LWN: Comments on "Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to"

Separate your wifi networks

dfsmith — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 19:25:26 +0000

You're correct! I should have said "trusted, secured network", to distinguish between effort and effect.

Why bother?

paulj — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:57:45 +0000

You mentioned "switch" and I had to actually stop and think for a minute to realise you meant a simple, physical electrical switch.

Here's why, I was talking to someone involved in IEEE standards stuff: Lights in the future are going to be run off ethernet (PoE) and contain actual ethernet switches in the fittings... (so other sensors and what not can be plugged in).

Why bother?

vonbrand — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 20:40:29 +0000

Oil lamps also depend on complex systems to get the oil and wick and matches into your hands.

Why bother?

marcH — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 20:04:24 +0000

> A candle or oil lamp are much simpler and more predictable, since they don't require an external generator. That's why people turn to them when the "simple" electrical grid has problems that result in a blackout.

For sure the electrical grid is internally anything but simple, however it's off-topic here. Its beauty is to completely abstract its entire complexity away behind the simplest "API" there can be.

By the way some electrical grids are incredibly reliable despite their complexity, more than many oil lamps. Granted: they require depending on others which can be a cultural issue.

And to keep things in perspective: the complexity of an electrical grid is most likely less than any chip capable of running software... even in a light bulb.

> Your failure to understand that other people may want the extra functions (and the cool factor) that this new lighting technology offers is exactly the dismissive attitude we're criticizing. Just because you don't want it doesn't mean that it's inherently useless.

The question is: why do you care enough to criticize this attitude? Cognitive dissonance maybe? https://xkcd.com/386/ ?

From my side I care because I'm afraid marketing and lobbying (and *not just* demand and supply) will eventually make it too hard to go and buy simple and reliable systems at some point in the future; because they'll be too cheap and not "cool enough" to market. So yes: I'm admittedly and actively making fun of the "cool factor". Hopefully I'm just being paranoid and you, I and everyone else will still be able to get from the market whatever they want for the foreseeable future - "useless" or not.

Why bother?

rgmoore — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 19:40:02 +0000

But a light bulb and switch are not the ultimate in simplicity and predictability. A candle or oil lamp are much simpler and more predictable, since they don't require an external generator. That's why people turn to them when the "simple" electrical grid has problems that result in a blackout.

Even if you accept that they're the simplest technology for electrical lighting, there are design criteria beyond simplicity and predictability that are worth considering, like efficiency, functionality, or even style. Maybe you don't care about those other design criteria when shopping for a lighting system, but other people obviously do. Your failure to understand that other people may want the extra functions (and the cool factor) that this new lighting technology offers is exactly the dismissive attitude we're criticizing. Just because you don't want it doesn't mean that it's inherently useless.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

anselm — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 00:21:20 +0000

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) currently considers glyphosate a group 2A substance, meaning that “it is probable that it is carcinogenic to humans, but the evidence is not conclusive”. This puts it in the same class as hot mate, red meat, and working as a hairdresser. On the other hand there are various substances in group 1 (“definitely carcinogenic to humans”) that many humans consume with great relish on a regular basis, like tobacco smoke and alcohol.

The way the IARC comes up with these classifications is, in many cases, by looking at studies where researchers feed extremely high doses of the substance in question to laboratory mice to see what will happen. They don't really teach us a lot about risk in the real world. When we consider actual risk, we're quite sure today that smoking (group 1) is a large contributor to lung cancer; with processed meat (recently placed in group 1) we suspect that it contributes to bowel cancer but it is unlikely to be an actual problem unless you really eat a lot of sausage and bacon; and the amounts of glyphosate (group 2A) people are exposed to through their food are usually so far below what is considered a safe limit that there really seems to be no cause for concern. (It should also be mentioned that the IARC's classification of glyphosate is not shared by various other health, safety, and risk assessment bodies.)

In the case of glyphosate in particular, there is a movement that would like to see the stuff banned no matter what. Here in Germany, the Green party has been flooding the media with scare stories about various places where glyphosate turns up, the most recent being that it can be found in beer (potentially a big issue with us Germans). It turns out, however, that on the one hand the amounts detected are such that a 60-kg human would have to drink 1,000 litres (that's “one thousand litres”) of beer a day to consume enough glyphosate to exceed the safety limit. On the other hand, the lab that did the study looked at a grand total of 17 bottles of beer of various brands, not all of which actually contained as much residual glyphosate as the worst ones that were mentioned in the study. This is apparently the level of scientific integrity one has to expect when dealing with the anti-glyphosate crowd.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

Cyberax — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 22:56:53 +0000

No, it's definitely NOT listed as a 'certain carcinogen'. That would have been quite Earth-shattering for the agricultural industry.

