Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way

Amazed they actually argued with the interests of advertisers so openly and not something like "well it could help crack down on insecure or hacked devices" or something like that.

And yeah, there seems to be a baseline assumption in big tech companies that it's no problem if they get unlimited control and surveillance abilities, because they're the good guys and would never abuse their privileges...

In every company I have worked so far, for the very large majority of decisions I've seen everyone try to act very ethically and morally. However, every once in a while, a temptation to make a greedy decision comes up, and what I see during the discussions of these kinds of decisions, where everyone already knows they want to make the choice that would be harmful to the customer, is that the usual detailed discussion of pros and cons that normally happens is reduced, and everyone implicitly somehow knows to focus on only talking about just the pros, both for the company and the customer. Sometimes cons for the company are mentioned, and it feels very performative, as if just to give the appearance of balance. At times when I or some other individual speaks up about the obvious harm to the customer, usually ignorance is feigned, people pretend not to understand the harm, or they counter with all the "pro-customer" points that have already been said so far.

It's never an overt thing like how you portrayed it, but it happens every single time when the perceived payoff is too enticing to pass up.

People rarely state out loud their nefarious intents when they can easily try and justify it under a completely different framing. Most people aren't dumb enough to state out loud their intent to do what the majority of people find abhorrent even if it is exactly what they intent to do.

People lie. It's what they do. It's childish to assume decisions that magically align with their interests specifically to the detriment of everyone else aren't actually motivated by their interests.

I mean, we have evidence of things that have been said e.g. in Facebook's board meetings. So those things do exist.

This seems unrelated?

I really dislike the rhetorical trick of framing any opposing argument as “apologist”. It’s the new “shill”; an attempt to attack motives rather than argument.

Regarding the PS3 specifically, that was the breaking point for subsidizing because it ended up being famously and heavily used for compute clusters. We see the same effects today where any chip useful for high end gaming is also useful for AI.

But the article isn’t saying that no form of planned obsolescence exists. If you think it’s important to make people aware of genuine planned obsolescence, then use examples of genuine planned obsolescence. Using incorrect or highly misleading examples is doing the cause a big disfavour.

You say the article is nonsense but all your points are about entirely different products/markets. So what exactly was nonsense about the article. It’s factually correct, and it’s raising awareness of something important: that we shouldn’t trust narratives just because they’re compelling and useful to make people engaged in a cause (the fight against planned obsolescence).

The kind of standardisation we got with light bulbs is exactly the thing we want: the avoid companies trying to sell you a bad product (one that wastes electricity and dumps heat in your home whether you want it or not), so they can use some less important metric (buy this! It lasts twice as long the competitors!) to sell you stuff. Basically a scam.

We don’t want to throw the baby out of the bathwater. Companies should be allowed to cooperate and set standard (NACS is a recent example) that is mutually beneficial to everyone. Then we create regulations to address egregious cases of planned obsolescence. Like EUs recent regulations for replaceable batteries - though as we now see it’s a double edged sword. Some products were made worse in a mildly significant way. That’s OK though as long as we decided that’s what we want through a democratic process.

If you put numbers on a package, the consumer will choose the bigger numbers. Taking some statistic out of context like "the typical consumer does not take reasonable account of product longevity" doesn't make sense when the only two things a lightbulb can do better are 'be brighter' and 'last longer', and both are prominently displayed on the package. The typical consumer does not pick coffee makers based on longevity because the coffee makers don't put longevity on the package, they put the number of feature buttons, and then the consumer chooses based on that instead of inferring or researching a longevity, and the actual takeaway is that consumers are bad at inference. And on this you call the article's extensive description of how lightbulbs work and how lifespan trades off with efficacy 'complete and utter nonsense'?

The video game system analysis is junk too. No, Sony and Microsoft are not in a cartel, you can tell by how they're in vicious competition with each other and Sony's winning. Assuming similar moves made at similar times is obvious proof of collusion is assuming that one party's move was just picked out of a hat, rather than market incentives prompting this move and applying equally to both companies causing both to come to the same conclusions for the same reasons. The actual reason the level of subsidization dropped, which you can find by googling for five seconds, is because they switched from bespoke hardware stacks to standard PC components, which were cheaper. No, you do not make the stupid financial move of making your hardware stack even more expensive just because your competitor made theirs more efficient.

