[HN Gopher] Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs
___________________________________________________________________
Longest-lasting incandescent light bulbs
Author : Vigier
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-08-04 19:19 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Related: The Dubai Lamp: The "World's Most Efficient" LED Light
| Bulb
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25808959
| [deleted]
| wunderland wrote:
| And the cartel of incandescent lightbulb manufacturers that
| prevented longer-lasting bulbs from eroding profits:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| pserwylo wrote:
| The Centennial Light mentioned in this article also features in a
| later chapter of the wonderfully written 17776 [0]. It will take
| a while to get through it, but very much worth the time.
|
| [0] - https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
| serf wrote:
| I read that after seeing the link in your comment.
|
| I didn't care for the conclusions drawn in the story, but I
| liked the story itself and the multimedia aspects of it were
| engaging and fun.
|
| thanks for the good read.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| This is an interesting bit:
|
| > While it might seem astonishing that so many longest-lasting
| light bulbs have been so infrequently turned off, this is the
| precise reason for their longevity. Most of the wear and tear
| that leads to burnouts in incandescent light bulbs is caused by
| turning them on and off, not by burning them. Each time the bulb
| is turned on and off, the filament is heated and cooled. This
| causes the material of the filament to expand and contract, in
| turn causing micro stress cracks to develop. The more the light
| is turned on and off, the larger these cracks grow, until
| eventually the filament breaks at some point, in non-spectacular
| fashion, thus causing the light to burn out.
|
| I knew running filament bulbs on low voltage is the key to their
| longevity, but this is another important aspect
| 0xEF wrote:
| This idea is in direct cobtradiction to the claims that the
| Phoebus Cartel gathered to lower the lifespan of light bulbs
| due to declining sales in a market saturated with long-lasting
| bulbs. This is cited by some as the birth of Planned
| Obsolescence.
|
| I personally have not be clear on which side of this argument
| holds more accuracy, but given today's anti-consumer leanings
| in manufactiring (particulatly in the US), I have my misgivings
| about it all.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| eru wrote:
| Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37046713
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I noticed this early on when I noticed how often I changed the
| light bulb in the bathroom compared to the hallway where it was
| always on. Once I thought about it, I assumed it was due to
| thermal stress.
| ekaryotic wrote:
| I'm sure it would be possible to extend bulb life by ramping
| up the voltage slowly to reduce the thermal stress. not worth
| it in most environments, but in a bathroom, why not. I
| understand there are soft start mechanisms used in certain
| electric motors, i know of an anglegrinder that used one.
| maybe i could do a transplant some day.
| rocqua wrote:
| I recently retro-fitted my portable table-saw with a soft-
| start. The process is quite easy, though the soft-starter
| you use has to be picked for a certain power-draw. And they
| might be specific to the type of load (i.e. specific to a
| universal AC motor)
|
| I got my soft-starter from amazon for EUR10.
| deepspace wrote:
| A few years ago, I retrofitted my entire house with Lutron
| Caseta switches, for home automation purposes.
|
| The Casetas allow me to soft-start each bulb, and to run
| lights at less than full brightness most of the time.
|
| It would have been interesting to see the effect on
| incandescent bulb life, but I also took the opportunity to
| replace all light bulbs with dimmable LCD, so the question
| is moot.
| Ekaros wrote:
| What type of bulbs are we talking about? I could see leds and
| CFL being affected by moisture in bathroom. Also bathroom
| could be slightly hotter and worse ventilated than hallway.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| This was incandescent bulbs.
|
| For LEDs the issue is the driver boards, they get crammed
| into the tiny socket and live a very, very hot life.
| Doesn't matter that the LED has 100000 hour lifespan or
| whatever they write on the box when the driver dies after
| 5000 hours.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I don't believe that theory. Instead, I think incandescent bulb
| lifespan is limited by sublimation of tungsten.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Both are relevant, and can feed into each other. A
| incandescent lightbulb that has been on for a long time is
| more likely to fail after a power cycle, as the cycling adds
| additional stress (anyone who's used them can attest to this:
| the most common experience with one failing is going to turn
| it on, only to get a brief flash of light before it fails).
