this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The U.S. is pretty late with this, compared to the European Union. Only a few special bulbs are still sold here. Apart from that, the only allowed lighting technology is LED.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Tell that to the bar I was at last night in Palermo. They had a string of festoon lights going down the laneway and every one of them was incandescent. I noticed the same in Taormina. In fact, Italy seems pretty far behind the rest of the EU when it comes to environmental concerns.....but that's for another thread.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you sure they were incandescent bulbs and not just LED bulbs copying the incandescent style? They make a lot of decorative LED bulbs now with straight sections of LEDs to imitate the glowing wire of an incandescent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you talking about an Edison bulb?

Picture of an LED Edison bulb

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Having grown up in the era of incandescent bulbs I remember the fancy white bulbs made with frosted glass being more expensive than the totally transparent ones you could see the glowing filament inside, because the filament was irritating to look at and the frosted ones smoothed out the light for you.

I'm very amused that we're now jumping through hoops to make skinny LEDs that can fake the look of the old filaments nobody wanted to look at back then, and those are now the fancy expensive ones.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This is one example of the LED bulbs I was describing, but there's plenty of different styles of these being made

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are not sold anymore, but whatever is left and working can still be used. Many people also bought a ton of incandescents before the selling stopped (tHe lIgHt is sO mUcH bEtTeR!!!)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

tHe lIgHt is sO mUcH bEtTeR!!!)

narrator voice: "but it was not"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It can be. Cheap LED lights with low quality AC rectifiers are awful. If those are your point of comparison then yes, incandescent light is better (more steady).

Of course that difference goes away if you just get a better LED light.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wondering if incandescents can still be sold as heat bulbs because that's what they are

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wrap it up boys, we've solved climate change.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is your point we should not be taking steps to decrease electricity usage because this step by itself doesn't fix the entire problem?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People will complain about climate change than complain about LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT to improve it. Isnt this what people are always saying needs to happen?? That individual action isnt the way but we need legislature to fix everything? What did people think would happen if governments try to fight climate change? That our lives would in no way shape or form be affected?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The answer is everyone else has to fix climate change. Everyone but me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you have billionares shooting off joy ride rocket ships to space putting out more pollutants than 1000 regular people do in a lifetime per trip, yeah, my recycling everything and switching to oat milk is a pretty futile effort. Individual actions are fine, but there are some things that need the force of law to make a difference.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed, both are completely required.

You're only one person, you don't have to take full responsibility for all of climate change. But you can take responsibility for your slice of climate change

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's just a joke, we need to do much more

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I've been in the industry for over a decade and I find it fascinating how much lighting has changed in that time. When LEDs were first available, they were $60+ per bulb. Now you can get multipacks for under $10. Also, CFL bulbs were almost universally hated by everyone (and for good reason) now we no longer sell them. We strictly sell LEDs for regular lighting and we still sell incandescent specialty bulbs. Also, when LEDs first arrived there was a lot of distain for them, especially by the elderly. They wanted their energy wasting incandescent bulbs dammit! It seems the majority of them have come around because they've learned that LEDs are better.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I think the main issue with initial Led bulbs was their color was wrong. Incandescent bulbs emit light at 2700K, a nice warm white. Early LEDs emitted light at more like 5000K or there abouts, which is a really white light. Same with CFLs. Elderly people didn't like that at all. Honestly it wasn't just them, lots of people hated them for their too white of light.

Today you can get LEDs that are 2700K and/or are adjustable to what ever color you want.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It seems the majority of them have come around because they’ve ~~learned that LEDs are better.~~

died

they died

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also it became a political issue as all things should be somehow

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The most amazing thing to me - I’ve been using leds for 10+ years, and I think I’ve had to replace one or two of them. It is a wonder that prices can come down with demand dwindling so much.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a brand that's better for LED? I get migraines and the stroking effect of LED bulbs can be a trigger.