> a typical example being the $20 coffee makers which you'll end up paying way more for than a decent one due to the fact they just constantly break.

I chuckled a bit realizing that you probably meant a decent coffee maker to cost far less than what I think a “decent” one does. Took me a moment to shake “you could buy a $20 machine every couple years for decades before you break even.”

I think a lot has to do with both luck and power quality as well.

When I got a new apartment ~10 years ago I filled it with LED bulbs. Mostly Philips hue, but also some generic stuff on Lutron controls. Had 0 failures for 7-8 years.

One summer we had weeks of power issues on my block. Transformer blew out 2-3 times and we had no power/low voltage/no power/restoration state multiple times. At this point 5-10% of my hue bulbs were fried. Pretty randomly since a bunch were in the same fixture and only a few of them died.

Its possible the hues died more than the generics since they are constantly "on" rather than behind a switch, so they experienced all of those voltage states directly.

A recent rewire saw the electrician fit LED bulbs throughout the house. Modern fire safe housings etc, plenty of ventilation.

These were not cheap off the shelf bulbs from the local store.

3 in the kitchen went after less than a year.

I contacted the manufacturer directly. Turns out they had a "bad batch". How many bulbs did I fit?

About 50..

A box of 48 bulbs turned up 2 days later.

Not a single other bulb has gone 4 years later.

Not sure what the lesson there is. You win some you lose some? It's not always down to cheap bulbs?

They have become cheaper and cut costs over time. LED bulbs bought around the l-prize time when the technology was new are heavy, you can feel their metal heatsink. New LEDs from the same reputable brand are comparatively cheap.

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

All of my led bulbs that failed were either cheap poor quality bulbs or expensive poor quality bulbs.

I have a hard time determining the quality of a bulb without running it for 2 years, and then it's a little late.

And then you have the mix and match problem. The same model number from the same manufacturer purchased at the same retailer gets different internals. So if you've got a room with 6 can lights, when one stops working properly, you have to search your inventory to see if you can replace just one, or if you have to replace all six. As long as the color is roughly the same, I don't mind a difference between rooms, but it's unacceptable when one lamp comes on instantly and the other five take a moment, or when they don't dim together, etc. I never had this problem with incandescents, as long as you bought the same color type and wattage, you could mix and match across brands. I did have one fixture that had tight tolerances for the fashion shaped large sphere bulbs it wanted, but that was fixable with a copper shim that cost one cent (and some paint on rubber insulation around the edge)

No, I started with Philips Hues but then gave up and migrated to Cree light bulbs with Lutron Casetas because the Hues kept dying. These are over 2 different houses as well. I wonder what is going on if it's just me

Same for me, have Philips Hue bulbs for the past 10 years, some 50 of them and only had one failure unrelated to the LEDs themselves.

> Maybe you're just buying cheap poor quality bulbs?

If only that were true. Osram is a well-renowned brand so you'd think their - rather pricey - 'high-wattage' (10W) bulbs meant for outside lights here on the farm would last longer than about a year, all in different armatures, all with plenty of cooling (they're mainly used in autumn/winter/spring when it tends to be rather chilly here in Sweden). You'd think cheap bulbs go bad quickly but the cheap 'Biltema' brand bulbs I bought for some rooms just keep on going without marked loss of output.

All in all the average life time of a LED bulb seems to be around 2-3 years before it either has dimmed so much that it is no longer usable or it has failed outright. There are exceptions like the mentioned cheap bulbs which are still going strong after about 9 years of close to daily use or those Osram bulbs which fail in about a year or less or the (not mentioned) 'fluorescent tube replacement fixtures' which last less than a year before one of the 4 LED segment strips fails due to a failed LED. I repair these by replacing the failed chip, they work for a few months and then the things fail again.