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sure. But that has very little to do with lifespan.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It seems to be relevant to lifetime, though not the
| dominant factor in most cases. There is an annoying
| shortage of actual data on this online though (the best
| actual experiment I can find is mythbusters where a
| 2-minute on-off cycle caused a failure in two weeks,
| which is obviously extreme but shows how rapid cycling
| can affect lifespan).
| Timon3 wrote:
| Do you have a basis for not believing it aside from you
| having a different theory?
| pfdietz wrote:
| You will note that incandescent bulbs gradually get dimmer
| as they age, due to deposition of tungsten on the glass.
|
| Also:
|
| http://donklipstein.com/bulb1.html
|
| "Due to the high temperature that a tungsten filament is
| operated at, some of the tungsten evaporates during use.
| Furthermore, since no light bulb is perfect, the filament
| does not evaporate evenly. Some spots will suffer greater
| evaporation and become thinner than the rest of the
| filament. These thin spots cause problems. Their electrical
| resistance is greater than that of average parts of the
| filament. Since the current is equal in all parts of the
| filament, more heat is generated where the filament is
| thinner. The thin parts also have less surface area to
| radiate heat away with. This "double whammy" causes the
| thin spots to have a higher temperature. Now that the thin
| spots are hotter, they evaporate more quickly. It becomes
| apparent that as soon as a part of the filament becomes
| significantly thinner than the rest of it, this situation
| compounds itself at increasing speed until a thin part of
| the filament either melts or becomes weak and breaks."
|
| Halogen bulbs last longer because the sublimated tungsten
| is converted to volatile halides, which then preferentially
| decompose back to elemental tungsten at the hot spots,
| healing them.
| rocqua wrote:
| Sublimation will thin out the wire, which weakens it. But the
| final failure mode is the fillament breaking. This can happen
| due to the wire getting so thin it melts. But the thermal
| stress of power cycling can also cause the thinned out wire
| to break. Perhaps the micro-cracks also increase wire
| resistance, causing more sublimation.
|
| The two mechanisms can easily interact.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, that's right. And it gives the illusion that on/off
| cycling is aging the bulb. That's like looking at someone
| who dropped dead from a heart attack during exercise and
| concluding exercise causes aging.
| memefrog wrote:
| That's really not written in Wikipedia's tone.
| mechhacker wrote:
| This is true for a lot of mechanical devices.
|
| For example, turning engines on and off heavily thermally
| cycles them. It can get worse when they are rapidly cooled or
| rapidly heated. Jet engines running at constant speed have high
| cycle fatigue to worry about, but steady temperatures don't
| pose a thermal stress issue.
|
| But shutting the engine off in cold air and letting them go
| from very hot to very cold suddenly will cause the thicker
| parts to cool slower than the thin parts, stressing them near
| the change in thickness. That results in low cycle fatigue
| (where you can count the cycles to failure in the
| dozens/hundreds/thousands vs. millions/billions for high cycle
| fatigue).
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I had some recessed lights in my ceiling that I installed in
| 2000.
|
| They worked daily for 20 years before I swapped them out for
| LED lights. Never had one fail.
|
| I attribute it to the fact that the dimmer switch they were on
| could only do soft turn ons and turn offs. Always took about 3
| seconds to turn on and off.
| [deleted]
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I have several carbon filament bulbs in a large ornamental
| chandelier. They glow gently and while I have replaced every
| other bulb in the property (some of them many times) in just the
| last decade... these vintage examples just keep on running.
| Output light per unit of electricity is very low, but that's not
| really why I chose them.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Mercury vapor streetlights are also good vintage lights if you
| can get your hands on them.
| interestica wrote:
| The street near my parents home has replaced all the sodium
| vapour street lamps with LED equivalents. Now, there is less
| ambient light (the new lights tend to point straight down)
| and the colour isn't necessarily a better option (that bluish
| not-quite-white from a cold temp light). I truly miss the
| orange distributed ambient glow of days (nights) past.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| On the subject of obsolete ways of making light, I really miss
| the aesthetic of the yellow low-pressure sodium lights we used to
| use outdoors in the UK that ate the colours out of everything.
