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Comment by Solstinox | Hacker News Reader

...and get better sleep.

Amen. I would kill for this. I keep my own outside lights off, so there's a bit less blindy light pollution on my end of the street. It's the same reason I never report the nearby street lights when they go out.

The best outdoor light is less.

Ahem... I seem to recall that the masts of most streetlights are rather thin. Which meant that one could kick them a few times in ways that make the mast swing. Which could be rather large and abrupt swings at the top, which led to "Wackelkontakt"/ loss of contact, and thus darkness. It was even reversible!

Your own personal kick switch for public street lights!

I've used high lumen, hand-held lights to kill streetlights. I haven't found a spectrum of laser that works, yet.

https://petapixel.com/2015/02/19/a-laser-can-turn-off-street...

Nice. I've got a red but it's probably too low power. My green and blue are 1W & 3W but they're too low a wavelength. High powered reds are relatively cheap. I'll look into it.

That's a good way to get in trouble, and rightfully so. We're not having streetlights because we want to kill insects, we have them for safety reasons. You do not want to travel in absolute darkness in a city with cars around.

Trying to interfere with that because you're too lazy to buy a black-out curtain is a terrible idea.

What if I'd like to be able to see some stars from my bed? Furthermore, not every light, sign makes sense at the place it is. They are mostly stamped out at regular intervals "because we say so".

> What if I'd like to be able to see some stars from my bed?

"My comfort should trump everyone's safety"? Still no.

And the cars you spoke of are stealthed, running dark, or what?

/me shakes head and thinks "Here is your sign! Hold it!"

"Anything that smells like safety automagically justifies the damage it does. Only monsters want less appearance of safety."

I'll take "what?" - with "what?" being my headlights only point straight ahead. They don't curve with the road or illuminate the sides of the roads where kids/animals can dart out. I live in a neighborhood with lots of kids and pets. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S038611121...

https://www.porschefremont.com/porsche-dynamic-light-system/

Cars have headlights.

The way that ("Lampen austreten") works is because the vibration causes the plasma to "disembark" from the electrodes, which opens the electrical circuit, which prevents further power flow into the lamp, which lets the plasma cool down quickly. There's a thermal cutoff switch in the lamp that prevents it from re-igniting on a hot lamp, so the entire lamp needs to cool down before it turns back on.

That could be the case, but at the time I felt it was of more mechanical nature. Because in my case they didn't turn back on, not for days, until kicked back into working order.

This.

I had a big orange street lamp hanging right in front of my bedroom for years.

In Germany you can generally call the city office and complain and they will put some metal there to block the light from falling into your house. It might be an option in other locations as well.

We were able to do that for an alley light here in small-town Minnesota USA.

Don't houses in Germany, and western Europe, have blinds ? I only had this night light issue when living in the US

Not everywhere in Germany, or in Western Europe for that matter.

I cannot explain why many regions that are fairly up North don't have solid outdoor blinds or shutters.

Where did you find a house in the US without blinds? I honestly don't think I've ever seen one without some sort of window covering. The solid exterior blinds that I slightly prefer are much less common in the US, but both still block light adequately in my experience.

Everywhere I slept in California, from SF to LA and a few places in between had these awful vertical blinds which can't even block moonlight: https://persianascanet.com/wp-content/uploads/Verticales-PVC...

They often do, and those are quite handy, but fully closing off your bedroom windows can be bad since you won't wake up with the light and sleeping with an open window is not possible.

(Plus, the major temperature control move in summer Germany is to open everything possible at night and close it during the day. If you have mostly cool nights and good insulation that is sufficient.)

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