I've used 'efficient' lighting since I bought my first house starting with jam-jar like Philips SL 'bulbs' (compact fluorescent tubes with all the related gizmos packaged in a single replaceable unit) for which I made fixtures out of birch plywood wood, 90° PVC drain pipe bends and E27 sockets because those things were heavy at about 500 grams. None of those SL bulbs had failed when I moved out 6 years later, I still have some somewhere in storage. Later I moved to the lighter PLC version which also tended to last a long time, some of them are still in use here. Then came LED bulbs which were supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours... and I suddenly started to have to think about replacing failed bulbs again.

Same here, around 40 Philips Hue lights, 8 years old. All but one are still working fine. In the broken one the electronics went bad after about 4 years, the light was still working but would occasionally turn off or change color for no reason. Got a new one for free.

Can second this. Did my whole house in Hue and have only had one failure (early on) in 5 years.

> I bought all new Philip hue bulbs going on 7 or 8 years ago now and not a single one has gone bad.

I had a bulb go bad once (out of almost 50 bulbs), but I called their support number and they shipped me a new one for free without any hassle.

Yeah, same. I have probably around 60 Philips Hue bulbs or lamps, I bought the first one over a decade ago, and so far, one lamp has failed (a Signe that has started flickering).

2 of the 4 philips hue I bought in 2019 died a few years back, a bulb and a led stripe, I'm not buying expensive ones next time

The bulbs from about 7 to 10 years ago were far more long lasting than the new ones

I bought a whole bunch of GE LED bulbs figuring big name, probably more reliable. Nope. Diabolically bad. Never again.

same on phillips hue but maybe 3 out of 10 have died.

they might not have great QA

[dead]

Fair enough but they don't get hot, nearly any glue would work, Being plastic, I would use CA(superglue).

After failure I like to do a postmortem teardown, it has never been the LED proper, usually it is the capacitor in a capacitance power supply, otherwise the controller IC.

I moved into a house with an obscene number of GU10 LED downlighters. The bulbs were all mid market (I think) brands like Energizer etc. I’d guess they’re coming up to 7-8 years old and I have now had to replace most of them, probably 30-40 bulbs from a couple of manufacturers that all just started to fail over about 12 months.

I also have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs, I’ve had 1 fail out of 20-30 and I think that was not the LED itself but some control board. Some are going on 10 years old.

My OG gray Philips lasted more than a decade constantly on. It was still working at the end but I noticed the yellow remote phosphor plastic panels were disintegrating with a web of cracks. Underneath, the plastic surrounding the LEDs had turned brown: the polymers had photodegraded.

I had a bunch of Philips Hue LED light bulbs until they started dying within a couple of years or less and the replacement costs were ridiculous. That's when I switched to Lutron Casetas.

I agree, my Philips hue bulbs have been going strong for about 7 to 8 years now I'm not a single issue. I think people are just buying cheap bulbs then getting upset that they bought cheap bulbs.

Yes, cooling is important. I don't have a passion for lamps so after 5 years in a new house most of my LED bulbs are still hanging from the ceiling and walls, I can't remember any failure.

I had an IKEA lamp with a pretty tight fitting for the bulb and it killed LEDs after a few months. I reverted putting a fluorescent bulb inside it. No failure.

I would say most LED bulbs. You need ones specifically rated for enclosures, which are way less common, and most people have the wrong idea of what counts as enclosed (the glass hood around your kitchen chandelier bulbs is an enclosure, as are ceiling cans)

> I don't know if LED bulb packages play similar tricks but it's worth checking out.

It's perfectly logical that lifetime should be measured in hours of service, not days of existence. People don't know how to translate 7500 hours of service into a real duration, though. Hence the years.

The following anecdote doesn’t contradict what you wrote but maybe you’ll find it interesting- I worked for a daughter company of Phillips in the 00s (as an embedded programmer). I was working on mp3 players and set-top boxes but my boss has been with Phillips for decades at the time. He told me how the CD players (the ones you’d connect to speakers at home, not the portable ones) had a variety of brands, from budget to premium. But the only differences were in the external materials & the quality of the disc tray - as those are differences people notice. But everything else (and thus the audio quality) was identical.