LED christmas bulbs particularly bad. It felt like walking into a rave at the Christmas store.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Regular brand LED bulbs don't strobe at all, only the very cheap ones from AliExpress and the resellers of Chinese crapware (like Walmart) do. IKEA has some nice and cheap bulbs, for example.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I took a look at the article and I came out with two points:

  1. finally! Congratulations! Join the rest of the world where changing a freaking lightbulb costs you no mental pain.

  2. left handed light bulbs? Are these a thing? Are these purpose built for specific applications, like counter clock wise screws?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Left handed bulbs are definitely a thing. They're mostly used for two reasons:

  1. You don't want people stealing your light bulbs. Instead of building a ton of secured housing for regular bulbs, you just buy ones people don't want to steal since their home appliances aren't threaded the same.
  2. You need a very specific type of bulb, and don't want some idiot putting the wrong type in.
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can we ban standard time and permanently switch to DST now too?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

DST is the best thing ever. Who doesn't want more daylight after work?

Oh yay it's bright at 4am in the morning when I'm asleep.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

What about 4am in the evening?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cure rage in certain circles

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Can’t wait for this to be the hot button issue in certain presidential campaigns this cycle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Makes sense. Nonetheless, reminds me of modern washing machines. Yeah they make sense and save water but it stinks that it's a compromise and it takes twice as long to wash. With Led bulbs it's always a say a prayer situation to see if a particular bulb works with a particular dimmer and isn't a flickering mess.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I wish the LEDs weren't such crap. They don't even last as long as a 60W incandescent a lot of times. The old CFLs last years, I have a few over ten years old.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm curious about what fixtures your led light bulbs were in.

Old incandescent lights worked great at high heat levels, so a typical boob light fixture that kept the heat in would be fine for an incandescent. Put an LED light in there, and it can still heat up beyond design capacity and might not get enough ventilation and age prematurely.

The only leds that failed for me were inside a fixture meant for incandescent lights. All our open bulbs or specially designed for led fixtures have been going strong for half a decade or more.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Planned obsolescence is a thing here. The LEDs don't fail, it's the power circuitry. Unfortunately the fixture theory doesn't pan out, as fixtures meant for incandescent bulbs need to be able to dissipate much more heat (about 6 times as much). I've been using LED bulbs for 7 years in all sorts of different fixtures and have never had even one burn out on me. Why? I don't really know. Maybe I turn the lights on less often than other people?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know what kind of crap LED light bulbs you get in the US but here in Europe to to get a CE mark (required to be able to import them into the EU) a model has to have less than 5% failure rate within (if I remember it correctly) the first year, last 10,000h at least (and have been tested for it, which is quite funny because the test requires having the thing always on for months), turn on within a second, lose (due to burn-in) less than a few percent (forgot the number) brightness within the first 6 months and a bunch of other requirements including stuff like color fidelity.

About a decade ago I actually looked into starting a business importing those things from China and still tody have several samples from back then still working fine (and that's also why I know the CE mark requirements for LED light bulbs).

More in general I've been using LED lamps for even longer and even back in the day when they were more expensive those things paid for themselves in lower power costs, and often do so quite fast (a couple of months) when used to replace incandescents, plus the rate of failures is now pretty low.

(When I first replaced all my lightbulbs with LEDs, way back when they weren't even as efficient as now, the fall in the electricity bill was very noticeable)

Oh, and the price of those things at the factory has been less than $1 for ages, so stores trying to sell those for more than $2 have huge markups and you're better of avoiding those places and getting them from hardware stores and similar (or just buy online).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This hasn't been my experience at all, I replaced most of the bulbs in my house with LEDs a couple years ago and I don't think I've had to replace a single one since. When they were all incandescent, I was regularly replacing burned out bulbs. Check which brand you're buying, you're probably buying crap which is why you're getting crap. I've found Phillips bulbs work great and are long lasting, I have done that've been in a fixture for 5 years now with no issue

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why are Republicans mad about it?!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Because they're driven entirely by emotion, not rationality. They were told to be angry about it, so they are. Plus, Biden or something.

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