Aargh! My EYEBALLS are MELLLTING! Curse this DEVIL LAPTOP

According to a recent study, lap-warming, ball-cooking laptops pose yet another threat to users, and this time it crosses the gender divide: "Computer Vision Syndrome". "On top of this, recent in-vitro (or experimental) studies conducted by UCM and Dr Celia Sánchez-Ramos, an important expert on ocular phototoxicity, have shown …

[Woza]

Not just an expert,

An *important* expert.

Well, I'm sold.

[big_D]

Re: Not just an expert,

"I strenuously object?" Is that how it works? Hm? "Objection." "Overruled." "Oh, no, no, no. No, I STRENUOUSLY object." "Oh. Well, if you strenuously object then I should take some time to reconsider."

Hmm, that is the second time that quote has come to mind in 2 days, reading articles and comments on this site...

[Kubla Cant]

Re: Not just an expert,

I object

Overruled

sudo I object

oh, well, ...

[Paul J Turner]

Almost news

Photochemical degradation of the retina by the light from the Blue LED used in 'White' LEDs from 2010.

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2010/11/light-and-human-health-led-risks-highlighted.html

A form of Actinism basically - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinism

Just updated to take account of white LED backlights in LCD screens.

[Splodger]

Re: Almost news

You can get your screen to automatically change colour temperature according to the time of day - get rid of the blue glow in the evening. Great FREE and lightweight little background prog, an a lot easier on the old eyeballs:

You can get it here: F.lux

'They' should build it into tellies too.

[Anomalous Cowturd]

Re: F.Lux

Something similar for Debian / Ubuntu users, and probably other *nixes is available at

http://jonls.dk/redshift/

Source is available on github too.

Works fine for me.

[Mark 85]

Is this like certain other things?

"The Madrid study tested someone looking at the equivalent of a 100watt light bulb, at a distance of 12 inches for 12 hours a day... And this isn’t something a normal person would be doing."

Is this like the tests where the rats were tested for certain sweeteners where a human would have had to drink something like 300 gallons of diet soda a day to get cancer from them? Like I'm going to look at that light bulb too....

[Elmer Phud]

Re: Is this like certain other things?

"Is this like the tests where the rats were tested for certain sweeteners where a human would have had to drink something like 300 gallons of diet soda a day to get cancer from them? Like I'm going to look at that light bulb too...."

Well, I heard you can die from smoking cannabis . . .

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Is this like certain other things?

>Well, I heard you can die from smoking cannabis . . .

There was a study where rats were given cannabis to smoke and then terriers wearing SWAT team jackets were released into the cage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not impressed

"The Madrid study tested someone looking at the equivalent of a 100watt light bulb, at a distance of 12 inches for 12 hours a day

Not that I lean much towards the PETA extreme, but I do find it repulsive that people are still doing nasty things to animals just to provide marginally useful data.

[Phil O'Sophical]

"in-vitro" studies?

Must have been quite a test-tube if they could get a laptop and a rat into it.

[Destroy All Monsters]

This will then be the "Alex Laptop"

But besides referencing Clockwork Orange, wasn't it in Neuromancer that there was a guy whose retinas had "permanent scanline burn-in"?

[Ketlan]

Pffft...

"Or so says Reticare, a company that, guess what, makes a shield which will "protect" you from this damage."

There's a surprise.

[Squander Two]

Re: Pffft...

No, this reasoning is nonsense. This particular bit of research looks like bollocks, frankly, but that's because it's along the lines of "Chocolate is lethally poisonous if you eat four hundredweight of it in twenty minutes", not because they're selling stuff. You may as well complain that engineers' knowledge of structural mechanics is all suspect because they're obviously just trying to push the price of bridges up.

[rurwin]

Hack job

I wish articles like this would reference the original papers that they are based on, not just some other hack article based on a press release.

"In vitro" indicates that this was not a live animal study -- no rats were forced to play Quake for twelve hours a day. They appear to have shone bright light on retina cells in a test tube (or more likely a petri dish).

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

100W bulb vs 13" screen

Physics would suggest the irradiance on the retina (W/m^2) as a function of wavelength would be the deciding factor for disease. A 100W bulb at at 30cm covers a much smaller solid angle in the field of view than my laptop screen at normal distance (some ten times smaller according to my BotE (back of the envelope) calculations. Assuming an incandescent light bulb, and assuming LEDs are ten times more efficient than an incandescent light, this suggests the power draw of the screen would need to be 100W to deliver the same irradiance on the retina (albeit over a larger surface area). Given the 58 Wh capacity of my old laptop battery, I would drain it in roughly 35 minutes assuming the processor, memory and disk have no power draw at all.

I think I can safely say the irradiance on the retina is at least one, if not two orders of magnitude lower, as I know too well after replacing a 100W equivalent lamp, and it turned out some joker had flipped the switch to the "on" position while I was doing it. Having such a bright light popping on at about 10" from your face is not fun at all. Watching my laptop screen is not a problem at all.

[Joe User]

In other words...

The gist of these studies: Don't let your mice use your laptop all day long.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Blinded by LEDs

Given how many manufacturers like to cram super-bright blue LEDs into their products, I don't doubt you could go blind from them. I wonder when device manufacturers will realize that blue LEDs produce a far more intense light than the same amount of energy in a red or green LED. There have been many times that I've walked into a datacenter and have been temporarily blinded by locator LEDs right at eye-level.