mainly to combat meibomian gland dysfunction and works by heating up the oils in and around the glands so that the dry build-up clears, and the glands can function a bit more normally. They should be releasing oil throughout the day to keep the surface of your eye from drying out.

I think you need to be careful not to overdo compresses, and associated massage, as the glands are also delicate and you can damage them, but for me it results in much more comfortable eyes and better vision when I do it semi regularly.

I've been doing this on and off for decades now, thanks to blepharitis and the associated gland dysfunction you mention. The fact that I stare at a screen all day certainly doesn't help and I've had to stop wearing contact lenses even though my prescription is quite strong and any sort of glasses screw up my peripheral vision.

The downside to the compress (other than the one you mentioned) is the simple fact that I can't always just nuke my little eye-pad thing and lean back for 10 minutes several times per day at work. Even when I'm able to do it a few times per day as my eye doctors have suggested, any relief is relatively short-lived and doesn't treat anything long-term.

It sucks because my eyes almost always feel irritated or dry and no manner of lubricating drops, antibiotic drops, or hot compresses have helped. I've tried a few less tested but ultimately harmless things like fish oil supplements (since they're cheap and effects seem to range from unnoticeable to possible systemic benefits in the long term).

My takeaway has been that there's really no "cure" for blepharitis or chronic inflammation and meibomian gland dysfunction. All you can really do is minimize the things that exacerbate it and deal with it.

Well no cure aside maybe not looking at a backlight. I really wish there were marketed displays without a backlight. There's got to be a way.

I've been wanting this for ages. And more simply, I want brightness controls that go all the way down to zero.

Seems like there could be a Kickstarter. I'd want a high resolution external eink display as a secondary monitor. The refresh rate would be hell, but it'd be okay for text work.

I've been wanting something like this for ages. Even as a small-scale secondary monitor, it'd be great to toss static text like tickets or APIs onto an eink display.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader uses Lua so maybe one could add some bidirectional or at least PC->Reader flow of data.

edit: VNC! https://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/660-Using_my_Kobo_eBook...