| They were actually about as efficient as LEDs in terms of turning
| electricity into visible light but didn't last as long and
| eventually the last European company making them packed it in so
| we've more or less switched over entirely at this point. I don't
| really like how a lot of modern lighting tries to make night look
| like day, I prefer the night to look like night!
|
| There's no reason you couldn't have monochromatic LEDs in the
| same colour, part of me wishes we went for that instead of white
| ones which are usually pretty cold and harsh though they've got a
| lot better on that front with the really warm white ones being
| quite nice.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| > I don't really like how a lot of modern lighting tries to
| make night look like day, I prefer the night to look like
| night!
|
| The animals and insects hate it too. It's brain damaged people
| who like sterilization white illuminating every space!
|
| (No offense if you prefer cool white, but kind of)
| interestica wrote:
| To build on my previous comment, the problem also appears to be
| a lensing issue: rather than providing diffused ambient light,
| new LED models direct it straight down so that a street scape
| will now be predominantly dark with weird cold-white
| "spotlights". It's not a pleasant experience when walking and
| constantly adapting to bright and then dark. At least something
| on the red end of the spectrum is easier for the adaptation.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| The world's longest-lasting light bulb website is also from
| another time: https://www.centennialbulb.org/
|
| Unfortunately it looks like they took down the webcam, which is
| what I was looking for
| chandlerswift wrote:
| Looks like it's still around!
| https://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm
|
| On the home page:
|
| > Click the "Home of the Worlds Longest Burning Light Bulb!"
| image above to see the Bulb-Cam in action
|
| Which...wasn't the most intuitive, admittedly!
| tzs wrote:
| OT: I'm curious about a long lasting bulb I have. Nothing like
| any of those, of course...it is just that it has way more hours
| on it than I'd expect based on average lifetimes of various types
| of bulb.
|
| It's an outdoor security light over my garage. I don't know what
| technology it uses because the bulb is screwed in too tight for
| me to unscrew it with one of those things you put on the end of a
| pole to change out of reach bulbs, and I'm not agile enough on a
| ladder to be willing to get up on the garage roof to do it by
| hand.
|
| The bulb is clear so it is not fluorescent. I think it is some
| kind of gas discharge lamp. When it turns on it takes a minute or
| so to reach full brightness.
|
| It's been there since I bought this house 16 years ago. It's on a
| sensor that turns it on sometime during twilight and turns it off
| sometime during dawn. So figure maybe 10 hours a night average.
| That's over 58000 hours of on time.
|
| But 58000 hours is over twice the average lifetime of all the
| likely technologies for this kind of security light except LED
| and it is definitely not LED. So I'm curious what technology my
| bulb actually uses.
| mikestew wrote:
| Very possibly a mercury vapor[0], or low-pressure sodium lamp.
| Mercury vapor lamps have effectively been banned in the U. S.,
| but that was around 2008 and your lamp would still be within
| that range. And, yeah, my experience says that mercury lights
| last effectively forever. I don't remember ever changing an
| existing bulb (not that my experience with mercury lights is
| all that extensive).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-vapor_lamp
| m0rissette wrote:
| Well at least I learned something new today!
| audunw wrote:
| Technology Connections talked a lot about this and the supposed
| planned obsolescence of light bulbs
|
| https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY
|
| TL;DW: (if I rember correctly) Bulbs with shorter lifespans are
| generally more energy efficient. There was good reasons to not
| making bulb that last forever.
| memefrog wrote:
| More energy efficient, brighter and whiter.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Is there evidence for a real correlation beyond the obvious
| spurious one: Newer bulbs are more efficient and at the same
| time have a shorter lifespan due to planned obsolescence.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The arguments from the basic physics of the problem makes
| sense: hotter bulbs means more light relative to heat output,
| but also shorter lifetime. It seems quite hard to get out
| from under that tradeoff even with improvements in the
| underlying tech (materials, manufacturing, etc).
