There are a lot of factors to take into account. For example, reducing the efficiency of a lamp by 10% doubles the life. Depending on the cost of electricity and the cost of lamp replacement (and labour costs if in a commercial environment) it may or may not be cost effective to do this, it might work out to have a lamp last only 750 hours, as I know some US incandescents did.

There are rather complex formulae to work all these things out, but I'm not that clever, you'll have to ask James if you want more detail

Ok i will ask him later on, some of my high watt (200w,300w etc) are 750 hours so maybe there more efferent and thus brighter but suffer in lamp life due to burning this way. I know they had 3100k photo bulbs in the U.S. that had a wayyy higher luminous output than a standard incandescent lamp but only last 3 hours of burn time! 

Yes I have a few of those Photoflood lamps. You are supposed to operate them in pairs with a series-parallel circuit, so the lamps are in series while you are composing the shot, then you switch to parallel to take the picture. Depending on the wattage, they have a life of between 2 and 10 hours.

Sometimes it is plainly malicious features. In here count planned obsolescence, DRM (Digital Restriction Management - typically for media and computer stuff), spying on user, and so on

I'm late coming to this, but this strikes me as right on the money. We were doing a bit of tidying up and I had a lot of games on DVD or CD, that I no longer play, but because Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have deemed them to be a security risk, they are now unusable and I had to consign them to the bin. 
Surely it should be up to the individual user what is or isn't a security risk.??

I use a microwave oven with an analog knob programmer, and it lastes 5+ years, even today it is 1000% working. Even now in days the analog programmed ovens are the cheapest in the market here. 

I think this may be infrastructure for "you shouldnt have this" (hack tools, other software MS would like to forbid, ...) in general

If those games are old, they might work well with old version of Windows without all this new world in it (do you have XP on hand ?). Also try ReactOS, it might work for the radio stuff too...

I think this may be infrastructure for "you shouldnt have this" (hack tools, other software MS would like to forbid, ...) in general

If those games are old, they might work well with old version of Windows without all this new world in it (do you have XP on hand ?). Also try ReactOS, it might work for the radio stuff too...

As I said, I've thrown the games out already, they were genuine store bought copies which should have gone on working forever. I didn't have another OS on hand to use, so they just got thrown away. I didn't need any drinks mats as that's all the discs are good for now. 

Lets not forget that the smart device brands out there also benefit from your data for advertising purposes. It allows them to track your usage, location, settings, etc. Maybe even the air temperature / pressure of the environment the device is in. Why else would devices like cell phones have these sensors in them?

Lets not even get started on smart speakers as thats pretty self explanatory. Those are more risky to have around than a smartphone as you can turn off the data on a phone but a smart speaker is a paperweight if turned off.


I personally prefer older stuff in general, from lighting to appliances to fans. I never say no to an older vintage fan as they will never die, unlike todays garbage where you're lucky to get a season out of it.

Lets not forget that the smart device brands out there also benefit from your data for advertising purposes. It allows them to track your usage, location, settings, etc. Maybe even the air temperature / pressure of the environment the device is in. Why else would devices like cell phones have these sensors in them?

Lets not even get started on smart speakers as thats pretty self explanatory. Those are more risky to have around than a smartphone as you can turn off the data on a phone but a smart speaker is a paperweight if turned off.


I personally prefer older stuff in general, from lighting to appliances to fans. I never say no to an older vintage fan as they will never die, unlike todays garbage where you're lucky to get a season out of it.
 if all

I personally also love 60's lights and appliances but with most modern stuff the data gathering capabilities are just a big no no. Apparently some insurance companies have plug in trackers for your car so that if you always go under the speed limit then you get some discount. That means that it tracks what roads your on and where you stop. That means that the may sell your data to compainse who own places you stop at frequently and give you personalised ads for said places.    I don't know what but that sound VERY orwellian and if all insurance companies did this i would quit driving on the spot even though i can't currently.

I personally also love 60's lights and appliances but with most modern stuff the data gathering capabilities are just a big no no. Apparently some insurance companies have plug in trackers for your car so that if you always go under the speed limit then you get some discount. That means that it tracks what roads your on and where you stop. That means that the may sell your data to compainse who own places you stop at frequently and give you personalised ads for said places.    I don't know what but that sound VERY orwellian and if all insurance companies did this i would quit driving on the spot even though i can't currently.

I agree! and they can ding you big time if you make a mistake which lets face it every driver does everytime. Not to mention driving under the speed limit isn't always safe to do.

Slightly off topic but related to insurance I wonder if the owners of insurance companies can use their own insurance for themselves? Example If I owned a car insurance company and I insure my car with it, do I pay... myself?

I think the data gathering can be used for much more than "advertising purposes", and "advertising purposes" is only part of the story

I think watching smart things can be a problem to varying extent based on who actually uses them :

 - If you own the smart speaker and live alone (or everyone you live with agrees to have it) then its your business

 - If somebody from the home opposes it then it is a problem. And think of it : Most average people live in the "you have nothing to hide" mindset, and would call paranoid most of us who participate in this discussion. Think what if you are in the age where you live with parents (etc) and they decide they want the speaker, and you dont have much say about it. This is a problem



Taking it to another example :

Many parents today require their kids to have a phone, answer it when they call, etc. They may see their parenting wishes fulfilled by it and thats it

I tend to judge this situation by comparing it to an era from recent past : I think 1980s are a good era to compare to in this case. Kids back then did not have a phone, and did wander away and do everything normal kids do, and came out fine. So it is ok to do the same nowadays. (I am a kid of the 90s, so i still caught this era, but already to the time of emptying and dying malls so to speak)



When you are required by insurance to install basically a backdoor in your car, this is a loss of freedom you had : To have a car without a backdoor

On the subject of insurance - Few days ago i heard on our local radio an ad of one of the big insurance companies (in Israel), that says : "We do insurance without any checks and trackers. Fill a form, declare how many km you drive, and we'll trust you". From which i can conclude that it is a common practice, but not unavoidable (however, nothing guarantees that it could not slip into regulations in the future under some excuse, unless we do our job and elect lawmakers that will stand for keeping such things out)