7 ms·

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

190 points by tonyg 2mo ago

dybovalex 2mo ago
Tungsten will burn in an oxygen atmosphere, therefore standard light bulbs actually use an inert gas (like argon). The gas pressure slows down tungsten evaporation and prevents oxidation. The main reason for short living of the bulbs is that the filament gradually evaporating over time until it thins out and snaps.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
montag 2mo ago
Misled
- enobrev 2mo ago
  I've been seeing the misspelling of the past tense of lead (led) incredibly often in the past couple years. It's clearly confusing that lead is an actual word, so it may seem right and likely doesn't get caught by auto-correct, although I assume grammar correction should catch it.
  - Austizzle 2mo ago
    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 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misled
    - enobrev 2mo ago
      Mislead is the present tense; Misled, the past tense. I'm not seeing the tenses being used interchangeably with the same spelling on the site, but I may be missing it.
freediddy 2mo ago
I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.
- pier25 2mo ago
  Some of the first LED bulbs we bought are still running after more than 10 years. I don't remember the brand but they were expensive at the time.
- convolvatron 2mo ago
  I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.
- ValentineC 2mo ago
  Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail. The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
  - Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
    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.
    - Marsymars 2mo ago
      It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours. None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.
jsLavaGoat 2mo ago
5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it. My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.
- Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
  I do something similar and all my Philips hue bulbs are going strong after 7 to 8 years. I think people just get upset with themselves for being cheap.
- TacticalCoder 2mo ago
  > Show me a non-LED that can do that. Many of use simply don't find LED lights, no matter the color they try to simulate, enjoyable. I find my LED lights, including fancy decorative ones, bearable only because I always use one real, old-school, warm white (more like yellow really), incandescent (hence non-LED) light in my living room. And, yup, if you know what you're looking for, it's totally possible to still buy incandescent lightbulbs. LED lights, no matter the shade/color always give such a fake / non-cosy feeling to just about everything. I'm taking an actual candle + an incandescent lightbulb's warmth feeling any day over anything LED. Now as I'm also conscious about saving the planet, I'll mix those with mostly LED lights. But having one incandescent lightbulb (and/or one candle) really creates, to many of us, a better atmosphere than pure LED lighting. It's the old "you're eyes cannot detect more than 24 fps" all over again: "you cannot detect the flickering of a LED light". Except I can instantly tell if it's the cold (no matter how "warm white" the box says it is) light of a LED or the actual warm light of a proper incandescent lightbulb.
  - krackers 2mo ago
    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.
WarmWash 2mo ago
That top paragraph is a masterclass in modern media standards. Tell the truth will hiding facts so your readers can be reassured that they are in fact smart and correct, while you never have to tell a lie.
BGizzle 2mo ago
You have been misled about spelling misled
wolfgangK 2mo ago
BTW, I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default. For a new house, it seems to make sense to me to have at least one external driver for a ceiling of spots, if not one per floor (not one for the whole house because pf the drop in voltage). But 24V led spots seem much less common and I cannot find many reviews. Any idea why it's not more common ? It seems efficiency and thermals would be much easier to optimize without the size constraint, plus economy of scale with components. Any specific 24V led spots / bulbs to recommend ?
- Ekaros 2mo ago
  GU5.3 is 12V standard socket. Then there is G4 but they probably have some issues as well in wrong place. Probably some others, it really is a mess.
- HappyPanacea 2mo ago
  It would be nice to have the driver and LED decoupled from each other with a standard socket between driver and LED even if there is one per bulb.
  - stavros 2mo ago
    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.
- mort96 2mo ago
  It seems like a pretty normal local maximum situation, no? It's a solution which works "well enough" and means all light bulbs work in all light fixtures and all light fixtures work with all light bulbs. It would be better if we all moved away from LED, got all new standardized 24V light fixtures and stopped putting the power supply in the base of a standard E26 light bulb socket, but those kinds of transitions are costly. It probably also doesn't help that this would require industry-wide cooperation between companies which would much rather sell their own light fixture + LED combo which people have to replace regularly than a light fixture which people buy once and keep for life.
comrade1234 2mo ago
There are varying levels of quality for the same bulb. I don't know what the difference is in the bulb but they make a difference in the order of years. I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found that I could buy them from a photography supplier for more money. The product number was different but it had the right specs. They've been going for three years and no burn outs.
- dataflow 2mo ago
  What do you like about halogen bulbs?
  - shrx 2mo ago
    The light spectrum they produce.
  - lelanthran 2mo ago
    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.
mreome 2mo ago
For an even deeper dive into this topic... Technology Connections: Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
