9 ms·

IMO, the best example of this is CF lightbulbs. How many people have have lived / are living with absolutely terrible light and usage ergonomics (and will do s

by rsync 6y ago

IMO, the best example of this is CF lightbulbs. How many people have have lived / are living with absolutely terrible light and usage ergonomics (and will do so for years more) because of that stillborn "technology" ? The kicker is that after 20 years of bad lighting environment, you have a local mercury disposal issue, regardless of how much mercury might have been saved in total emissions over the bulbs lifetime.

cultus 6y ago
Not to mention the CFLs never lasted anywhere near as long as advertised, which is annoying and exacerbates the mercury situation further. This is why the environmental impact of something should always be examined holistically instead of just zeroing in on one particular aspect.
CamperBob2 6y ago
I don't know anyone still using CFLs (edit: meaning, still buying) them. We use LEDs now, which are better than either CFLs or incandescents. Anyone who says differently either uses weird light bulbs, which is a valid excuse, or has a closet full of hoarded tungsten bulbs they wish they could sell, which isn't.
- samatman 6y ago
  This supports the point. Incandescents were banned, and CFLs were heavily promoted and subsidized to replace them. Meanwhile, along came a superior technology, ten times as energy efficient, longer lasting, and with a broader range of light which is at least as good. So all that heavy-handed regulation produced, was an era of inferior light, a mercury disposal problem, and the inability to acquire incandescents for applications such as heating, which they're excellent for. Sometimes a lot of heat and a bit of light is what you want, and most of those devices have an Edison socket. To head off one objection: any technically competent person could have taken a look at the trajectory of LED technology and said "hold on, CFLs suck, how about we just hang back and wait five to ten years?". LED bulbs were hardly a black swan.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    Actually, good-quality LED replacement bulbs were around for several years prior to the ban. They just cost an arm and a leg. The ban didn't force the technology to magically appear -- something that hardly ever happens due to legislation alone -- but it did drive competition and force an economy of scale that would otherwise have been much slower to develop.
    - samatman 6y ago
      So the subsidy backed the wrong horse, and the ban eliminated a useful technology, but it also accidentally supported buildout of LED bulbs, which we could have just accomplished by subsidizing LED tech and not banning incandescents? Yeah, that seems about par for the course for this kind of regulation. Sometimes a blind cat catches a dead mouse.
      - CamperBob2 6y ago
        Note that the ban didn't prescribe CFLs, it only proscribed incandescents. Yes, it was arguably premature, but it's going to be very hard to convince me that it was the wrong thing to do in retrospect. It didn't eliminate any technologies, either. I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I?
        jandrese 6y ago
        There are still a few places where I use incandescent bulbs. Inside of my oven for example. But I'm totally fine with them being relegated to specialist niches.
        marcosdumay 6y ago
        > I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I? My father had a really hard time getting them for an egg incubator a while ago. A problem that was solved by replacing the incubator (more trash).
        6y ago
- bityard 6y ago
  My house is full of CFLs. When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs because we were in that brief period where they were legitimately the best option due to being good enough and cheap enough compared to incandescent. Good LED bulbs (Cree) were still expensive enough that I would have had to drop a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole house. Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap, and I will replace dead CFLs with them today but for now the existing CFLs work fine and only use marginally more power than LEDs. As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    When I was in that transition, I’d rotate the CFLs to the low-use locations as I rolled out the LEDs. Still have a few 100w équivalent CFL monsters in the laundry room.
  - gorkish 6y ago
    > Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap I take exception to this. Bad LED bulbs are common and cheap. Your average $5 bulb from the big box has about 3 common failure modes, all of which are exacerbated by heat. I haven't been able to buy a decent LED bulb at any brick and mortar retailer in years. Meanwhile my 20 year old sylvania LED bulbs which are basically giant heatsinks all still work great. Now you know why nobody makes those anymore.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Yup. LED bulbs were good until the market competition caught up. Now they're mostly shit. At this point, I shop for LEDs at IKEA. Tad more expensive, but they don't break after couple of months because someone soldered them on their knee in the middle of a Shenzhen marketplace (been there, seen that), making them overheat and eventually pop something off the circuit board. And then I know people who got so pissed at LED bulbs they switched back to incandescent. Because turns out that the ban on incandescent bulbs in my country worked for about a year or two, before the stores got flooded with boxes of these, each with a label telling you it's not suitable for use at home, but only in storage buildings, etc. Which got the sellers off the hook, and also got the manufacturers off the hook for quality issues. My mother had a brief moment of weakness, but after two of these "legal" incandescents literally exploded over our heads, shattered glass flying everywhere, I convinced her to go back to buying LEDs.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I haven't stopped using incandescents myself, they.re getting hard to find. I went through them all, CFLs are awful, halogens die as fast as incandescents, if not faster, i've had a bunch of those where the glass just separates from the metal leaving the filament exposed and personally I can't stand the light from LEDs. It hurts my eyes and gives me a headache and honestly, I haven't noticed much difference in lifespan with LED bulbs i've tried, they still end up needing to be replaced in about a year or so. I remember when we switched my old workplace from fluorescents to LEDs everybody at complained for weeks about headaches and sore eyes.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    Stop buying cheap LEDs. Lookup tear down reviews on YouTube and make sure you get ones with the color temp you like.
