A video on the Phoebus cartel / light bulb conspiracy and why it's a stretch to call it a conspiracy

Fantastic Video!

Raul Ramos

great video. Some pushback on conspiracies and explains past limits of technology

Mark Lefler

Umm actually Kelvin-radians are the better unit to use than Kelvin-degrees.

Micah Gale

You need to swing over to Dearborn MI to see a certain rebuilt lab that's all that was left of a certain lab in New Jersey in 1928. Amtrak's Wolverine line would get you to a station next to Greenfield Village. This video addresses half of the conspiracies I hear when I get to work in the lab.

“Eek!” is a cat, “eke” is how you spell the word meaning “to scrape by” or “economize.”

krallja

Worth noting some pretty direct paralells to the way Auto manufacturers are trending toward increasingly lower weight engine oils. I recently bought a car which uses 0w20 weight, which is harder to find and more expensive than more traditional weights like 5w30, 10w40 etc. Some new cars, especially brands like Honda\Toyota, come with even more exotic oil weights like 0w16 and even as low as 0w8. Besides the mechanical differences, one of the named reasons is a small (few percentage) increase of engine efficenicy, and despite burning off more readily during the normal combustion cycle compared to standard weights, and being more expensive to purchase, that few percentage gain in efficency makes a MASSIVE overall reduction in fuel consumption when scaled up to world-wide scopes, and ultimately is less costly over all. It's interesting to consider who is taking on those new costs, who decides which direction the world should trend, etc..

Wonderful aesopian moral. Consider that it may yet be somewhat true even in other “planned obsolescence” scenarios where the tradeoffs are less obvious.

Johnathan Reale

Am I the only one who thinks the outro music is a little sharp in pitch?

Cameron Steel

BigClive has a bunch of videos on LED bulbs he buys and ‘hacks’ to run at a lower current to make the LEDs last long. Feels weirdly similar :)

Erik Granlund

Did you just spend half an hour confirming what I've always assumed, working from "first principles" engineering? Thank you!

Michael Steeves

Good points, as usual, all well-researched! Funny that you mention washing machines: I don't know how the market there in the US is looking, but here in Europe, you can choose in a range of at least a factor 20 of different prices washing machines. When I bought a washing machine about 15 years ago, they told me that I could buy a €200 Indesit, a €500 Zanussi or a €3000 Miele. Expecting that the Indesit would last only a couple of years at most, the Zanussi 5-10 years, or the Miele which would last at least 20-30 years. Here you just pay for what you get.

MrHammond

Alec was paid off by "big lightbulb" and "big energy generator". It's all coming together now. He encourages wasteful electric cars, discourages home energy generation in the form of Rooftop Solar Panels, and now, is trying to tell us that long life lightbulbs are bad for us!!!! (s) (EDIT: ---Patreon won't let me use the standard symbol for sarcasm---)

Witold Witkowski

Same! Never heard of it, but now I want to go next year :)

Open Sauce looks so cool! wish I could join. would love some bts stuff :D

"Everlasting light bulb-stopper" cracked me up

Brilliant points in every aspect of your coverage (pun intended, of course).

AArexx AAron Ruscetta