m463 2mo ago
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly, Roy - Bladerunner (1982) also, I enjoyed the last lines of the article: Also, to preempt the orange site, I'm not saying that planned obsolescence doesn't exist.
- ludwigvan 2mo ago
  To the contrary, isn’t the phrase the orange site used as a derogatory sense here? I have seen it used when authors think HN audience just criticize everything without substance.
  - simoncion 2mo ago
    > ...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.
- GeorgeTirebiter 2mo ago
  Unfortunately, Tyrell is incorrect. https://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/ohmslaw.html https://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/ohmslaw.html which gives the equation: Life(actual) = Life(rated) x ( V(rated) / V(actual) ) ** 13 NOTE that 13th (!) power. Doubling brightness only requires a small voltage increase, but it causes the lifespan to be roughly 9% due to this law. Hams have known about this for decades, where is it common to run 14V or 12V lamps on 6.3 volts for dial / panel illumination. I have a Drake 2-B receiver that uses this technique, and I have yet to replace the 2 bulbs that light up the frequency dial.
  - m463 2mo ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon#Kessel_Run related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
cge 2mo ago
While the author mentions that they are not trying to defend the Phoebus cartel, I think they may inadvertently be somewhat misleading in their explanation. What they are saying is, from an engineering standpoint, true. But my understanding of the argument against the Phoebus cartel is that it was using legitimate engineering points as the official justification for profiteering business collusion: that the points were real, but were not the actual reasons for their decisions, or reasonable justification for the particular choices of values they enforced. In doing so, the article perhaps obscures the point that business collusion, I expect, is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.
- joe_the_user 2mo ago
  Yeah, moreover, the argument is a particular kind of apologism for one or another kind of profiteering. Basically, "the people criticizing this (profiteering) don't understand the full details of how business (give some business details)". But then, actually, even with all the details, the alleged profiteering is actually happening and naturally people running these business know lots of details but they like money too.
  - brookst 2mo ago
    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.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      What is apologism then?
      - GigaDingus 2mo ago
        The point isn't that it sometimes isn't apologism, but that it is used even when it isn't apologism
- 2mo ago
petethomas 2mo ago
The Story Behind the Story Behind “The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy” Thomas Pynchon didn't invent the Phoebus cartel: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-story-behind-the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-story-behind-...
Aardwolf 2mo ago
> In order to put the emission peak in the visible spectrum, the filament would need to run at ~5700 °C (...) No metal can survive these conditions: Tungsten melts at "only" 3422 °C. Hmm, can we possibly find something that does survive at 5700 °C to use as a light source? Perhaps molten metal confined in a magnetic field...
- NooneAtAll3 2mo ago
  mercury vapor
  - MathMonkeyMan 2mo ago
    mercury vapor lamps are not a thermal light source, though
shevy-java 2mo ago
The author critisizes one incorrect claim, but also makes claims that are in turn incorrect. For instance: > In truth, increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way... but people think they want a long lasting lightbulb Here the author writes "people think they want a long lasting xyz". Well, people do not merely THINK they want a long lasting xyz. They really WANT it. Why are projects not infinite in durability? Of course, creating products with an infinite life time is not possible if only due to entropy alone; but also wear-and-tear damage. Nonetheless, the intrinsic quality and production process SHOULD CREATE PRODUCTS with a maximum life time. Some companies try that. Others deliberately avoid that in order to force customers to spend more on products they need to buy again and again and again. So the author is incorrect in the assumption; people WOULD ideally want a product that lasts as long as possible. Nothing wrong with that. > Going off modern day prices, electricity costs around 0.10 [$/kW*h], so a 60 W lamp will consume 6$ of electricity over a 1,000 hour lifespan. Considering that such a lamp only costs around 3$, installing one that lasts longer but uses more power would be silly. Here he is doing another mistake. First, those flat prices are not correct in general; instead, you must take in the opportunity costs. For instance, when I order new LED devices ("lamps"), I do not want to just order one. I want to order several, so that I have backup, and also so I don't have to go to purchase them several times. It is easier to do buy in some quantities, say, 8-10 or so. This lasts quite a long time for my use cases. Ideally this would last a long time, because if not then I have to do more purchases, which in turn takes away time I could spend doing other things. So the cost comparison is different here. The ideal situation would be to never ever have to replace anything here. Or even capture in solar power and use that for the lamps. > Instead of "making bulbs last longer", manufacturers spent huge amounts of time and money developing entirely new technology: fluorescent and LED lamps. Well ... the EU forbade the old technology. While I understand this partially, I don't understand why a dictatorship forces me into having to use new technology. I have nothing against new technology at all, but the prices increased a LOT, so those technocrats ultimately forced me (and force me) to increase expenditure. I absolutely hate that. It is even more annoying with the current inflation. Why do a few people constantly try to abuse the huge majority? Perhaps LED lamps is not the real problem, but this tendency exists throughout society. I feel that both democracies and dictatorships abuse people, just in different amount of quality. We see this with the current trend to force age sniffing onto people. This is even clearer abuse.