I've been using one of these 1700K bulbs [1] for a few years, and it produces a pleasant light. They also have a 2400K model [2].

[1] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/superwarm-1700k-...

[2] https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/lux24-circadian-...

The most common setup for installations by lighting designers, sure. I suspect the vast majority of home led lighting is in lightbulb form, from people replacing incandescents.

They said for new houses.

This might be my bubble showing, but I expect this would have worked better if DC lighting became more popular 20+ years ago, when many many more people had landlines.

(I suppose a lot of people in the US still probably do have landlines, but I know very few, if any, people who do.)

Then again, my house (built in 2009) is still wired for a landline, but the wires (and the voltage on them) remain unused...

That's what I've always thought as well. The driver could also fit in the standard sockets that bulbs fit in now, with the socket/LED interface being a different standard connector.

mercury vapor lamps are not a thermal light source, though

> people would buy the bulb that lasts 50% longer and not notice the lower lumen output.

OK, but if they're fine with the lumen output, where is the problem?

They last forever. I moved into my current house over a decade ago and the only bulb I haven't had to change is the single halogen that was already in a bathroom.

With halogen, the lifespan doubles just by reducing the power by a single percent. Having a light fitting far away enough from the DB means that the tiny internal resistance of the wire going to this bulb is enough to make a difference to lifespan.

The light spectrum they produce.

Merriam Webster lists it as a valid spelling, and even uses that spelling in one of the example sentences

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misled

Have you tried Philips Ultra Definition bulbs? They have 1/6th the flicker percentage of incandescent bulbs and 1/3 the flicker index.

Here's a review I found of several bulbs for CRI, flicker, dimming performance, and spectral characteristics [1].

[1] https://www.thesmarthomehookup.com/25-soft-white-led-light-b...

There's two separate issues where LEDs still have a hard time competing with incandescent bulbs: CRI (really R9 or other deep-red measures, because CRI stats are sort of gamed) and flicker. Most LED bulbs also have poor heatsinks and are more likely to die if kept inverted or in enclosed fixtures.

All of these are individually solved problems, you just can't buy a bulb that's an e26 retrofit that satisfies all of them for whatever reason. If LED bulbs actually lasted 10 years, then there'd be 10 year warranties. Yet even the most expensive boutique LEDs (e.g. from YujiLED) are only 3 years at best.

For the vast majority of people the problem was their first exposure to LED bulbs were in harsh temperatures and they wrote them off. The lightbulb wars aren't new. It's an evergreen political football.

If you strongly prefer incandescent that's fine but it doesn't take the 5-7 years the author suggests to recoup your investment. It might, or it might not. Where your curve lands depends, but they do in fact use a lot less energy.

> I've heard a theory that it has to do with genetics and lower eye sensitivity.

Might be.

But I expect that -as you said- it's cultural, rather than biological. One's sense of color is amazingly adaptable [0], but when I do a side-by-side comparison, I find that I strongly prefer the "noontime sun" color to the "incandescent bulb orange" color. As a bonus, the "noontime sun" whitepoint is pretty close to the whitepoint of my monitors, so white things on the screen are very nearly the same color as white things on my desk.

[0] Go play the game "Return of the Obra Dinn" for like an hour straight, and then be amazed at how off your understanding of what black is has become.

Is it by deliberate choice or something like availability? I come across enough people who don't seem to notice the difference at all, or at least until it's directly pointed out.

Brightness and color temperature are orthogonal. The dimmer switch only controls brightness.

I'm pretty sure there is some movie math that you haven't considered.

Just like Han Solo made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.

Lucas acknowledged the misnomer in 1977, saying that Han modified "the navigational system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon#Kessel_Run

related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

> ...isn’t the phrase the orange site used as a derogatory sense here?

Seems likely, yeah.

> To the contrary...

Why are you -er- proposing the contrary or whatever? From my ~sixteen years of experience with HN commentary, the preemption seems totally fair and reasonable... as does getting some joy from seeing an author publish it.

Probably the down votes are from people who have no idea what you're going on about, or what it's got to do with an article entirely about the early history of incandescent bulbs.