Let's hope it isn't true :o/

The condition is called macular degeneration. My mum has a bit of that going on. It creates "holes" in the sufferers vision. The brain compensates though if it's not a severe case so you still can see without a big hole in your vision but you would notice it when trying to focus on something like book.
 
Thing is staring at any light source for extended periods is likely to have an effect. I can't imagine sitting at a computer is any worse than staring at an old style TV. I'd also think that the more modern LCD, LED, or whatever displays are a heckuva a lot better than the big old CRTs blasting away at your eyeballs all the time.
 
Sounds like some scientists did a study blasting really bright LED lights into some poor woodland creature's eyeballs for 24/7 leading to inevitable results, some journalist got a hold of the data and twisted into some alarmist nonsense about how "COMPUTORBS R GONNA FRY YER EYEBALLZ!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!". Happens all the time. Someone wants to sell some newspapers or get some extra page clicks so they take a valid scientific study, make their owned uninformed and unscientific conclusions then regurgitate it to the public. Then if the people who did the study bother to correct the misinformation the media freaks who already have their money MAY post some kind of subtle retraction nobody will ever see and their audience repeat the faulty information in perpetuity making people do silly things like rub colloidial silver on their buttholes or punch themselves repeatedly in the groin to reinvigorate their sperm.
 
If something in the news seems like it might be fer real and affect me personally I try to read about it from multiple sources and check out where the info originated from. Most of the time it turns out I'm not actually going to die a fiery death or have my eyes explode in their sockets.

This is bad news for many. I hope the research will be proven wrong.

bapu
I have two floaters.
 
Then I flush.
 
 
Seriously, I have two floaters. One in each eye. I'll be 63 next month and I'm told it's not uncommon. They come and go. Usually last a day and I've gone months without seeing them.

A few years ago I was starting to get a ridiculous amount of floaters (the eyeball kind... not the terlet kind) that I thought my retinas were detaching (which is one of the things that can happen with my condition). I went to the eye doc and fortunately my eyeballs were not about to fall out of my head. Apparently they can actually see those little goobers floating around in there. He said eventually the brain gets used to them and tunes them out (kind of like how your brain will eventually stop making you hear chronic ear ringing). I got some glasses and eventually they "went away" even though they are probably still there.
 
The hooman body tis a strange thing.

Beepster
Albino rats, eh? Their genetic similarities to humans are great for testing for obvious reasons but, and I'm no science talkin' dude here, considering one of the traits of albino anything is those freaky pink eyes lacking the pigment(?) of non albino eyes I wonder if they are the appropriate test animal for such studies. I seem to recall reading that just like with darker skin tones darker eyes are less susceptible to damage. So if there is a significant risk perhaps those with brown eyes are less likely to suffer ill effects.
 
I have brown eyes so hopefully this won't affect me too much. Then again, as they say, I may just be full of...pigment.

Definitely albino rats (and people) are more susceptible to light injury than normal ones. But it is not so much the color of the iris (the part that we refer to when we say eye color) that is protective, but the pigmentation of the retina itself. Normally the black that you see when you look at the pupil is because the retinal pigmentepithelium absorbs most of the light that reaches it after passing through the sensory cell layers. Without melanocytes more light is scattered, and reflected, acuity is reduced and more damage is likely from the same amount of light entering the eye.
 
 

Black dog?