eimrine 2mo ago
Hey friends, why you do not pull off that second resistor in order to make your LED bulb to emit 30% of power but to have endless lifespawn? Your TV has a matrix of LED with endless lifespawn. Just don't be a blind consumer, also you can glue off the cap which blurs the light winning 10% of light, also you can drill the radiator for helping to cool the debuffed bulb even more.
- eimrine 2mo ago
  thanx for downvotes, blind consumers. or check your favorite information sources about the second resistor and about how much lm/w gives 30%-ed lamp related to a 100%-ed one otherways.
  - quietbritishjim 2mo ago
    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.
JTbane 2mo ago
You ever hear of Dubai lamps? Apparently underdriving LEDs makes them last much longer.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
xg15 2mo ago
I was with the article until this point: > If long lived light bulbs are worse products, why would they need a cartel to enforce a the thousand hour limit? Well, it's because people think long lasting bulbs are a good product: Lifespan is something everyone can understand, and has a direct effect on when you will have to go back to the store: if you saw two 60 W bulbs in a store, one claiming to last 400 hours and the other 2,000 hours, you'd probably get the longer lasting one without thinking about it. This makes no sense to me. The article's whole point was that longer-lived bulbs produce worse lighting: Less brightness, more "orange glow" instead of "daylight", etc. But light quality is the one thing that a buyer would immediately notice once they actually tried out the bulb. If they bought the amazing 100.000 hours bulb but found out it's a nightlight, they'll probably not buy that bulb again even despite the lifetime. If fact, they'd probably go back to the store really quickly to get a "real" light. So I don't see why we'd need some industry cartel here to decide what's good for the customers if the customers would perfectly well decide themselves.
- tuetuopay 2mo ago
  Seeing how many people buy 6000k LEDs for sunset/night lighting (e.g. a bedroom), no, people don’t give a shit about lighting. The most caring of average consumers would notice their bedroom looks like a hospital, but refuse to buy 2700k or 3000k because "they look like piss" when they go to the store at midday. And with the stupid habit of talking about lights in input watts (skimmed over in the article), we’d get what’s described in the article, albeit less dramatic: people would buy the bulb that lasts 50% longer and not notice the lower lumen output. Consumers are not educated at all in lighting, especially when the industry does not help (re: watts, but also temperature, color rendering, flicker, etc)
  - xg15 2mo ago
    > 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?
xg15 2mo ago
> "Therefore, this was done so that people would always need to buy more light bulbs." This is wrong, but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check Just as a general point: I haven't seen a product decision that wasn't sold with some official explanation why it's "really for the good of everyone". Google's Manifest v3 was about reducing performance bottlenecks, FIFA's hydration breaks were about player health and relentless tracking is about "being able to provide better experiences". The question is if those explanations hold up to scrutiny or turn out to be bullshit, not whether or not they exist in the first place.
- brookst 2mo ago
  The macro point is that complex systems are complex and have competing priorities, so it’s facile to say “I don’t agree with the decision, therefore any reasoning that supported the decision must be 100% intentional malicious bullshit.” I’m old, I’ve had a varied career, I’ve been in small group meetings in startups and VCs and megacorps. I have never once heard the kind of “obviously this is an evil decision, but here’s how we’ll spin it” conspiracy that people so enjoy imagining. It just doesn’t work that way.
  - xg15 2mo ago
    I mean, we have evidence of things that have been said e.g. in Facebook's board meetings. So those things do exist.
    - saalweachter 2mo ago
      Facebook is also kind of an outlier IMO. There will be a scandal where Facebook is caught doing something, and then you get a bunch of people talking about "tech companies", or "Facebook and Google", and then you read the details ... and it was Facebook, with everyone going "well, the rest probably are too".
      - j-bos 2mo ago
        Outlier in candor.
1970-01-01 2mo ago
I don't understand this one. Yes, I want the long-life lightbulb. No, that doesn't somehow make it worse in every other way. The point is so obvious, I couldn't follow the logic in this argument. Nobody is buying or selling 120 Watt short-life bulbs to brag about their tremendous brightness. Long Life (LL) bulbs are not some kind of marketing ploy. We buy them understanding that we're going to minimize the hidden costs of making light, i.e. changing that bulb.
- crypttales 2mo ago
  [dead]
- quietbritishjim 2mo ago
  Are you taking about modern long life bulbs? This article is taking about design choices for original format bulbs over 100 years ago.
crypttales 2mo ago
[dead]
LearnYouALisp 2mo ago
wOrSE in EvERy WAY (Is such an outrageous claim true? Click to generate ad revenue and maybe find out!)
SCLeo 2mo ago
As many have pointed out, I think the cartel is just using the engineering perspective for justification. If avoiding racing to the bottom is the goal, the rule could be that "no one can advertise a lifetime longer than 1000 hrs" as opposed to actually limiting the lifetime.
winterbloom 2mo ago
You need to spell and grammar check your writing

