Nichia still makes the best color LEDs. Semi-recently they made a UV free LED for artworks.
I thought all LEDs are uv-free, except those specifically designed for UV?
It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
151–160 of 204 posts
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#152After the blue LED came onto the market in the 1990s, it took less than a decade for them to become shelf items of a couple dollars each at electronics retailers. It was also around that time that web-based communities of computer technicians really took off. Web forums, etc. The coincidence led (yup!) to a love-at-first-sight relationship. Funny as it may seem now, being a mere 20 years later (or: "holy crap, it's b…
Yes - there was Time that every consumer device insisted on using extremely bright blue LEDs for “power on” status. Even mundane things like DVRs or TVs. It became so annoying that various forms of tape were use to cover them.
I’m glad those days are over.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#153It's incredible to see with cases like this how extremely absurd the relationship of capital and labor is. If I was someone aspiring to be a researcher, I'd most definitely give up due to stories like this. The person created probably close to trillions of value to humanity (his LEDs spawned multiple new industries), yet he was compensated less than what I make with web development. Meanwhile the CEO and other busine…
Without that corporation behind him there's no way he would have been able to go to America for a year, buy a brand new deposition machine and then spend more years working on it.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#154There is something oddly humbling and inspiring about this story. The scientist thanklessly slaved away for a year and half before even producing the first breakthrough. It must require an immense amount of perseverance to do so. It also reminds me to the craft mentality and patience of Jiro dreams of sushi. Very refreshing when contrasted with western mentality, where people can't wait to get promoted fast enough.
The puzzling thing is how he was able to just keep ignoring orders from management to stop working on the pet project. Clearly this required quite some resources to continue and he didn't get fired. I don't know if I could get away with this at a Faang-type job.
It's much harder to fire people in Japan due to their labor laws. The result is that companies often just make employees as uncomfortable as possible to try and make them quit. There are stories about Konami during its worst period for example doing things like blocking access to the internet, banning employees having their own email addresses, or forcing people to do menial jobs instead of their real jobs.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
LED lighting wouldn't exist if not for blue LEDs. And neither would much of modern display technology. The importance of this discovery was not because we could make shiny blue light with it.
LED lighting in practice is typically terrible (though not always or inevitably): the spectrum is too blue and too spiky, without due respect for human needs. It has ruined nighttime lighting, especially outdoors in applications like street lamps, car headlamps, camp lamps, and flashlights. Whatever marketing people are making decisions in the lighting industry have insufficient understanding of human color vision an…
Agreed on all.
I'd like to add it also pains me that the power to produce about five times more light for the same electricity expenditure has been given without question or qualification to most of humankind, and yet almost no-one seems to ask themselves whether keeping spending the same energy and producing about five times as much light is what they should be doing...
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#156Amazing and inspiring story about perseverance and never giving up.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/595d3fb837c581...
Though it is incredibly frustrating how ungrateful Nichia Corp was to Mr. Nakamura, the underdog who pushed through every obstacle to ultimately give them the vehicle for more than 65% of their revenue!
People like the Nichia CEO at the time, a nephew who inherited the business nepotism-style (ditching the successful methodologies of his uncle) are just goddamn fools. Any success is in spite of their unimaginative, bean counting petty mindedness fighting tooth and nail every decimeter of the way.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#157Interesting to some, YouTube force fed this video to me today after a seemingly unrelated video about Legos finished. It was a good story but I have to imagine the hacker news traffic may have had a significant effect on "the algorithm" as they call it.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#158I remember when blue LEDs started appearing in guitar FX pedals just out of novelty,resulting in a pedals becoming harder to use as when the pedal was on the brightness meant visibility of the controls was reduced. On pedals I made I always used fine sandpaper to increase the diffusion of each LED, and the result was significantly better. Early blue LEDs,especially, seemed to have a very narrow projection angle.
They sell LED dimming (and blackout) stickers on Amazon, and those things have been a lifesaver for me. My new USB-C charging block is brighter than the sun and the LED is functionally useless, so it's been masked with the blackout version of the stickers, but my Dyson fan which has a blue power LED (which turns to red when it's on heat mode) and BRIGHT WHITE LED temperature readout in heat mode has gotten the dimmin…
Dedicated stickers are probably the nicest option, but I've just used black electrical tape to completely black out a lot of blue LEDs electronics - especially in the bedroom like you. If you want to see the light, a few pinholes are enough to let some light through.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Does whatever they said necessitate 'flagging' rather than just downvoting? Groking it from the further discussion, it seems worthy of at least talking about.
The users would be the one flagging, not dang or the mods. That's a discussion we would have to have as a community.
Re: It was almost impossible to make the blue LED [video]
#160After the blue LED came onto the market in the 1990s, it took less than a decade for them to become shelf items of a couple dollars each at electronics retailers. It was also around that time that web-based communities of computer technicians really took off. Web forums, etc. The coincidence led (yup!) to a love-at-first-sight relationship. Funny as it may seem now, being a mere 20 years later (or: "holy crap, it's b…
I still remember the blue power LED on my Toshiba laptop fading on and off in a pattern that was not quite the patented Apple "breathing" pattern, but close enough to suggest it.