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| More efficient bulbs would be less hot, not more. The more
| energy gets converted to visible light instead of heat
| radiation, the more efficient the bulb is. So this argument
| only makes it more questionable, according to what you're
| saying modern bulbs should be lasting even longer than
| those old ones.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Not if you're using incandescence (LEDs and fluorescence
| use different mechanisms where this tradeoff doesn't
| exist in the same way). Incandescence is black-body
| radiation and the thing about black-body radiation is
| that as the temperature increases both the total energy
| given off and the proportion of higher energy radiation
| (useful visible light) to lower energy radiation (waste
| infrared) increase. So a hotter incandescent lightblub is
| more efficient than a cooler one (at least up until the
| point that it's so hot it starts giving off too much
| ultraviolet light, but that corresponds to a temperature
| at which no material is solid), though still pretty
| shockingly inefficient. Note that heat output and
| temperature can change seperately: a bulb running at a
| higher temperature (what I mean by hotter) can either
| have more light output for the same heat output, or less
| heat output for the same light output (for example, if
| the filament is shorter).
| retrac wrote:
| The hotter an incandescent element is, the more
| efficiently it converts heat to light. Think about how
| something metal and hot glows dull red, while something
| metal and _really_ hot glows orange-white. Reaching
| white-hot is a trade-off, in balance with the limit of
| the material for how hot you can run the filament, before
| it boils away.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| No, this has never been researched.
| speps wrote:
| IIRC, it's not exactly "more energy efficient", but rather
| "brighter light bulbs mean shorter lifespan" so you use the
| energy better but it's not inherently using less energy, it's
| using the same energy to produce more light. It also explains
| why the light bulbs from TFA last so long, they're all pretty
| dim.
| weberer wrote:
| Wouldn't hotter bulbs mean less energy wasted as infrared
| light?
| greggsy wrote:
| You mean more?
| falcrist wrote:
| Turns out it's less.
|
| Cooler bulbs seem to generate a larger fraction of their
| energy in the infrared. Hotter bulbs generate not only
| more light, but a greater fraction of that light is
| visible.
| montecarl wrote:
| This is easier to think about, if you consider the
| extremes. A very low power bulb generates no visible
| light, but still consumes energy. This is super
| inefficient. At higher temperature the peak shifts to
| longer wavelengths (i.e. visible). You can compare the
| black body radiation at different temperatures using
| Planck's law.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law#/media/F
| ile:Bla...
| brazzy wrote:
| >At higher temperature the peak shifts to longer
| wavelengths (i.e. visible)
|
| Shorter, not longer.
| josephg wrote:
| > it's using the same energy to produce more light.
|
| That is, by definition, more energy efficient.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Not if you need to produce a new light bulb
| rcxdude wrote:
| Not obviously so. The embodied energy of an incendescent
| lightbulb could easily be dwarfed by the energy used in
| its lifetime. The relative cost of the bulb and the
| energy used to run it would certainly point to this being
| the case.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| To restate your point: it's highly unlikely that a $1
| light bulb contains more than $1 worth of energy.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A $1 dollar bulb can blow through a dollar of energy in
| about 100 hours. 200 hours if its a 50W.
|
| In the technology connections video he does the math to
| show that long life bulbs are just an all around loss.
| postmodest wrote:
| (Bullshit numbers incoming)
|
| If one "forever bulb" can only output 10 lumens @10 watts
| but you need 100 lumens, and a "one year" bulb can create
| 100 lumens @60 watts, the disposable bulb wins.
| mrfumier wrote:
| "The Phoebus cartel was an international cartel that controlled
| the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of
| Europe and North America between 1925-1939. The cartel took
| over market territories and lowered the useful life of such
| bulbs, which falsely claimed to raise their efficiency and
| output."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| oblio wrote:
| I'm not sure what your comment does, is it just to provide
| the Wikipedia link?
| rocqua wrote:
| The video cited above explicitly claims that the thinner
| wires (that last less long) are indeed more efficient. He
| backs it up with real experiments, and addresses the common
| claims that the Phoebus only did this to sell more products.
|
| Specifically, the life-time of a bulb has to do with filament
| thickness (the filament sublimates until it is too thin,
| melts from resistance and breaks). At the same time, thinner
| fillaments will get hotter, and therefore be brighter at the
| same power level. (specifically, more of the heat energy is
| radiated away in the visible spectrum). This means bulb life-
| time and efficiency an inherent trade-off.