190 points by tonyg 2mo ago

Tungsten will burn in an oxygen atmosphere, therefore standard light bulbs actually use an inert gas (like argon). The gas pressure slows down tungsten evaporation and prevents oxidation. The main reason for short living of the bulbs is that the filament gradually evaporating over time until it thins out and snaps.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

montag 2mo ago

Misled

enobrev 2mo ago
I've been seeing the misspelling of the past tense of lead (led) incredibly often in the past couple years. It's clearly confusing that lead is an actual word, so it may seem right and likely doesn't get caught by auto-correct, although I assume grammar correction should catch it.
- Austizzle 2mo ago
  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 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misled
  - enobrev 2mo ago
    Mislead is the present tense; Misled, the past tense. I'm not seeing the tenses being used interchangeably with the same spelling on the site, but I may be missing it.

freediddy 2mo ago

I've never had LED lights last anywhere near the purported 5-7 year timeframe. The worst ones are the small decorative ones with the tinier screw part that my house seems to have an inordinate number of. Those last maybe 6 months and then they start getting dimmer and then all the lights in the circuit get worse at once. I like LED lights immensely but the idea they last even 2 years is a lie in my opinion.

pier25 2mo ago
Some of the first LED bulbs we bought are still running after more than 10 years. I don't remember the brand but they were expensive at the time.
convolvatron 2mo ago
I've run 30w led modules for 10+ years by - using real power conversion components, making sure they have sufficient cooling and running them at 75% of their rated current. they still seem plenty bright.
ValentineC 2mo ago
Randomly, my Philips Hue E27 bulbs last far longer than any of the China Zigbee clones I've bought, but like all mass produced goods, there are outliers that fail. The cheap China stuff tend to fail in a few months, while I've only had two Hue bulbs in my collection fail ever, so Philips seems to be doing something right.
- Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
  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.
  - Marsymars 2mo ago
    It's a bit tricky to determine what exactly is "cheap" though. I've got various Philips Hue bulbs/strips with no failures at 20k+ hours. OTOH I've got a few Philips Ultra Definition bulbs over my kitchen island which seem to fail at an average of 10k or so hours. None of the other bulbs in my house are really on long enough to say much about failures... like I've got dozens of recessed LEDs without any failures over 5 years, but I doubt any of them are over 1-2k hours.

jsLavaGoat 2mo ago

5700 is a terrible temperature for lighting unless that matches the daylight. Soft white and even reddish is much better at night. Presumably, most artificial light it used at night. 2700 is more like it. My LED lightbulbs change temperature based on the time of day and are dull red at night so you both don't wake up and you don't stub your toe. Show me a non-LED that can do that.

