I also haven't any issues with age verification.

I use discord, but I've only been asked to verify my age when there's an explicit photo (don't ask). Haven't had issues otherwise.

In regards to the energy saving mercury vapor lamps that have actually been made, I have not been able to find electrical specifications for the Westinghouse 300W energy saver mercury vapor lamps for North American 400W H33 mercury vapor ballasts as well as the Mitsubishi 375W energy saver mercury vapor lamps for Japanese 400W mercury vapor ballasts. However, I have been able to find electrical specifications for National/Panasonic’s energy saver mercury vapor lamps.

For your reference, here is what I have found out regarding National/Panasonic’s energy saver mercury vapor lamps for the Japanese market:

235W mercury vapor for replacing Japanese 250W mercury vapor:

140V 1.9A

Full power Japanese 250W mercury vapor is 130V 2.1A

280W mercury vapor for replacing Japanese 300W mercury vapor:

140V 2.2A

Full power Japanese 300W mercury vapor is 130V 2.5A

375W mercury vapor for replacing Japanese 400W mercury vapor:

145V 2.8A

Full power Japanese 400W mercury vapor is 130V 3.3A

660W mercury vapor for replacing Japanese 700W mercury vapor:

145V 5.0A

Full power Japanese 700W mercury vapor is 130V 5.9A

940W mercury vapor for replacing Japanese 1000W mercury vapor:

145V 7.0A

Full power Japanese 1000W mercury vapor is 130V 8.3A

I sourced the information from pages 1088-1095 of the 1992-1993 National Facilities and Outdoor Lighting catalog shown below:

https://esctlg.panasonic.biz/iportal/CatalogViewInterfaceStartUpAction.do?method=startUp&mode=PAGE&catalogCategoryId=&catalogId=792140000&pageGroupId=1&volumeID=PEWJ0001&keyword=&categoryID=&sortKey=&sortOrder=&designID=retireOut_sp&designConfirmFlg=


An interesting thing to note about the energy saving National/Panasonic mercury vapor lamps is that they have virtually the same published initial lumen outputs as their full power counterparts while Westinghouse’s 300W energy saver mercury vapor lamps have substantially lower initial lumen outputs compared to their full power counterparts.

I have sourced information about Westinghouse’s 300W energy saver mercury vapor lamps for 400W mercury vapor ballasts on pages 47 and 49 of the 1975 Westinghouse catalog shown below:

https://www.scribd.com/document/112839524/Westinghouse-1975-Large-Lamp-Catalog

More information can also be found in the following post:

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=14606&pos=3&pid=265870

That is true, and I’m really hoping that that doesn’t end up being a roadblock in production restarting. There are other countries that do not have lighting bans and still have traditional lamps for sale, at least some machinery must still exist somewhere. As much as I would love to see a return of US-made lamps similar to what GE, Sylvania, and Philips used to make, I wouldn’t be opposed to imported lamps as long as the quality is decent, which if they’re anything like the imported lamps of decades ago, it probably would be.

I don’t think luminaries suffer from the same issues as lamps. The reason I say this is because there are LED fixtures now that use the exact same housings as the old traditional fixtures. It’s just integrated LED instead of fluorescent or whatever. I know this is at least true for fluorescent, not sure about HID but I’d imagine there’s probably some. Incandescent is kind of immune to this issue, because there are still plenty of incandescent fixtures available that are just used with screw-based LED lamps.

I've had really good luck with MaxLite. Their LED offerings seem to be quite good. I installed three of the 75W equivalent A19s in my aunt's ceiling fan about 5 years ago, and they've been holding up extremely well despite extremely heavy use. GE's Classic line of filament lamps are decent too. Stay away from Feit.

To anyone who uses Discord. If you value your privacy, and data security. It is best to start packing up and moving out of discord. They will be rolling out GLOBAL age verification schemes. Including Governmental ID verification, Facial scanning, and AI analysis of you content to "gauge" if you are truely under or overage. Extremely Orwellian stuff.

While I do not know of any catchall Alternatives I can offer a few separate suggestions.

For Private, Encrypted and Anonymous messaging service, Signal Messenger will be my recommendation. This is a replacement for the wildly insecure MMS (phone messaging), Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc. And will function fine for a replacement of Discords Instant messaging and even voice chat functions.

As for the community functions.... Well I sense as time progresses we will be pushed back into the forum age. Places like this forum I am typing in are alot safer from these rampant systems trying to be put into place. But there is also Reddit. Which has its own set of issues..


Here is the Discord Press release:

https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally

And a Video by SomeOrdinaryGamer:

https://youtu.be/jAyAg7DBqbg?si=x8358h37U9WgGiE1

I recommend pulling your personal data from Discord and Leaving.

I saw this video: https://i.imgur.com/lL3130r.mp4

I wonder if the guy even knows that the mercury, as small as the amount is, sticks to the phosphor and glass.

Correct, the machinery, tooling, and even the documentation and institutional knowledge associated with making this stuff probably all got tossed, scrapped, when the plants were closed and the employees left/retired. At best the equipment and tooling might have gotten transferred to other plants in the world that still make this stuff. I think Signify might have done that when they transferred fluorescent production to India. You might be able to restart simpler lamps such as incandescent, fluorescent but even then initial quality would suffer...think about how modern Polaroid film compares in quality compared to vintage Polaroid film, or even Fuji Instax for that matter.

More complicated lamps such as HID, especially ones with a PCA arctube and SOX would probably be too hard to restart production...worst case you might have to redo the decades of work done to optimize the process.

The same applies for the luminaires as well, the tooling for making housings, reflectors and especially the refractors is probably long gone as well. The manufacture of the refractors was complicated enough that most manufacturers contracted it out to companies specialized in glassware such as Holophane, Corning, and Kopp Glass. Fluorescent luminaires are a bit easier to restart production, you can make simple fixtures from a sheet metal cutting laser and a bending brake...even fixtures like louvers. 

 The listed colored lenses are interesting !

 They can "unban" whatever they like , doesn't mean manufacturers are gonna restart production . Most of the equipment for making that stuff has been long ago scrapped .  I like my old , non computerised cars without all of the "technology gadgets" . I'll pretty much guarantee non will ever be built again in mass quantities .