Live data from Hacker News

Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

nature.com

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#31
post #13

I made a (what most people would consider terrible) vim color scheme that has no blue light in it (it's like an old amber terminal). Initially I thought I would hate it and switch back in a couple days/weeks, but I actually find it very nice, and switching to anything w/ blue light or a "normal color scheme" with blues and greens now weirdly feels like an assault. Feel free to give it a whirl: https://github.com/camg…

For those that don't use vim, here are roughly the colours

- orange #ff8700 for text

- darker orange #d75f00 for bold

- lighter orange #ffaf00 for comments

- red #5f0000 for errors

- dark grey #1c1c1c (and #121212) for backgrounds (text in the lighter themes).

- off yellow #875f00 and #afaf00 for some status/wild menu

- git diff orange #ff5f00

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#32

e-ink laptop pls

I recently got the Dasung Not-eReader and while it has its quirks it works pretty well overall, especially as mini-screen for my laptop. It is fast enough for me to work in vim without any ghosting. And it allows me to actually do some work outside. But I agree, having an actual eInk laptop would be fantastic.

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#33

Their model animal is a fly (Drosophila). I can imagine that impacting the claims significantly. Insects and mammals differ quite a lot. I wouldn’t expect the same results in mammals (or any animals really).

> Insects and mammals differ quite a lot. They can still be merged in teleportation accidents.

Found Jeff Goldblum's account.

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#34

The report also states that flies living with blue LEDs with yellow filters lived more-or-less as long as the flies grown in darkness. That's rather comforting to me as most if not all LED fixtures have these.

Most LED fixtures emit a lot of blue, even if the bulb appears a different color. As far as I know, "bug bulbs" are the only ones that actually filter out all the blue- which attracts bugs.

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#35
post #13

I made a (what most people would consider terrible) vim color scheme that has no blue light in it (it's like an old amber terminal). Initially I thought I would hate it and switch back in a couple days/weeks, but I actually find it very nice, and switching to anything w/ blue light or a "normal color scheme" with blues and greens now weirdly feels like an assault. Feel free to give it a whirl: https://github.com/camg…

Installation instructions, for those with Drosophila-like memory (like me): $ md ~/.vim/colors $ cd ~/.vim/colors $ curl -LO https://github.com/camgunz/amber/raw/master/colors/amber.vim $ vim amber.vim in vim :colorscheme amber :set background=light :set background=dark I like the look of it, though the syntax highlighting isn't as distinguishing as default (for java). BTW: I code on a phone, and set the colour tempe…

Code on a phone!? When I first started it was an orange terminal, DOS3 something. @hyperpalluim is giving me the "Future Shock" I used to hear the old folks talk about...but still using VI?! On the phone!? I'm having some really mixed feeling now

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#36
post #27

Surely walking around outside exposes you to plenty of blue light. I think the issue is when people stay up late working at the computer.

Note that the study involves exposing the flies for 12h a day, not all day every day.

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#37
post #13

I made a (what most people would consider terrible) vim color scheme that has no blue light in it (it's like an old amber terminal). Initially I thought I would hate it and switch back in a couple days/weeks, but I actually find it very nice, and switching to anything w/ blue light or a "normal color scheme" with blues and greens now weirdly feels like an assault. Feel free to give it a whirl: https://github.com/camg…

If you're on a Mac could you just use Flux or Night Shift to achieve the same result of removing all blue light from your display?

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#38
What intensity of light, for how long compared to sunlight?

Every time I hear these blue-light crusaders I am reminded of that “iPads are bad for reading” so-called experiment where the iPads were fixed to the desktop set at maximum brightness with a custom font chosen by the experiment lead. Basically attempting to make life as uncomfortable for the subjects as possible, then blaming all the negative effects on blue light emitted by the iPad.

So short version: is this study meaningful in an way or does it shorten lifespan by using extremely bright blue light for many hours longer than a natural day/night cycle?

edit: they maintained similar photon flux density so the blue light would have been extremely bright to compensate for being a single wavelength.

Edit2: the actually useful words in that linked paper are about two paragraphs, the rest is baseless speculation. An effect was observed, with no mechanism described, therefore extrapolation beyond the experimental conditions is entirely in the realm of fan fiction and soap opera (ie: emotive drama).

Re: Daily blue light shortens lifespan, causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila

#39
post #36
post #27

Surely walking around outside exposes you to plenty of blue light. I think the issue is when people stay up late working at the computer.

Note that the study involves exposing the flies for 12h a day, not all day every day.

At what intensity compared to sunlight or iPad screens?
Post reply on HN