Nobody cares • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody cares

#461

Post by nyokodo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:25 AM UTC

tqi wrote: post #449

easygenes wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible to install warm colored LEDs with very little blue light output though. You get all those benefits without giving up the more-suitable-for-night sodium light spectral benefits.

Agree, but it's more expensive and less energy efficient[1]. Personally, that seems worth it to me [EDIT: "it" being using slightly less efficient lights that are more comfortable for people], but thats a difference in values not in how much I "care" about the problem... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-... .

> that seems worth it to me

How much more energy efficient is it? If it's a tiny efficiency gain vs the negative effects of blue heavy white light then I would suggest it's a bad tradeoff. Some studies have suggested that blue light doesn't affect sleep [1] but the psychological effects of cold vs warm light has been used by lighting designers for decades. Cold light is less comfortable and discourages hanging around, the positive spin is "energizing", it's often used in supermarkets and budget stores that value faster browsing, and impulsive decisions under a greater feeling of urgency. Warm light has a relaxing effect and is used, for example, in luxury stores and restaurants where people are intended to take their time. [2] For outdoor areas where people are intended to enjoy relaxing after dark activities warmer light would be far superior an experience than colder light.

1. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blue-light-may-not... 2. https://www.tcpi.com/how-lights-impacts-psychology-mood-in-r...

Re: Nobody cares

#462

Post by teslabox » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:28 AM UTC

_lyxd wrote: post #452

easygenes wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible to install warm colored LEDs with very little blue light output though. You get all those benefits without giving up the more-suitable-for-night sodium light spectral benefits.

OK but blinding blue LEDs are most common substitutes, because it's the lazy default, and because people do not care. That's the point of the article.

Blue-white LEDs have become the replacement for High Pressure Sodium [HPS] traffic lights because that's what the LED light companies have to sell. In the early years of the transition to LED streetlights they had to sell blue-white LED streetlights because warmer LEDs were not competitive with HPS on the basis of lumens-per-watt.

Most of the people who understood the advantages of blue-free amber HPS light over white metal halide lights retired, and this little tidbit of information didn't get passed to the next generation of city employees.

> and because people do not care.

People care, but they don't know why they hate the blue-white LED replacement lights. I've complained to the city about their new lights, but have not gotten any responses about why they haven't deployed LED lights with a safe spectrum of color.

This comment about unsafe blue-white headlights got a few upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42444111

Re: Nobody cares

#463

Post by huhkerrf » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:31 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #316

leipert wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. The traffic curb example is actually a good one. I don’t think it’s an excuse to build a potentially dangerous ramp because you aren’t a cyclist yourself. People who design ramps should be capable to do it properly. Imagine it were a ramp for wheelchairs and they would have decided that a 20 degree slope is doable.

This may be intentional. Road to sidewalk is a speed transition point. The transition from street to sidewalk via a tight turn here is an effective traffic-calming component to slow down bikes from road speed to walking speed. That's done on freeway off-ramps, where there's a curved section or two of decreasing radii to force vehicle speeds down before they reach a stop sign or traffic light. Same problem.

Yes, this is most likely the reason.

Which means that the author didn't "care" enough to think through what the reason might have been or didn't "care" enough for the pedestrians.

Re: Nobody cares

#464

Post by nyokodo » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:31 AM UTC

I recently spent some time in the ER in a criminally underfunded and understaffed public healthcare system. People in quite severe pain were languishing waiting their turn but the nurses went out of their way to show a semblance of care and humanity to the patients and even apologize to them when they didn't have to and weren't expected to. Maybe that overall situation shows that key people in the society or government don't care but clearly the frontline people still care. I choose to focus on them and do my little bit to make things around me a little bit better when maybe no one expects me to either.

Re: Nobody cares

#465

Post by SoftTalker » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:33 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #400

Aeolun wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nonsense. Some businesses exist purely to fund the ability to do exactly that thing as well as possible. Making money is a means to an end. It’s just that they always seem to lose to those that optimize for money.