The whole noise was about its classification as a 'probable carcinogen' which pretty much doesn't mean anything.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

nix — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 20:55:21 +0000

There's fairly recent research that suggests otherwise. It was all over the news about six months ago. The stuff is now listed as a certain carcinogen (though that particular rating system is more or less useless: *oxygen* is a certain carcinogen).

I'll see if I can track down a reference from somewhere more trustworthy than a news site :)

Why bother?

marcH — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 08:45:50 +0000

The light bulb and switch is not just a random technology: it's the utmost symbol of simplicity and predictability. Hence the joke: "How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?"

Seeing this joke turn true and that symbol die does hurt.

Smart lights and E-readers.

marcH — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 08:32:37 +0000

> This whole thread/discussion feels a lot like talking about e-readers back in the day.

e-readers brought obvious advantages that no one argued about: instant buy, weight, no backlight,... These advantages didn't, still don't and will never appeal to many people but no one can contest their reality.

So far the only advantage of a smart light bulb seems to be some cardiovascular disease coming earlier in life; more likely to beat cancer to the line. Because you know; walking from the car to the front door was too much physical effort already.

And of course all the usual "smart" drawbacks will also apply to smart bulbs: not just security holes but also regular bugs and crashes, long boot and response times (including the time to find the phone and app), configuration and other clumsy user interface issues, etc.

Not every gadget is bound to succeed eventually. Google "failed inventions".

I reluctantly surrendered to software the simplicity, reliability and responsiveness of the dumb switches on my old TVs because there were obvious benefits in return like Netflix & co. I predict it's going to be much harder to make simple light switches disappear. I'll believe the killer app when I'll see it.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

anselm — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 23:10:12 +0000

Glyphosate is not very toxic to humans. You could drink a small quantity (say, a shot glass) and while it wouldn't be a pleasant experience it would be unlikely to cause you lasting harm (a pint glass, however, would be a very, very bad idea). Caffeine, which many people don't think twice about consuming on a regular basis, is about 25 times as toxic to humans as glyphosate.

Having said that, it turns out that many herbicides on the market contain glyphosate as well as other, nastier stuff (which is why you shouldn't try the shot glass experiment with commercial “glyphosate”). It's probably not a bad idea in general to take reasonable precautions if you're a farmer about to spray glyphosate (or any herbicide) on your field, but the overwhelming scientific consensus after 40 years of research by various entities is that eating produce that had glyphosate sprayed on it at some point is quite safe.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

Cyberax — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 21:43:51 +0000

> Glyphosate is not as good as all that. It damages DNA (numerous double-strand breaks are seen, so it's probably ripping up the phosphate backbone). i.e. it's a fairly strong mutagen and carcinogen.
Where did you get this info? Glyphosate is classified as "probable carcinogen", along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_work . There definitely is no known biochemical pathway for it to damage the DNA.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

nix — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 21:00:07 +0000

Glyphosate is not as good as all that. It damages DNA (numerous double-strand breaks are seen, so it's probably ripping up the phosphate backbone). i.e. it's a fairly strong mutagen and carcinogen.

When it tells you not to go near the stuff without gloves on, it's not lying. It's better to use whole-body protection and a mask...

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

nix — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 20:57:10 +0000

I dunno. Water with wheat is more or less bread, but I think selling it as water would probably be fraudulent.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

mathstuf — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 18:22:48 +0000

The extreme of this is that things that have no business not being what their label says are now being sold (probably at a severe markup too). Here is "Low Carb, Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Vegan, Wheat Free, Yeast Free"…water. What would water with gluten even be? A slurry?

http://www.foodservicedirect.com/product.cfm/p/2959750/Gl...

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

anselm — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 13:42:03 +0000

So why are quite a fair few of them just ordinary, NATURAL products, like cochineal

Even the natural stuff can come with a yuck factor. Consider cochineal; I wonder how many people would like to find out that their lipstick is made from squashed bugs?

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

Wol — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 13:27:41 +0000

Bit like e-numbers, really.

"All e-numbers are bad". So why are quite a fair few of them just ordinary, NATURAL products, like cochineal, or caramel, etc etc.

Yes it pays to know your e-numbers - some are clues to dodgy practice - but just because it's an e-number doesn't mean a thing (other than somebody's bothered to codify it).

