Comment by insaneirish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by insaneirish | Hacker News Reader

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I understand the issue at the heart, but this article does a horrible job of explaining any sort of practical realities of this new rule.

- "blue-pump" LEDs are not defined.

- Specific examples of things sold today that would not be allowed to be sold in the future would be helpful.

- A chart showing a 5000K bulb having what appears to be a spike in the blue spectrum greater than a 3000K bulb (though how could we be sure, since the axes aren't labeled) implies that certain color temperatures are worse, but is this always the case, or is it the consequence of a particular product sampled?

I'm walking away from this wondering if I won't be able to buy 3000K LEDs anymore, or if things like dim-to-warm will be banned. I hope not, but I just cannot tell from this woefully lacking write up.

I get the impression the writer's opinions are extremely niche. In the case of blue pumped LEDs he's referring to bulbs that use a short wavelength LED in combination with phosphor that absorbs the light and reemits it at lower, and broader, wavelengths. So long as the desired CRI and color temp is being produced, I'm not seeing the issue with method to get there.

> In the case of blue pumped LEDs he's referring to bulbs that use a short wavelength LED in combination with phosphor that absorbs the light and reemits it at lower, and broader, wavelengths.

This was part of my suspicion, but I'm not familiar enough to know if that was correct.

> I get the impression the writer's opinions are extremely niche.

I'll be the first to say "citation needed" to what I'm about to say, but I feel like we went through a cycle of "the science is clear: blue light is bad for sleep!" to "actually a lot of that was not good science", so I'm unclear of where the consensus actually is (if I ignore this article).

If blue pumped LEDs rely on short wavelength emitters and phosphor excitation, how similar is the light spectrum to that of fluorescent lamps?

As you may know, fluorescent lights are not used in museums because the UV light from them damages things. Incandescent lights were used for a long time, but I've been told that now LEDs are recommended because the emission spectrum is sufficiently safe. I'm wondering if blue pumped LEDs will cause a reversion.

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