| ekidd wrote:
| Has there been a similar shortening of the lifetime of
| commonly-advertised LED bulbs?
|
| We bought a bunch of Philips Hue bulbs around 2015 or 2016.
| They were expensive bulbs, but every single one is still
| running fine. The downside for Philips is that once I
| replaced all my bulbs, I stopped needing to buy lightbulbs.
|
| The Hue bulbs are still available, but a lot of the newer LED
| bulbs I see claim much shorter lifetimes.
| sgerenser wrote:
| I imagine this is at least partly due to being more
| realistic. LED bulbs from the past few years were rated for
| around 25,000 hours but anecdotal reports seem to say they
| rarely reached that lifetime.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| A LED bulb = LED(s) + electronics.
|
| It's usually the electronics that dies (specifically:
| electrolytic capacitors, if included).
|
| Life of the LEDs themselves depends a lot on operating
| temperature. Running hot (like in the cramped innards of a
| bulb), their output gradually decreases or they burn out @
| some point. This is the fate of many cheap bulbs with poor
| thermal design.
|
| Separate electronics (read: and _their_ waste heat) from
| the LEDs, cool them well (and /or run at reduced power),
| and the LEDs can last practically infinite. Just like
| standby LEDs on appliances don't burn out. And
| -potentially- failed LEDs or driver electronics can be
| replaced independently.
|
| But this does require a purpose designed fixture. Chip-on-
| Board (CoB) LED is the keyword here.
| mleo wrote:
| I am there with you, but with regular Philips LED bulbs
| from 2012. When I moved in 2013, I took those bulbs with me
| and they have been going strong 10 years now. All other LED
| bulbs in the house have been replaced a couple of times.
| jokabrink wrote:
| The text you cited was changed just today from
|
| > [...] lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which _raised_
| their efficiency [...]
|
| to
|
| > [...] lowered the useful life of such bulbs, which _falsely
| claimed to raise_ their efficiency [...]
|
| emphasis mine. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?t
| itle=Phoebus_cartel&di...
| vesinisa wrote:
| This seems to have been reverted only moments ago. Perhaps
| a disgruntled person from HN trying to force learned false
| history on Wikipedia?
|
| Please watch the video from Technology Connections linked
| above to understand why a) Phoebus was indeed a cartel but
| b) which did not have as nefarious purposes as has been
| later claimed by e.g. populist TV documentaries such as
| "The Light Bulb Conspiracy".
| jokabrink wrote:
| I believe you that the efficiency argument played a role
| when they decided to reduce the life expectancy of the
| light bulbs. The cartel doing 'cartel-things' aside, the
| 1000h-limit probably was a good decision even though I
| think that they ultimately did not do it for the
| consumer.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Of course, there's no citation for the change.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The citation for that sentence does back up the
| assertion: there's a quote from someone in the source
| saying that the cartel didn't meaningfully increase
| efficiency but did shorten lifespans. Whether you trust a
| media studies professor who has 'studied the cartel's
| documents' is another question though.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| But also in the same wiki page:
|
| _" As regards life standards, before the Phoebus Agreement
| and to this day the general service filament lamp was and is
| designed to have, on average, a minimum life of 1,000 hours.
| It has often been alleged--though not in evidence to us--that
| the Phoebus organisation artificially made the life of a lamp
| short with the object of increasing the number of lamps sold.
| As we have explained in Chapter 9, there can be no absolutely
| right life for the many varying circumstances to be found
| among the consumers in any given country, so that any
| standard life must always represent a compromise between
| conflicting factors. B.S.I, has always adopted a single life
| standard for general service filament lamps, and the
| representatives of both B.S.I, and B.E.A., as well as most
| lamp manufacturers, have told us in evidence that they regard
| 1,000 hours as the best compromise possible at the present
| time, nor has any evidence been offered to us to the
| contrary. Accordingly we must dismiss as misconceived the
| allegation referred to above."_
| masklinn wrote:
| This is also what Alex explains in the Technology
| Connection video, and a lot more, with actual examples
| using actual lightbulbs and some surface explanations of
| the physics.