Cheers,
Wol

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

viro — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:01:11 +0000

I see your "free of genes" and raise "100%-natural, polymer-free yarn". So cellulose is out and so are all proteins, which leaves very few natural fibers, all of them highly unpleasant (asbestos variants, basically). OTOH, the word "yarn" has more than one meaning and _that_ kind of BS is polymer-free, so...

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

niner — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 12:24:17 +0000

For added laugh products here are sometimes advertised as what translates to "free of genes". So they are 100 % artificial? Makes the salad much more attractive...

Separate your wifi networks

immibis — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 06:12:49 +0000

You forgot:

4) trusted, insecure network: because your home router was actually made by the same people as these lightbulbs.

Smart lights and E-readers.

rgmoore — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 20:36:04 +0000

I don't see the point in having the logic in the light bulb, since the only possible benefit I can see there is having the light bulb able to send me an e-mail saying "Hey, I just broke, go to the store and buy a new one". Having the logic in the switch/socket makes much more sense, since those are unlikely to need replacement.

I think the goal of having the logic in the lamp is that it lets you expand the control set without having to rewire the circuit. I don't see an easy way of making a lamp that can both dim and change hue and/or color temperature using a simple switch and wiring. I suppose you could send control signals superposed on the existing line voltage, but that would require a fair amount of smarts in the lamp to decode it, which sort of undermines the point of having the smarts in the switch. It would also require the switch and lamps to use the same protocol, which would make it harder to mix and match brands without some kind of industry standard.

There's also the advantage that smart lamps require less end-user skill; they're designed to be replaceable by ordinary people with no special training. In contrast, switches and sockets do require some skill and training to replace, and they are potentially hazardous to replace if you don't know what you're doing. And the worry about lifespan is probably overblown. LED lamps should have a very long lifespan, which is why they're now making LED luminaires that are designed to be replaced as a unit rather than having a separate replaceable lamp.

Smart lights and E-readers.

idrys — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:34:15 +0000

Smart switches are nice, but consider a rental: I can't change the switch, but I can change the light bulb.

But as always, different people have different requirements, so it is good that there are various options :)

Why bother?

epa — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 15:12:42 +0000

Those are useful applications but neither requires the lightbulb to be running a full operating system. A much dumber bit of electronics to allow remote turning on and off would do the job better.

Smart lights and E-readers.

JGR — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 15:09:09 +0000

A sufficiently "smart" switch ought to be able to detect that the current draw is zero or outside the expected range (indicating that a light bulb has failed) when the switch is in the on state, and then send such an email if configured to do so.

Smart lights and E-readers.

tao — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 13:35:26 +0000

Smart switch + plug is the solution I use at home (admittedly mostly for the novelty of it than any real need though; unless I have guests
over, or cook/clean, I rarely have much light on at all).

I don't see the point in having the logic in the light bulb, since the only possible benefit I can see there is having the light bulb able to send me an e-mail saying "Hey, I just broke, go to the store and buy a new one". Having the logic in the switch/socket makes much more sense, since those are unlikely to need replacement.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

anselm — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 08:13:22 +0000

Glyphosate (marketed by Monsanto as “Roundup” but available under other names from various other manufacturers as the relevant patents have expired a while ago) is pretty popular in agriculture even without GMOs. This is because it is fairly cheap, effective, and – the current flap notwithstanding – quite safe if used as directed. We have 40 years' worth of studies from all sorts of sources (not just “Big Agro”) that support this. The main advantage of glyphosate is that it is very toxic to plants but not all that toxic to animals (and humans) because it inhibits a biochemical reaction that plants use but animals don't. If we stopped using glyphosate we would have to move to other stuff which would probably be worse in various respects.

You can get GMO plants that have been engineered not to be susceptible to glyphosate (Monsanto calls them “Roundup ready”). This gives you the convenience of being able to douse your field with glyphosate even as your crop is growing, because the glyphosate will get rid of all the weeds but let your crop alone, but glyphosate is useful to farmers even if not used in conjunction with Roundup-ready crops.

Finally, Monsanto is a big company out to make a profit, but it isn't the incarnation of evil many people think it is. In that it isn't all that different from other big companies out to make a profit. Many of the stories you hear (“Monsanto sues organic farmers if their fields have been contaminated with patented Monsanto seeds”, “Monsanto drives Indian farmers to suicide”, and so on) are actually made up by anti-Monsanto activists and have no basis in fact.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

jospoortvliet — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 01:45:55 +0000

I think the big link between evil agricultural companies and GMO is Monsanto and their roundup stuff. There is some validity to that fear/hate, as far as I can tell and the link isn't imaginary, Monsanto is pushing GMO hard. But I agree that the potential of it goes so far beyond what most ppl van even imagine, we shouldn't let even Monsanto ruin the opportunity.

