61–70 of 90 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously an environmental disaster if everyone had these. But still, a quaint thing.
From the Wikipedia article > The Centennial Light was originally a 30-watt or 60-watt bulb Why? Everyone, where I'm from anyway, now has CFLs and LEDs, mostly, and the environmental disaster rolls on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why should it be the government's business to determine what "the actual needs of consumers" are? The government has signed up to various international treaties around ewaste and other eco indicators. Consumers only buy on price. Government sets minimum standards, which forces manufacturers to build their minimum cost devices to that standard. Manfs can also offer better devices for more money. > How do companies i…
Thanks for your comment, you raise some good points. I do have to question a couple of things: > Consumers only buy on price. Really? Everyone I know also looks at reviews, brand reputation, and other factors. Of course you're right that sometimes we just buy the cheapest option. :-) > Your mobile phone is intensely regulated across a number of different regulators. There seems to be plenty of innovation in cellphone…
Anecdata time! :).
I think that this sometimes turns out to be more often than not :). Not many people have time to read reviews and check brand reputations for everything they buy. Personally, I divide shopping decisions into two groups - where I care about quality, and where I don't. In the former group, which includes mostly expensive stuff, I'll check some reviews. In the latter, I don't care. The latter group mostly consists of things that cost about as much or less than my time spent on doing research.
But from what I've seen (and experienced), a lot of things move from the "check reviews" to "buy on price" group the moment one is low on cash and/or low on free time. Anecdata - my mother used to buy CFLs but at some point switched back to incandescents (the ones that are illegal in EU, but are being sold in every corner shop anyway, just labeled as "not for household use") just because she didn't have time / energy to go to the big store that sells decent CFLs at a reasonable price. I only upgraded her apartment to LEDs after few of those cheap-ass incandescents literally exploded, sending glass shards all over the kitchen.
> I was going to post the list, but had second thoughts that it may seem argumentative, and they seem pretty obvious anyway.
Please post that list, I'm interested. Even if it seems obvious, it may not be obvious to everyone.
> Of course, given the collective ingenuity of the cartel’s engineers and scientists, it should have been possible to design a lightbulb that was both bright and long-lived. And not energy efficient. The article lightly touches on it, but the physical reality is that the better the electrical efficiency the less time the bulb lasts. It's a tradeoff that has not changed in 100 years. So yes, the cartel did mandate 1,0…
This is a general point about all "eco" technologies too - a device is not "eco-friendly" if it's total manufacturing and distribution energy costs are higher than the "eco-unfriendly" alternative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some US states whithout an IKEA, such as Maine. Incidentally, in Maine, incandescent light bulbs are almost 100% efficient for much of the year as they produce both light and heat.
100% is a bit of a deceptive claim, since 1) we can exceed 100% with heat pumps, and 2) pretty much _every_ electrical appliance in an enclosed space is 100% efficient at converting energy to heat. 3) For the most part, the electricity being used to power those incandescents is produced with 25-50% efficiency. Burning gas to make heat to run a turbine to produce electricity to transmit it to your home to heat a coil…
Natural gas or heating oil is far more economical, although nothing beats the warmth provided by a good wood stove.
For 90 years, lightbulbs were designed to burn out. Now that's coming to LEDs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103244
Planned obsolescence would be changing the base on the lamp every few years so that people would have to buy new fixtures when they can't buy replacement bulbs anymore. Author is not using that term correctly. The actually interesting story is about the market failure where customers have no choice but to prefer the thing they can measure (bulb life vs cost) over the more important thing they can't measure (electrici…
- Wikipedia
Seems fitting to me.
I can't believe an LED that adapts the colour temperature to the time of the day like F.lux does isn't a standard yet. LEDs are great but boy are they agressive to the eyes. (Yes that's a bit unrelated, I figured I'd rant and hope some poeple starts mass proucing it thanks to my message)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Won't it amount to the same thing as a heat source anywhere else in a room, with convection and radiation?
Modern heat pumps are three to four times more efficient in their use of electric power than simple electrical resistance heaters.[1] I have a 7.1kW heat pump, it uses a little over 1.79kW of power generate that heat, so a thermal efficiency of 3.96:1. Any light bulb, whether it's incandescent or CFL or LED produces heat a 1:1 thermal efficiency. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump
how many people does it take to screw in an everlasting lightbulb?
I can't believe an LED that adapts the colour temperature to the time of the day like F.lux does isn't a standard yet. LEDs are great but boy are they agressive to the eyes. (Yes that's a bit unrelated, I figured I'd rant and hope some poeple starts mass proucing it thanks to my message)
Are LEDs aggressive to the eyes even if you manage to get them to have the same colour as ordinary light bulbs?
I highly recommend reading through this, very educational about how complicated "vision" really is: http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/col... It's a long read but well worth it.
"Color" is something your brain creates, it's not "physical". Frequencies of light of course are a (the) major input, but it's not in any way a straightforward 1:1 one.