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
I do something similar and all my Philips hue bulbs are going strong after 7 to 8 years. I think people just get upset with themselves for being cheap.
TacticalCoder 2mo ago
> Show me a non-LED that can do that. Many of use simply don't find LED lights, no matter the color they try to simulate, enjoyable. I find my LED lights, including fancy decorative ones, bearable only because I always use one real, old-school, warm white (more like yellow really), incandescent (hence non-LED) light in my living room. And, yup, if you know what you're looking for, it's totally possible to still buy incandescent lightbulbs. LED lights, no matter the shade/color always give such a fake / non-cosy feeling to just about everything. I'm taking an actual candle + an incandescent lightbulb's warmth feeling any day over anything LED. Now as I'm also conscious about saving the planet, I'll mix those with mostly LED lights. But having one incandescent lightbulb (and/or one candle) really creates, to many of us, a better atmosphere than pure LED lighting. It's the old "you're eyes cannot detect more than 24 fps" all over again: "you cannot detect the flickering of a LED light". Except I can instantly tell if it's the cold (no matter how "warm white" the box says it is) light of a LED or the actual warm light of a proper incandescent lightbulb.
- krackers 2mo ago
  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.

WarmWash 2mo ago

That top paragraph is a masterclass in modern media standards. Tell the truth will hiding facts so your readers can be reassured that they are in fact smart and correct, while you never have to tell a lie.

BGizzle 2mo ago

You have been misled about spelling misled

wolfgangK 2mo ago

BTW, I don't understand why having the driver converting AC to DC inside the LED spots is the default. For a new house, it seems to make sense to me to have at least one external driver for a ceiling of spots, if not one per floor (not one for the whole house because pf the drop in voltage). But 24V led spots seem much less common and I cannot find many reviews. Any idea why it's not more common ? It seems efficiency and thermals would be much easier to optimize without the size constraint, plus economy of scale with components. Any specific 24V led spots / bulbs to recommend ?

Ekaros 2mo ago
GU5.3 is 12V standard socket. Then there is G4 but they probably have some issues as well in wrong place. Probably some others, it really is a mess.
HappyPanacea 2mo ago
It would be nice to have the driver and LED decoupled from each other with a standard socket between driver and LED even if there is one per bulb.
- stavros 2mo ago
  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.
mort96 2mo ago
It seems like a pretty normal local maximum situation, no? It's a solution which works "well enough" and means all light bulbs work in all light fixtures and all light fixtures work with all light bulbs. It would be better if we all moved away from LED, got all new standardized 24V light fixtures and stopped putting the power supply in the base of a standard E26 light bulb socket, but those kinds of transitions are costly. It probably also doesn't help that this would require industry-wide cooperation between companies which would much rather sell their own light fixture + LED combo which people have to replace regularly than a light fixture which people buy once and keep for life.

comrade1234 2mo ago

There are varying levels of quality for the same bulb. I don't know what the difference is in the bulb but they make a difference in the order of years. I'm in Switzerland where we can no longer buy halogen bulbs. Every bulb in our apartment is led except 7 bulbs under the cabinets in our kitchen. I used to buy bulbs from a hardware store but they would only last about a year. When they banned halogen bulbs I found that I could buy them from a photography supplier for more money. The product number was different but it had the right specs. They've been going for three years and no burn outs.

dataflow 2mo ago
What do you like about halogen bulbs?
- shrx 2mo ago
  The light spectrum they produce.
- lelanthran 2mo ago
  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.

mreome 2mo ago

For an even deeper dive into this topic... Technology Connections: Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

m463 2mo ago

Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly, Roy - Bladerunner (1982) also, I enjoyed the last lines of the article: Also, to preempt the orange site, I'm not saying that planned obsolescence doesn't exist.

ludwigvan 2mo ago
To the contrary, isn’t the phrase the orange site used as a derogatory sense here? I have seen it used when authors think HN audience just criticize everything without substance.
- simoncion 2mo ago
  > ...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.
GeorgeTirebiter 2mo ago
Unfortunately, Tyrell is incorrect. https://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/ohmslaw.html https://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/ohmslaw.html which gives the equation: Life(actual) = Life(rated) x ( V(rated) / V(actual) ) ** 13 NOTE that 13th (!) power. Doubling brightness only requires a small voltage increase, but it causes the lifespan to be roughly 9% due to this law. Hams have known about this for decades, where is it common to run 14V or 12V lamps on 6.3 volts for dial / panel illumination. I have a Drake 2-B receiver that uses this technique, and I have yet to replace the 2 bulbs that light up the frequency dial.
- m463 2mo ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon#Kessel_Run related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

cge 2mo ago

While the author mentions that they are not trying to defend the Phoebus cartel, I think they may inadvertently be somewhat misleading in their explanation. What they are saying is, from an engineering standpoint, true. But my understanding of the argument against the Phoebus cartel is that it was using legitimate engineering points as the official justification for profiteering business collusion: that the points were real, but were not the actual reasons for their decisions, or reasonable justification for the particular choices of values they enforced. In doing so, the article perhaps obscures the point that business collusion, I expect, is more often built around legitimate reasoning taken to illegitimate extents and conclusions, than around outright fabrications.