I think some small businesses start because the owner wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with some group of customers and it's sustainable. Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part. Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as…

McDonalds has fallen so far in the past few decades. I used to eat there or at least grab a soda several times a week. I never go there anymore. The kiosks suck; I refuse to use them, but they don't staff the counter half the time so there's no other way to order. The drive-thru expects you've already ordered on the app. Fuck that. It's all way too complicated. I want a Big Mac meal with a coke. That used to take me 3 seconds to order and I had it on a tray in about another minute. Now I have to dick around on the kiosk for a couple of minutes, pay, and then wait 5-10 minutes for the food. It's absurd.

Re: Nobody cares

#466

Post by photonthug » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:33 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #440

photonthug wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old "use your agency" response never gets old does it, no matter how much consumer alternatives are whittled away, and no matter how much the abusive corporate behaviour gets ratcheted up and normalized. Do you actually make a profit yourself from forcing ads on paying customers who can't choose to avoid your services, or just aspire to one day?

Thats a cop out. There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's. There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost more money though. That's kinda the point.

What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free restaurant or for that matter an ad-free gas pump? What if I buy a plane ticket to get out of this bad situation and the airline is using the emergency PA to harass their captive audience of paying customers to join their miles club? What can't be avoided must endured, but there is no reason for people like you to insist that this is fine or normal, or that it's something one can opt out of. You're actively building the dystopia when you do that

Re: Nobody cares

#467

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

liontwist wrote: post #86

DharmaPolice wrote: post #77

As someone who works for a local government bureaucracy - not caring is a coping mechanism because if you let every sub-optimal thing bother you then you'd just burn out. Very few jobs are structured in a way that those directly involved can determine how things are done so there is no real value in caring about how long a process takes. Where people have some agency you might be surprised how much people do care eve…

Why doesn’t Japan have this problem?

Japan has processes for everything, and people care about following the process properly, and are empowered to follow the process properly (indeed that's the only thing they're empowered to do).

High trust and good equilibria might be part of it as well. If your superior cares and does things properly then you can care and do things properly and you'll get proper results. If your superior is burnt out and doing the minimum, but you care and want to do things properly, you'll get burnt out, and a few years down the line you'll be that superior doing the minimum.

Re: Nobody cares

#468

Post by cokeandpepsi » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

automatic6131 wrote: post #183

liontwist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn’t Japan have this problem?

>Why doesn’t Japan have this problem? Japan has some of these problems. For example: they do not care about homeless people. In Japan, I saw a homeless person sleeping between two car lanes, amongst some bushes. Literally 50cm of space separating cars, and he was lying there with his possessions.

aren't homes generally extremely cheap in most of Japan?

Re: Nobody cares

#469

Post by doubleorseven » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

Zooming out of your own world is a gift that can be taught. You have a gift that 100% makes your life easier, with the side effect of the occasional frustration.

I feel compassion for those people who live in their own body and keep hitting walls.

You can help people care, it's your path.

Re: Nobody cares

#470

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:38 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #440

photonthug wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old "use your agency" response never gets old does it, no matter how much consumer alternatives are whittled away, and no matter how much the abusive corporate behaviour gets ratcheted up and normalized. Do you actually make a profit yourself from forcing ads on paying customers who can't choose to avoid your services, or just aspire to one day?

Thats a cop out. There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's. There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost more money though. That's kinda the point.

If an "alternative" to McDonald's does exactly the same abusive thing it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's at all.

If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more, or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's.

A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar enough to McDonald's for your purposes that you can use it to replace McDonald's. I'm sure some people have that, but I'm also sure many people don't.

There are lots of things that don't actually have suitable alternatives. There are entire product categories that are completely filled with consumer hostile garbage, with zero competitors offering a suitable alternative, because sometimes it will always be more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want.