Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 343 posts

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#241

Post by thehappypm »

_yb2s wrote: post #235
santoshalper wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem they are trying to solve is not light pollution, it is that incandescent bulbs use several times as much electricity as LEDs.

Making it more efficient just means people will think even less before brightly lighting things up all night long that either don’t need lighting at all or don’t need it so bright. LEDs are so efficient and cheap that the result is massive light pollution. The solution to energy waste is to make light dimmer and more localized.

That would be the case if LEDs weren’t so, so much more efficient. Like 5x more efficient, easily.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#242

Post by latency-guy2 »

willcipriano wrote: post #41
ketzu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I ever saw points to rising real wages over spans larger than 20 years. e.g., https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N (there's quite the dip after 2008). Could you provide a source?

Contrast it to GDP: https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/wa... Or labors share of the economy: https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/ei...

I thought GDP wasn't a real measure? Are we selectively choosing when and if GDP is a real measure, but specifically only when it's beneficial to the side I am arguing for?

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#243

Post by osigurdson »

rqtwteye wrote: post #27
osigurdson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve had many technological advancements, but few touch on concrete problems that actually save time or reduce costs for individuals. I suspect the next few decades will have more impact in this regard than the last 50 years. Full self driving might be an example in the near future that will measurably lift standards of living for many. More automation, AI and robotics are the key.

No tech will be available to lift the standard of living in the same way that a reliable health care and social system, affordable housing and reasonable work life balance can. Telling people “you can’t afford health care, housing or retirement but look at how great self driving cars and phones are” is just condescending talk by the upper class to distract from growing inequality.

Healthcare is largely tech. Housing is human technology . Retirement is just accumulated savings, which go further with less expensive goods and services.

Since everything you mention that we need more of is human technology, why are you so convinced that more technology will not benefit people?

I’m certain there was a point in history where everyone was largely equal with very very little. Was this better?

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#244

Post by maxerickson »

johnklos wrote: post #31

Considering that the amount of computing that could be rented for the price of a house every month could now be bought for $20, this isn't surprising. What's surprising is that with all these resources made available to the world, we still have systems that allow hoarding of wealth to such a degree that most people can't afford to own a home and many can barely afford rent and food.

Housing shortages are due to policy, not hoarding. With good policy, total wealth is probably going to increase.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#245

Post by jiggawatts »

patmcc wrote: post #210

One way I like to think about progress: there are things that are (basically) post-scarcity. Things that have become either too cheap to meter or close to it (for an average "western" consumer, at least). Light. Water. Ice. Calories (if not picky). Entertainment (radio, youtube, etc). Information (google, Wikipedia). We still have a ways to go, but that's a good damn start.

In 2008 when the financial crisis hit, I had some friends that got their news from Zero Henge got into a panic spiral. One of them was seriously thinking of quickly buying a plot of land and farming it so he wouldn't starve to death when the economy collapsed.

I had to explain to him that no, he won't starve to death. Even if money ceases to exist overnight, the government will step in and forcibly collect the food from farmers if need be and distribute it to the cities.

As a part of the argument I worked out what it takes to feed an adult for a year with storable staples. There's "preppers" that have helpfully prepared lists of things to buy with nutrition profiles, etc...

Apparently, all you need is a trip to Costco and about $2,000 will buy you a year's supply of salt, sugar, oil, lentils, dried fruits, nuts, flour, etc...

You can scrape together that much money even if you're unemployed!

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#246

Post by jonwest »

_yb2s wrote: post #176
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

While I appreciate your reluctance, I’d recommend trying to find one of the Philips LED bulbs that dim like an incandescent bulb. I’m not sure they’re easy to find now, and to be honest I don’t remember the model name, but if you can find them they are wonderful. Basically they have multiple sets of diodes within them that dim at different rates which is an incredibly convincing “incandescent emulation”. They are a “whiter” light at high brightness and a nice warm glow at low brightness with a nice smooth transition between them.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#247

Post by ltbarcly3 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #216
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I'm saying they aren't dumb. If what you are saying is true they would have to not only be dumb, but barely have human level intelligence. You believe that your friends and neighbors are completely incompetent at things that are trivially easy, and they have no hope of ever figuring it out on their own. You are actually claiming that there are tens of millions of adult humans, who have lived 20, 30 years, and…

> and they have no hope of ever figuring it out on their own. It's not a case of not understanding , or not having the skills , or it being “unreasonable to think they might” do anything. https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine... https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2022/04/12/its-not-about-the... I get not understanding, but can you try not to be so obnoxious about it, please? It's clear you don't h…

No, you are using a tiny subset of a group to make broad assertions about the entire group. That is not logically valid.

I accept there are sick people. But not all people are sick. Most poor people do in fact make themselves inexpensive food at home. That you and others want to claim it is impossible for them to do so is bizarre.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#248

Post by Retric »

brookst wrote: post #231
dmonitor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m lighting a room, not a science experiment

If you're not lighting a science experiment, you are the science experiment. (or something like that)

Except people have already done these experiments, and it turns out trichromacy is quite common among humans.

If you actually dislike LED lighting then you should also notice issues with LED screens not just lightbulbs. Instead you like most people dislike bad LED lightbulbs which are common because most people are buying them without testing em. Which means most manufacturers don’t actually optimize for light quality.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#249

Post by ceejayoz »

charcircuit wrote: post #145
derefr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, now I need to own a car and afford gas to drive 40mi to the nearest library. (More importantly, now I need to have a kitchen to cook in .) You realize that there are people who are homeless and who live in areas that don't have any support systems for homelessness (e.g. homeless shelters), right?

Libraries can mail books to you.

"To: Cardboard Box under the 5th Street Bridge"?

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#250

Post by ceejayoz »

valval wrote: post #153
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof that this is not a problem is the rampant obesity and lack of people actually starving.

For some reason the doomers always forget that there hasn’t been a case of involuntary death from malnutrition in decades in America. The argument seems to revolve around the fact that there will always be people who are way worse off than most others. It’s not particularly more surprising than the fact that there will also always be people who are way better off than most others.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-13/...

> Deaths attributed to malnutrition more than doubled, from about 650 in 2018 to roughly 1,400 in 2022, according to preliminary death certificate data from the California Department of Public Health. The same trend occurred nationwide, with malnutrition deaths more than doubling, from about 9,300 deaths in 2018 to roughly 20,500 in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

> Malnutrition is particularly common among older people, especially those who are ill, low-income, homebound, or without reliable access to healthy food or medical services. It can result from not eating enough but also from poor eating habits that lead to nutritional deficiencies. The majority of deaths in California from malnutrition last year occurred in residents 85 and older.

Post reply on HN