joe_the_user 2mo ago
Yeah, moreover, the argument is a particular kind of apologism for one or another kind of profiteering. Basically, "the people criticizing this (profiteering) don't understand the full details of how business (give some business details)". But then, actually, even with all the details, the alleged profiteering is actually happening and naturally people running these business know lots of details but they like money too.
- brookst 2mo ago
  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.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    What is apologism then?
    - GigaDingus 2mo ago
      The point isn't that it sometimes isn't apologism, but that it is used even when it isn't apologism
2mo ago

petethomas 2mo ago

The Story Behind the Story Behind “The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy” Thomas Pynchon didn't invent the Phoebus cartel: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-story-behind-the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-story-behind-...

Aardwolf 2mo ago

> In order to put the emission peak in the visible spectrum, the filament would need to run at ~5700 °C (...) No metal can survive these conditions: Tungsten melts at "only" 3422 °C. Hmm, can we possibly find something that does survive at 5700 °C to use as a light source? Perhaps molten metal confined in a magnetic field...

NooneAtAll3 2mo ago
mercury vapor
- MathMonkeyMan 2mo ago
  mercury vapor lamps are not a thermal light source, though

shevy-java 2mo ago

The author critisizes one incorrect claim, but also makes claims that are in turn incorrect. For instance: > In truth, increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way... but people think they want a long lasting lightbulb Here the author writes "people think they want a long lasting xyz". Well, people do not merely THINK they want a long lasting xyz. They really WANT it. Why are projects not infinite in durability? Of course, creating products with an infinite life time is not possible if only due to entropy alone; but also wear-and-tear damage. Nonetheless, the intrinsic quality and production process SHOULD CREATE PRODUCTS with a maximum life time. Some companies try that. Others deliberately avoid that in order to force customers to spend more on products they need to buy again and again and again. So the author is incorrect in the assumption; people WOULD ideally want a product that lasts as long as possible. Nothing wrong with that. > Going off modern day prices, electricity costs around 0.10 [$/kW*h], so a 60 W lamp will consume 6$ of electricity over a 1,000 hour lifespan. Considering that such a lamp only costs around 3$, installing one that lasts longer but uses more power would be silly. Here he is doing another mistake. First, those flat prices are not correct in general; instead, you must take in the opportunity costs. For instance, when I order new LED devices ("lamps"), I do not want to just order one. I want to order several, so that I have backup, and also so I don't have to go to purchase them several times. It is easier to do buy in some quantities, say, 8-10 or so. This lasts quite a long time for my use cases. Ideally this would last a long time, because if not then I have to do more purchases, which in turn takes away time I could spend doing other things. So the cost comparison is different here. The ideal situation would be to never ever have to replace anything here. Or even capture in solar power and use that for the lamps. > Instead of "making bulbs last longer", manufacturers spent huge amounts of time and money developing entirely new technology: fluorescent and LED lamps. Well ... the EU forbade the old technology. While I understand this partially, I don't understand why a dictatorship forces me into having to use new technology. I have nothing against new technology at all, but the prices increased a LOT, so those technocrats ultimately forced me (and force me) to increase expenditure. I absolutely hate that. It is even more annoying with the current inflation. Why do a few people constantly try to abuse the huge majority? Perhaps LED lamps is not the real problem, but this tendency exists throughout society. I feel that both democracies and dictatorships abuse people, just in different amount of quality. We see this with the current trend to force age sniffing onto people. This is even clearer abuse.

eimrine 2mo ago

Hey friends, why you do not pull off that second resistor in order to make your LED bulb to emit 30% of power but to have endless lifespawn? Your TV has a matrix of LED with endless lifespawn. Just don't be a blind consumer, also you can glue off the cap which blurs the light winning 10% of light, also you can drill the radiator for helping to cool the debuffed bulb even more.

eimrine 2mo ago
thanx for downvotes, blind consumers. or check your favorite information sources about the second resistor and about how much lm/w gives 30%-ed lamp related to a 100%-ed one otherways.
- quietbritishjim 2mo ago
  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.