    - nate_meurer 6y ago
      High CRI and lack of flicker are also important.
    - grawprog 6y ago
      I realize for people on HN, who live in magic rich people land where money is no concern spending a bunch of money on expensive light bulbs is no issue, but for those of us without large six-seven figure salaries, i'm not spending more that a few dollars per bulb. I've got better things to put my money towards.
      - stordoff 6y ago
        That can turn out to be false economy. I had some cheap LED bulbs, and six failed in the first year. With some Amazon Basics bulbs, that were only 10-20% more expensive, none have failed in the first year (in the same light fitting and with the same supply).
        grawprog 6y ago
- abawany 6y ago
  Some of the cheaper LEDs are still not recommended in use for enclosed fixtures so I keep my semi-retired cfls around for use in such fixtures.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  You know? I have about 2 dozen 100w E27 superspecial contraband Osrams stowed away somewhere, and don't wish to sell them :) OTOH I indeed don't really need them anymore (maybe as a temporary spare) because meanwhile I also upgraded everything to warmwhite(2700k) retrofit filaments, which saves much energy and doesn't flicker at all. They are Osram(by name only, meanwhile chinese owned) "PARATHOM Retrofit CLASSIC A" and "B". No smarts, no frills, no dimming. Just the right light. I'm using the clear ones from 2.5W to 8W. Compared to anything I've tried before they are excellent, and the first ones meanwhile about 3 years old? None of them broke so far. [1] https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lamps/professional-led-lamps-with-filament-style-led-technology/parathom-retrofit-classic-a/ https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lam...
romwell 6y ago
Stillborn technology? How about "good enough" technology, and by "good enough", I mean something that's better than incandescent. Everyone has their metric, mine is how often I need to replace a bulb. I am a lazy person, I don't want to think about things if I can avoid it, see. In my experience, CFL bulbs were bright enough, and lasted much longer than incandescent ones. Plus, they are way less of a fire hazard, and I don't have to worry about scorching my hand on a desk lamp. Environmentally, they are a disaster though.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  CFL bulbs never lasted as long as halogen for me, and often less long than incandescents, particularly when recessed.
  - deelowe 6y ago
    CFLs have all of their components in the base. They try to use the screw portion of the bulb as a heatsink, but it doesn't really work. If the base can't get decent airflow, they burn out.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  In my experience the CFLs weren't bright enough, at least not instantly, were more expensive and failed faster. Without exception none made it to 6 months of use. My incandescents lasted several years. Maybe it depends on the quality of the power company and/or the internal cabling? Regarding the environmental disaster, why would you think that, given that the same technology was in use in much larger volumes since the 70ies or even earlier in commercial settings, offices and even homes? Lacking only the compactness, requiring external "ballast" and starters. When I was young we had a large ring, maybe 40 to 50cm diameter under the ceiling in the kitchen, and I disliked it even then for looking "fugly" somehow. Oh, and the ring never lasted more than about half a year also :)
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Mine actually worked well enough. Or at least they would have if they hadn't had such shitty power supplies. Every one of mine that burned out died because of an overheating power supply rather than because the actual bulb burnt out. This is a problem with a lot of LED bulbs too. Great light source that lasts 30,000 hours; shitty power supply that lasts 800 hours.
yongjik 6y ago
I personally like CFL. They are more efficient, don't get as hot as incandescent bulbs, and unlike incandescent bulbs, you can actually get light that approaches white. Also they're much less bulky and easier to handle than traditional (lightsaber-shaped) fluorescent lamps. What's not to like? Also, each bulb contains only a few mg of mercury. Tuna has ~0.3 ppm of mercury, so if you eat two pounds of tuna then you'll ingest about 0.3 mg of mercury. I don't think you'll ingest more than 10% of mercury even if you break a CFL, so roughly speaking, "breaking a CFL" is the same order of magnitude as "two pounds of tuna" - doesn't sound that dangerous to me.
Tagbert 6y ago
CFL was a transitional tech. I’ve just about finished migrating our house to LEDs and they are worlds better than either CFL or Incandescent.

by rsync 6y ago

cultus 6y ago

Not to mention the CFLs never lasted anywhere near as long as advertised, which is annoying and exacerbates the mercury situation further. This is why the environmental impact of something should always be examined holistically instead of just zeroing in on one particular aspect.