Smart lights and E-readers.

jospoortvliet — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 01:40:47 +0000

I personally really like the crownstone: http://crownstone.rocks

Decent product, open source to a fault and good ppl behind. One downside - haven't really tried them yet myself, still not convinced the whole iot is worth my time :-)

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

viro — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 01:21:50 +0000

Not quite - the real driver behind the GMO ban/mandatory labelling/etc. is that small farms are already too inefficient to survive without serious dotations. Lower costs of growing food mean that the overhead has more impact on the lowest price they (or anybody else) can sustain, but for big operations the overhead is lower. IOW, the cheaper it is to grow food, the worse they get squeezed. So if they can get GMO outright banned - great. If that fails, they have to fall back to the usual product differentiation scam ("our product contains no chemicals; what do you mean, how does that cardboard box manage to hold vacuum?"). And "no GMO" would work just fine, if everything else would be forced to be marked...

So big agro *does* have something to do with that mess - by being able to drive the food prices lower. Unpardonable sin, that...

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

anselm — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 00:05:28 +0000

Actually many if not most food crops these days are hybrids which have various advantages but don't breed true, so even without patents there would be no point in hanging on to the seeds. In addition, many farmers prefer to buy seeds because it is often more economical. “Big agriculture” as a concept is pretty much orthogonal to GMO.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

Cyberax — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:07:53 +0000

Newsflash: all large-scale farming operations depend on ag companies for fertilizers and pesticides.

And also, the most lucrative GMOs are now in public domain - the patents have expired. People now can just re-seed them (not that many actual farmers do this).

Smart lights and E-readers.

rgmoore — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:25:55 +0000

My current personal trouble is that really like the CRI/price of IKEA's lights and they are still not offering any smart solution.

One potential solution is a smart switch or wall plug, which lets you switch power to "dumb" devices. I've had good luck with Belkin's WeMo series, but I'm sure there are other options out there.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

rgmoore — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:25:43 +0000

There are a number of ethical/political objections to GMOs completely apart from worries about their safety. A big one is that the most popular GMO crops, especially ones that are herbicide resistant, make farmers dependent on the whole big agriculture system. Farmers wind up buying seeds from the big ag companies, then they have to buy the associated herbicides, etc. Patent law even blocks them from keeping seeds from their own crop to plant the next year.

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

tao — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 12:49:13 +0000

What political reasons would that be?

Smart lights and E-readers.

fb — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 11:34:12 +0000

This whole thread/discussion feels a lot like talking about e-readers back in the day. Some people did not like them and seemed grumpy about the fact that lots of people really liked them.

I think that smart lights, much like e-readers, are a game changer and obviously come with a bunch of trade offs. The most obvious is the increase in complexity and its consequences. Some people will buy them, some won't.

Much like e-readers, I expect that the complexity will get worked out so as to cease to be a problem. Same thing with the price point. What costs 40 bucks now, will be costing a lot less in the near future and you will be getting a much better product.

[...]

I've owned bluetooth controlled lights (Phillips) and RF controlled LED strips (Osram). My current personal trouble is that really like the CRI/price of IKEA's lights and they are still not offering any smart solution.

Why bother?

Wol — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 10:19:55 +0000

> What I completely fail to understand is the second reason...

Unfortunately, as rgmoore says, it's very common. Including here :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Garrett: I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to

bronson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 21:02:02 +0000

Shame on you tao for dropping a bunch of political ammunition and walking away. This is not a site for that. Hoping everyone ignores you.

Why bother?

idrys — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 19:49:07 +0000

I have used both, and your option 2 was the more complicated one (not to mention I can't steer ceiling lights that way.)

Why bother?

bronson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 19:07:32 +0000

Very true, good quote.

Reminds me of an interview I saw a decade ago. Some rich guy had a massively automated house custom built for his family... Later, when he was on vacation, his daughter called asking how turn on the living room lights. Smiling, he just turned them on for her.

I guess that story was supposed to sound like a success, but it sounded like failure to me.

Why bother?

bronson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:59:40 +0000

Dunno... You'll spend an hour or more trying to get your $40 IoT lightbulbs on a schedule. Plugging in some $5 timers will take minutes.

Have you actually used these products?