Re: The insane progress nobody is talking about

On Thu, 20 Jun 2024 02:59:25 GMT, Random <random@who.cares> wrote:

On Jun 19, 2024 at 11:44:52 AM CDT, "Robert Woodward" <robertaw@drizzle.com>
wrote:
>

In article <slrnv760nq.ve1.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>,
 Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
 

People are bitching about a lack of flying cars or fusion power,
but hardly notice the actual, incredible, crazy progress that is
happening.
 
I'm talking of course about artificial illumination.  (Yes, again.)
Not sexy?  Too bad.
 
Recently a conventional light bulb that had escaped my purge revealed
itself by dying.  I replaced it with the latest generation of Philips
LED bulb that requires about 1/14 (!) as much energy for the same
light output and is specified with a lifetime of 50.000 hours, which
amounts to some 50 years of average use.
 

 
I have been replacing LED bulbs at a much higher rate than that for one
particular fixture. They aren't lasting even 10 thousand hours (why that
is happening, I have no idea - if the fixture was wired up wrong, the
incandescent bulbs I had been using wouldn't had lasted as long as they
did).

>
The short answer, is the cheap power conversion electronics in the base of
most LED bulbs. An LED is a direct current devise, so there is a set of
electronics in the base of the bulb to convert the AC to DC.
>
A conventional bulb's filament is not sensitive to AC voltage fluctionations,
where the conversion electronics is. My guess is that your wiring to that
light is causing voltage dips and is stressing the electronics in the LED bulb
base.

I've seen a similar claim about timers that actually count
cycles-per-second: if those vary then the timer misperforms.

Of course, pretty much any electric power system is likely to have
/some/ problems, from time to time.

I once was in a situation where every time the Refrigerator (in
another room, but on the same circuit) powered up, the computer
rebooted. This gets very old very fast, but illustrates that even your
home wiring can misbehave and affect what you have plugged in.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"