CamperBob2 6y ago

I don't know anyone still using CFLs (edit: meaning, still buying) them. We use LEDs now, which are better than either CFLs or incandescents. Anyone who says differently either uses weird light bulbs, which is a valid excuse, or has a closet full of hoarded tungsten bulbs they wish they could sell, which isn't.

samatman 6y ago
This supports the point. Incandescents were banned, and CFLs were heavily promoted and subsidized to replace them. Meanwhile, along came a superior technology, ten times as energy efficient, longer lasting, and with a broader range of light which is at least as good. So all that heavy-handed regulation produced, was an era of inferior light, a mercury disposal problem, and the inability to acquire incandescents for applications such as heating, which they're excellent for. Sometimes a lot of heat and a bit of light is what you want, and most of those devices have an Edison socket. To head off one objection: any technically competent person could have taken a look at the trajectory of LED technology and said "hold on, CFLs suck, how about we just hang back and wait five to ten years?". LED bulbs were hardly a black swan.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  Actually, good-quality LED replacement bulbs were around for several years prior to the ban. They just cost an arm and a leg. The ban didn't force the technology to magically appear -- something that hardly ever happens due to legislation alone -- but it did drive competition and force an economy of scale that would otherwise have been much slower to develop.
  - samatman 6y ago
    So the subsidy backed the wrong horse, and the ban eliminated a useful technology, but it also accidentally supported buildout of LED bulbs, which we could have just accomplished by subsidizing LED tech and not banning incandescents? Yeah, that seems about par for the course for this kind of regulation. Sometimes a blind cat catches a dead mouse.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      Note that the ban didn't prescribe CFLs, it only proscribed incandescents. Yes, it was arguably premature, but it's going to be very hard to convince me that it was the wrong thing to do in retrospect. It didn't eliminate any technologies, either. I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I?
      - jandrese 6y ago
        There are still a few places where I use incandescent bulbs. Inside of my oven for example. But I'm totally fine with them being relegated to specialist niches.
      - marcosdumay 6y ago
        > I can still buy incandescents if I insist... but why would I? My father had a really hard time getting them for an egg incubator a while ago. A problem that was solved by replacing the incubator (more trash).
        6y ago
bityard 6y ago
My house is full of CFLs. When we moved in, I replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs because we were in that brief period where they were legitimately the best option due to being good enough and cheap enough compared to incandescent. Good LED bulbs (Cree) were still expensive enough that I would have had to drop a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole house. Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap, and I will replace dead CFLs with them today but for now the existing CFLs work fine and only use marginally more power than LEDs. As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  When I was in that transition, I’d rotate the CFLs to the low-use locations as I rolled out the LEDs. Still have a few 100w équivalent CFL monsters in the laundry room.
- gorkish 6y ago
  > Good LED bulbs are now common and cheap I take exception to this. Bad LED bulbs are common and cheap. Your average $5 bulb from the big box has about 3 common failure modes, all of which are exacerbated by heat. I haven't been able to buy a decent LED bulb at any brick and mortar retailer in years. Meanwhile my 20 year old sylvania LED bulbs which are basically giant heatsinks all still work great. Now you know why nobody makes those anymore.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Yup. LED bulbs were good until the market competition caught up. Now they're mostly shit. At this point, I shop for LEDs at IKEA. Tad more expensive, but they don't break after couple of months because someone soldered them on their knee in the middle of a Shenzhen marketplace (been there, seen that), making them overheat and eventually pop something off the circuit board. And then I know people who got so pissed at LED bulbs they switched back to incandescent. Because turns out that the ban on incandescent bulbs in my country worked for about a year or two, before the stores got flooded with boxes of these, each with a label telling you it's not suitable for use at home, but only in storage buildings, etc. Which got the sellers off the hook, and also got the manufacturers off the hook for quality issues. My mother had a brief moment of weakness, but after two of these "legal" incandescents literally exploded over our heads, shattered glass flying everywhere, I convinced her to go back to buying LEDs.
grawprog 6y ago
I haven't stopped using incandescents myself, they.re getting hard to find. I went through them all, CFLs are awful, halogens die as fast as incandescents, if not faster, i've had a bunch of those where the glass just separates from the metal leaving the filament exposed and personally I can't stand the light from LEDs. It hurts my eyes and gives me a headache and honestly, I haven't noticed much difference in lifespan with LED bulbs i've tried, they still end up needing to be replaced in about a year or so. I remember when we switched my old workplace from fluorescents to LEDs everybody at complained for weeks about headaches and sore eyes.
- driverdan 6y ago
  Stop buying cheap LEDs. Lookup tear down reviews on YouTube and make sure you get ones with the color temp you like.
  - nate_meurer 6y ago
    High CRI and lack of flicker are also important.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    I realize for people on HN, who live in magic rich people land where money is no concern spending a bunch of money on expensive light bulbs is no issue, but for those of us without large six-seven figure salaries, i'm not spending more that a few dollars per bulb. I've got better things to put my money towards.
    - stordoff 6y ago
      That can turn out to be false economy. I had some cheap LED bulbs, and six failed in the first year. With some Amazon Basics bulbs, that were only 10-20% more expensive, none have failed in the first year (in the same light fitting and with the same supply).
      - grawprog 6y ago
abawany 6y ago
Some of the cheaper LEDs are still not recommended in use for enclosed fixtures so I keep my semi-retired cfls around for use in such fixtures.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
You know? I have about 2 dozen 100w E27 superspecial contraband Osrams stowed away somewhere, and don't wish to sell them :) OTOH I indeed don't really need them anymore (maybe as a temporary spare) because meanwhile I also upgraded everything to warmwhite(2700k) retrofit filaments, which saves much energy and doesn't flicker at all. They are Osram(by name only, meanwhile chinese owned) "PARATHOM Retrofit CLASSIC A" and "B". No smarts, no frills, no dimming. Just the right light. I'm using the clear ones from 2.5W to 8W. Compared to anything I've tried before they are excellent, and the first ones meanwhile about 3 years old? None of them broke so far. [1] https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lamps/professional-led-lamps-with-filament-style-led-technology/parathom-retrofit-classic-a/ https://www.ledvance.com/professional/products/lamps/led-lam...