| BillinghamJ wrote:
| I believe his name is Alec btw :)
| kipchak wrote:
| The statement by UK Monopoly and Restrictive Practices
| Commission seems to be inaccurate as the objective was an
| average lifespan of 1,000 hours, not _" on average a
| minimum life of 1,000 hours"_ as bulbs that exceeded 1,000
| hours were fined, as well as those lasting less.[1] That
| bulbs lasting longer than 1,000 hours were fined,
| regardless of their wattage used to lumens produced seems
| explainable only by a desire to restrict lifespans, and
| contrary to efficiency or minimum lifespans being the goal.
|
| From [1], quoting Anton Phillips discussing members
| building higher voltage and longer lived bulbs,
|
| "This, you will agree with me, is a very dangerous practice
| and is having a most detrimental influence on the total
| turnover of the Phoebus Parties.... After the very
| strenuous efforts we made to emerge from a period of long
| life lamps, it is of the greatest importance that we do not
| sink back into the same mire by paying no attention to
| voltages and supplying lamps that will have a very
| prolonged life."
|
| [1]https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
| rcxdude wrote:
| Is this assertion that the claim of efficiency is false
| actually backed up by anything, though? The cited article has
| a quote from a media studies professor who has apparently
| read the cartel's records.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That was one of the first videos were i disagreed with him
| completely... Looks like he let his personal politics get in
| the way.
|
| "yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-competitive
| cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it is all
| forgiven" was is his basic take
|
| The ends justify the means.
|
| it was not up to the Phoebus cartel to choose what was a
| "better bulb"
| scrollaway wrote:
| Did you watch the video or hear what you wanted to hear?
|
| His point was about the consumer's end costs. It was cheaper
| to replace the lightbulbs than to be energy inefficient. He
| provided pretty solid evidence for that too.
|
| It wasn't about "saving the planet".
| louwrentius wrote:
| I think you totally misunderstood the video, that wasn't his
| point at all.
|
| Because of the increased efficiency, you saved much more on
| the energy bill, even offsetting the extra cost for more
| light bulbs which were cheap even back then.
|
| Even if you don't give a fuck about the planet, most people
| care about their wallet.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I understood, it was a "consumers are too dumb to pick
| correctly so the experts must choose for them" argument.
|
| I reject that mentality, it is a path to lots of unintended
| consequences not to mention government over reach when the
| "experts" we are forced to follow also have the power of
| government authority
| louwrentius wrote:
| The inefficient bulbs were also available as stated in
| the video but these bulbs only made sense for hard to
| reach/service locations. So people could pick according
| to their need.
|
| Seems to me you let your politics, prejudice and personal
| hangups totally cloud and warp what was actually said in
| the video.
| [deleted]
| georgyo wrote:
| His other points are better.
|
| The cartel dissolved many years ago, and there wasn't a flood
| of _better_ longer bulbs because there physically can't be.
|
| Longer bulbs have existed for a long time, but they are much
| dimmer in addition to using more power. As such they are not
| desirable to people.
|
| Even beyond the cartel, power plants wanted the higher
| efficiency lightbulbs to reduce strain.
|
| Those points are far better.
|
| In any case, the cartel's goal definitely wasn't saving the
| planet. Can you even imagine a evil shadow organization with
| that goal? Their goal was profit, and to get profit they
| wanted standards.
|
| Standards make it so a consumer can get various different
| products that work predictably. The world would be a much
| worse place without agreed upon standards.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>The world would be a much worse place without agreed upon
| standards.
|
| Yes "Standards" where they big player dictates to everyone
| else how they must do things.. Of course they hide it in a
| "standards organization" like how W3C is functionally a
| decision of Google at the point, but we do have "web
| standards" which are what ever google says
|
| Or how Microsoft more or less forced out OpenXML with Open
| Office XML which is anything but open...
|
| I could list 100's of examples
|
| Also https://xkcd.com/927/
| bombcar wrote:
| You can do your own long-life bulb - get a incandescent and a
| dimmer and run your bulb at a lower voltage. It'll be dimmer,
| but it'll last longer.