JTbane 2mo ago

You ever hear of Dubai lamps? Apparently underdriving LEDs makes them last much longer.

deleted 2mo ago

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xg15 2mo ago

I was with the article until this point: > If long lived light bulbs are worse products, why would they need a cartel to enforce a the thousand hour limit? Well, it's because people think long lasting bulbs are a good product: Lifespan is something everyone can understand, and has a direct effect on when you will have to go back to the store: if you saw two 60 W bulbs in a store, one claiming to last 400 hours and the other 2,000 hours, you'd probably get the longer lasting one without thinking about it. This makes no sense to me. The article's whole point was that longer-lived bulbs produce worse lighting: Less brightness, more "orange glow" instead of "daylight", etc. But light quality is the one thing that a buyer would immediately notice once they actually tried out the bulb. If they bought the amazing 100.000 hours bulb but found out it's a nightlight, they'll probably not buy that bulb again even despite the lifetime. If fact, they'd probably go back to the store really quickly to get a "real" light. So I don't see why we'd need some industry cartel here to decide what's good for the customers if the customers would perfectly well decide themselves.

tuetuopay 2mo ago
Seeing how many people buy 6000k LEDs for sunset/night lighting (e.g. a bedroom), no, people don’t give a shit about lighting. The most caring of average consumers would notice their bedroom looks like a hospital, but refuse to buy 2700k or 3000k because "they look like piss" when they go to the store at midday. And with the stupid habit of talking about lights in input watts (skimmed over in the article), we’d get what’s described in the article, albeit less dramatic: people would buy the bulb that lasts 50% longer and not notice the lower lumen output. Consumers are not educated at all in lighting, especially when the industry does not help (re: watts, but also temperature, color rendering, flicker, etc)
- xg15 2mo ago
  > 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?

xg15 2mo ago

> "Therefore, this was done so that people would always need to buy more light bulbs." This is wrong, but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check Just as a general point: I haven't seen a product decision that wasn't sold with some official explanation why it's "really for the good of everyone". Google's Manifest v3 was about reducing performance bottlenecks, FIFA's hydration breaks were about player health and relentless tracking is about "being able to provide better experiences". The question is if those explanations hold up to scrutiny or turn out to be bullshit, not whether or not they exist in the first place.

brookst 2mo ago
The macro point is that complex systems are complex and have competing priorities, so it’s facile to say “I don’t agree with the decision, therefore any reasoning that supported the decision must be 100% intentional malicious bullshit.” I’m old, I’ve had a varied career, I’ve been in small group meetings in startups and VCs and megacorps. I have never once heard the kind of “obviously this is an evil decision, but here’s how we’ll spin it” conspiracy that people so enjoy imagining. It just doesn’t work that way.
- xg15 2mo ago
  I mean, we have evidence of things that have been said e.g. in Facebook's board meetings. So those things do exist.
  - saalweachter 2mo ago
    Facebook is also kind of an outlier IMO. There will be a scandal where Facebook is caught doing something, and then you get a bunch of people talking about "tech companies", or "Facebook and Google", and then you read the details ... and it was Facebook, with everyone going "well, the rest probably are too".
    - j-bos 2mo ago
      Outlier in candor.

1970-01-01 2mo ago

I don't understand this one. Yes, I want the long-life lightbulb. No, that doesn't somehow make it worse in every other way. The point is so obvious, I couldn't follow the logic in this argument. Nobody is buying or selling 120 Watt short-life bulbs to brag about their tremendous brightness. Long Life (LL) bulbs are not some kind of marketing ploy. We buy them understanding that we're going to minimize the hidden costs of making light, i.e. changing that bulb.

crypttales 2mo ago
[dead]
quietbritishjim 2mo ago
Are you taking about modern long life bulbs? This article is taking about design choices for original format bulbs over 100 years ago.

crypttales 2mo ago

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LearnYouALisp 2mo ago

wOrSE in EvERy WAY (Is such an outrageous claim true? Click to generate ad revenue and maybe find out!)

SCLeo 2mo ago

As many have pointed out, I think the cartel is just using the engineering perspective for justification. If avoiding racing to the bottom is the goal, the rule could be that "no one can advertise a lifetime longer than 1000 hrs" as opposed to actually limiting the lifetime.

winterbloom 2mo ago

You need to spell and grammar check your writing