romwell 6y ago

Stillborn technology? How about "good enough" technology, and by "good enough", I mean something that's better than incandescent. Everyone has their metric, mine is how often I need to replace a bulb. I am a lazy person, I don't want to think about things if I can avoid it, see. In my experience, CFL bulbs were bright enough, and lasted much longer than incandescent ones. Plus, they are way less of a fire hazard, and I don't have to worry about scorching my hand on a desk lamp. Environmentally, they are a disaster though.

aidenn0 6y ago
CFL bulbs never lasted as long as halogen for me, and often less long than incandescents, particularly when recessed.
- deelowe 6y ago
  CFLs have all of their components in the base. They try to use the screw portion of the bulb as a heatsink, but it doesn't really work. If the base can't get decent airflow, they burn out.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
In my experience the CFLs weren't bright enough, at least not instantly, were more expensive and failed faster. Without exception none made it to 6 months of use. My incandescents lasted several years. Maybe it depends on the quality of the power company and/or the internal cabling? Regarding the environmental disaster, why would you think that, given that the same technology was in use in much larger volumes since the 70ies or even earlier in commercial settings, offices and even homes? Lacking only the compactness, requiring external "ballast" and starters. When I was young we had a large ring, maybe 40 to 50cm diameter under the ceiling in the kitchen, and I disliked it even then for looking "fugly" somehow. Oh, and the ring never lasted more than about half a year also :)

dreamcompiler 6y ago

Mine actually worked well enough. Or at least they would have if they hadn't had such shitty power supplies. Every one of mine that burned out died because of an overheating power supply rather than because the actual bulb burnt out. This is a problem with a lot of LED bulbs too. Great light source that lasts 30,000 hours; shitty power supply that lasts 800 hours.

yongjik 6y ago

I personally like CFL. They are more efficient, don't get as hot as incandescent bulbs, and unlike incandescent bulbs, you can actually get light that approaches white. Also they're much less bulky and easier to handle than traditional (lightsaber-shaped) fluorescent lamps. What's not to like? Also, each bulb contains only a few mg of mercury. Tuna has ~0.3 ppm of mercury, so if you eat two pounds of tuna then you'll ingest about 0.3 mg of mercury. I don't think you'll ingest more than 10% of mercury even if you break a CFL, so roughly speaking, "breaking a CFL" is the same order of magnitude as "two pounds of tuna" - doesn't sound that dangerous to me.

Tagbert 6y ago

CFL was a transitional tech. I’ve just about finished migrating our house to LEDs and they are worlds better than either CFL or Incandescent.