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Comment by cyberpunk | Hacker News Reader

I think they look pretty cool too: https://www.themayor.eu/uploads/image/file/1031/medium_batst...

Looks like something out of a horror movie.

Does remind me of the old low-pressure sodium street lighting that was popular in the UK when I was growing up. They’d glow pink for a while when they first turned on, before turning a deep orange.

They're still around here in Poland. I don't think they get installed anymore, but where they still work fine they're still there.

I love them. That's the best night-time lightning out there. Blueish LED lightning is unsettling in comparison. These orange street lights are comfortable to eyes and make the streets look pretty.

Love the sodium lights. The white LEDs here have a blinding spectrum, also are installed so they glare straight into your eyes. Insane.

big positive of the LED lights is much less light pollution, but I do wish they could be warmer

Sodium light is actually pretty great from light pollution perspective, because it is extremely easy to filter it out, as it is a very narrow band. Astronomers prefer sodium lamps, for example.

Dead moths prefer sodium lamps too, or something. Currently, LEDs are kind of stupid, too. The parking lot outside my home has fixtures with builtin LEDs which will last, like forever. So there's no need to make the LEDs replaceable like a bulb had to be.

Except they do break (they dim into a faint glow, and the brown out completely) and they have to replace the whole fixture.

> Dead moths prefer sodium lamps too, or something.

Isn't that just because it is very hot so they die?

> Except they do break (they dim into a faint glow, and the brown out completely) and they have to replace the whole fixture.

That's the big lie of LED industry; we can make ones lasting 50-100k hours... except we won't cos that would put price up by a bit and get out-competed.

It's exactly the other way around. Now I'm afraid this is some kind of common misconception, like "not only are LEDs great when it comes to efficiency, they don't pollute the light either!"

The ones around here direct the light downwards at the street instead of almost-every-direction like the old ones did, so it's kind-of true that the LED ones have less light pollution (I know I'm getting a hell of a lot less light into my windows), but it's because of the lamp shape and not that they're LEDs.

yes this was my observation, since the ones outside my house were replaced I have much less light into my house and I can see the stars. I assumed it must be some factor of the LED design that makes it easier to direct downwards though

For astronomy, the pollution upwards is the problem.

For insects and mammals and birds, it's the spectrum, the colour, which is the problem.

Here it's the other way around. The new shapes are bonkers.

It's not really true that they pollute less. One thing that has happened due to their "lower power and longer life" is that they are being installed in a lot of places where they aren't needed.

Where I live, the city decided in the downtown core to wrap non-diffused non-rectified LEDs around the poles in spirals. What this means is that if you're walking or driving, you are looking directly at the light as opposed to a traditional fixture that is pointed downward and may also have a cover.

One of the reasons my wife and I moved to the country is because there is so much LED lighting everywhere that the sky glows white at night. Our neighbors have also taken to competing with each other to see who can install the brightest spotlights around our city house. One guy installed a 15000 lumen flood in his driveway which was lighting up our bedroom at night through the blinds.

I really think we're going to have to ban certain forms of exterior lighting or nobody is going to be sleeping well.

My mother told me that a neighbour across the street from her that we know installed a light like that because he was paranoid that people were going to break into his car at night or something. It's been changed to a different less-bright light. She thinks another neighbour must have complained. The new one is still on most of the night but it's not as bright. I think it's ridiculous. If someone is going to go into your car, a light isn't going to stop them and in fact, might even discourage people from looking if it's too bright.

These new LEDs are just trash. Some houses, you see them stuffed in a foot apart all around the soffits on multiple levels and when you walk at night they just make the place look cheap and tacky compared to how it used to be before when people would place an incandescent flood at ground level shining upward.

Would have been amusing if you mounted an adjustable mirror on the wall near your window to aim the high-power beam straight back at their own window if talking to them first didn't work. Seems fair. It doesn't need to be pointed directly at you after all.. when it could be pointed at the driveway instead..

We had those in the USA as well. If you kicked the pole hard enough you could make it go out for a few minutes.

the light they produced was the best and I wish we still used them, or at least an LED that mimics the orange color.

I remember being teached pole kicking as a drunk teenager...

Yellow LEDs emit light at 585 nm, which is very close to low pressure sodium lights at 589 nm.

I have such a core memory of reading in the back of the car by the yellow sodium lights that take the colours out of everything. They're really efficient even by modern standards but the bulbs need replacement much more often than LEDs and they aren't made in the UK any more so they're an expensive niche import.

I definitely prefer the warm yellow sodium glow to the harsh 'operating table white' LEDs a lot of councils replaced them with but I think they're finally getting the message now because by the time they got round to my street they used much better warm white LEDs to replace the sodium lights.

It looks more Cyberpunk to me. The red/blue contrast is nice IMO.

There are some of these red lights near my parents house (in the UK), and driving through them did definitely give off a ye olde low pressure sodium vibe, albeit a bit redder.

I think sodium lights are more pleasant than red light district themed street lighting.

They were common in the Netherlands like 15 years ago.

They do but they don't look very effective for actually lighting stuff up

Love the name of the file "_PR.jpg". That's all it is.

it looks like if i walk down that road i’m going to get beaten up by batman.

Cool but very weak

It's really all you need for eg walking the dog at night. I've only seen them used on streets where cars are very rare especially in the evening.

Not enough in dangerous areas though and no city would choose different lamps based on violence statistics (or they would have to admit certain areas are worse to the wider population that never checks statistics).

Yes they're only used in suitable areas.

I wonder if it is partially made up for by the redness of the light. Red light doesn’t mess up your night vision, right?

Correct. It also doesn't interfere with peoples' sleep, which is why it's polite to use the red LED on your headlamp when walking through a campsite at night.

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