| armada651 wrote:
| > yes they screwed over the consumer with their anti-
| competitive cartel but hey they were saving the planet so it
| is all forgiven
|
| That's a misrepresentation of his take. He does not say that
| the cartel should be forgiven for their anti-competitive
| practices.
|
| He just said that what is often referred to as planned
| obsolescence, may simply have been an early form of product
| standardization and wasn't necessarily intended to be anti-
| competitive.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I'm very glad he made this video, because the meme about
| planned obsolescence needs to die
|
| Yes you can make a bulb that lasts "forever", but it is very
| dim and consumes a lot of energy
| armada651 wrote:
| Planned obsolescence in the modern day is a real problem
| rather than a meme of course. There is no insurmountable
| physics at play when a phone stops receiving security
| updates.
|
| I wonder if anyone has actually looked into what the real
| first instance of planned obsolescence was.
| masklinn wrote:
| > There is no insurmountable physics at play when a phone
| stops receiving security updates.
|
| There is the "insurmountable physics" problem of needing to
| spend money on something perceived as having no ROI worth
| speaking about (if it's even positive).
|
| This is what most "planned obsolescence in the modern day"
| is about, not spending money you don't _absolutely_ have
| to. The precision of modern manufacturing and the progress
| of material science similarly allows very low tolerances,
| because you don't need to account for anywhere near as much
| manufacturing variance. Therefore you can hew much closer
| to what you _need_ to provide, and lower your costs as a
| result.
|
| An other factor is the market cycling, why would you design
| a phone to last for 10 years when pretty much none of your
| target market will keep the phone 3, and it will net you no
| brand loyalty whatsoever?
|
| Finally there's time to market, pretty much all foldable
| phones seem to suffer from cracking or delamination,
| because it's a super popular idea which commands a huge
| premium, so as soon as that was an option manufacturers
| started releasing device with limited real-world durability
| testing.
| armada651 wrote:
| You've perfectly summarized why the only way we'll reduce
| e-waste is by introducing legislation that requires our
| electronic products last longer. This is exactly why the
| issue of planned obsolescence can't be left up to the
| market: making short-lifespan products presents a better
| ROI.
|
| Some may argue that this would stifle innovation and we
| would likely not have foldable phones today if such
| requirements were in place. But in my opinion if such
| innovations can't be made durable, then the world would
| be better off without them.
| mikestew wrote:
| _You 've perfectly summarized why the only way we'll
| reduce e-waste is by introducing legislation that
| requires our electronic products last longer._
|
| Well, that _would_ be one way to reduce e-waste: make
| phones so expensive that a lot fewer people buy them.
| Because whereas before that test matrix had five phones,
| but legislation increased that to seven, including two
| that can 't run the latest OS so we have to back port the
| fixes to the previous OS. None of that is free, in fact,
| it's quite expensive.
|
| Beside, how many people do _you_ know that base their
| phone buying decisions on whether or not their current
| one is still supported? Of the folks I know, no one does
| that (granted, I live in Redmond, WA, which has some
| techy types living in the area). They just buy a new one
| when they are tired of their old one, or they have New
| Phone Fever.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > I wonder if anyone has actually looked into what the real
| first instance of planned obsolescence was.
|
| I would love to see a short comic about a smith who creates
| swords out of gallium for cheap, only for them to literally
| melt in your hand shortly after walking away.
| kube-system wrote:
| Even in the modern day, it is (often, but not always) a
| meme. The reason your phone stops getting security updates
| isn't physics but the economics of selling phones. People
| buy new phones, not old phones, and OEMs allocate their
| labor to work on those phones. There is no conspiracy to
| force you to upgrade. If you could somehow release an HTC
| Hero today with Android 13.0.0_r66 on it, it wouldn't be a
| viable business. People don't make purchasing decisions
| based on security updates.
| rocqua wrote:
| Just because the phoebe cartel did not limit bulb lifetime
| (purely) as planned obsolescence, does not mean that there is
| no planned obsolescence in the world currently. It just means
| the concept is not as old as some people think.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Very weird article. Doesn't follow the same writing style as the
| rest of Wikipedia and almost every bulb story has citation needed
| on it.
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