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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

They should also mandate longevity, not just lumens per Watt. LED bulbs could technically live for decades, but there's a trend to drive them so hard that they die a heat death after a few years. And those LED bulbs contain much more electronics and thus stuff that is bad for the environment, so while we obviously save a lot of energy compared to incandescent bulbs, we could easily do even better by not going for the most shitty design that dies early. But I get it, how are you gonna make a living if your bulbs last forever?

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I have some of the original Philips L Prize bulbs from ~2012. They've probably been on an average of eight hours a day for more than a decade now. I'm sure brightness has declined a bit, but not noticeably. Otherwise still great. They weren't cheap, but I expect to get another decade or two out of them.

Bought a Philips CFL bulb in 1998. It ended up lasting 12 years. It was bought for a garage that had no door so sort open to moisture when it rained. It would be on sometimes several days if forgotten but on average eight to twelve hours over night. Incandescent light bulbs would blow in a month or two and at 75 watts it cost several dollars a month because energy was not cheap in that country. Philips knows how to make a bulb.

They already try to sell it as a subscription. So you don't pay for the lightbulb itself, but for the service that there is light. It is kind of a ridiculous concept for private customers. There have been some Phillips light bulbs with an app and subscription, that supposedly achieve this. I don't know what happened to it, but was in sheer disbelief, when it was explained to me. There are some other companies, which offer something similar. It may make sense for big installations, that change quite often and I certainly would subscribe to some Christmas led light installation for some time.

But having ones home light based on a subscription and not actually owning it, is very strange to me.

Housing providers could partner with LBaaS providers to provide renters with light bulbs (DRM locked to the unit's sockets for the renters safety of course) for a monthly fee. Hold my NA beer, I've got a great idea for the next YC batch.

It is admittedly utterly absurd but has some merit. Rental models align incentives better for promoting longevity - they get paid more effectively by making products durable. A hybrid approach of sale of something requiring a subscriptions is the worst existant model as it adds rent while encouraging selling replacements post warranty period.

AFAIK there are two resistors in parallel on each of those LED bulb, except of in the cheapest ones. If you destroy/unsolder a correct one (with higher resistance), the lamp is going to shine significantly less brightly but with higher energy conversion efficiency and with significantly less heating. If not a correct resistor has been dismounted, the lamp is going to shine too dimly to be useful.

PS. I have not tried this livehack yet, so i can not promise it works, but maybe it is important to clarify that my source is talking about 220V bulbs.

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