On that incandescent lamp ban...

On that incandescent lamp ban...  I keep getting surprised by running into people who believe that the ban on incandescent bulbs is the result of the green lobby.  It is no such thing.  The ban on incandescent bulbs would never have happened if it weren't for the lobbying (and associated millions of dollars in bribes “campaign donations”) in support of the ban done by the manufacturers of the incandescent bulbs.

Why?  Because before the incandescent bulbs were banned, the lamp manufacturing business was stagnant: their sales were limited to replacing those bulbs that burned out, plus a very modest growth each year.  It was a boring, highly-competitive, low-margin business.  By banning the incandescent bulbs, those manufacturers managed to get the government to force the replacement of every single incandescent bulb in the country with a more-expensive, government-subsidized, high-margin bulb (and in the case of CFL bulbs, far less reliable and therefore needing replacement more often).

It's smart business for those manufacturers to do this.  They're now seeing record profits, and are projecting even more.  They love disruptive new lamp technologies, as each time one comes along, they get to replace all those lamps again.  They'd love to see a mass migration to CFL (already in progress) followed by a mass migration to LED (easy to predict).  If you want proof that this is something those companies want, all you have to do is look at their lobbying expenditures.  They wanted that incandescent ban, and they wanted it bad.  The CEO of Philips (one of the world's largest manufacturers of incandescent bulbs) once said (on an earnings call) that the ban would “save the industry”.

Some greens are actually quite upset by the ban, especially the move toward CFL bulbs – mainly because of the mercury content and the environmental problems associated with their disposal.  Consumer groups are upset with the CFL bulbs because of their reliability problems (they're only reliable if you leave them on – cycling them on and off, as ordinary users would of course do, makes them fail much quicker than incandescent bulbs do).  Many consumers – most definitely including me – are unhappy with the terrible quality of the light emitted by both CFL and LED lamps (in both cases, their emission spectrum is very “peaky”, with between two and six peaks, unlike the smooth, continuous spectrum from incandescent bulbs).  For those consumers, the distortion of perceived colors is somewhere between annoying and painful – especially if you engage in any activity that requires high fidelity color.  That includes obvious things like photography or painting, but also perhaps less obvious things like reading the color codes on electronics parts, choosing yarns for knitting, etc.

Bring back the incandescents (or an equally high quality alternative)!  Down with spectrally impure lamps!!

Scratch a prog, find a greedy, grubby thief...

Scratch a prog, find a greedy, grubby thief...  So says Stephen Green, writing at VodkaPundit.  “Prog” is shorthand for “progressive”...

Geek: an awesome hack...

Geek: an awesome hack...  Jeroen Domburg hacks into a hard disk.  Today's hard disks have computers (much) more powerful than the mainframe computers I started my career on.  They're thoroughly hidden by their embedded nature, but they really are there – as Jeroen proves with his awesome hack...

I've been worried about this for a while...

I've been worried about this for a while...  Over the past few years, the number of Internet-connected devices in our home has grown steadily.  Every time I dump the MAC addresses from our home's WiFi router, I'm surprised at just how big the list is.  Without consciously trying to build a “Internet of Things” at home, we've done it.  Sometimes when we buy a device, we're not even aware that it has Internet connectivity.  The proliferation of these devices made me wonder – and worry – about how some hacker might cause me grief by attacking them.  Bruce Schneier agrees, but puts a lot of the focus on routers and firewalls, rather than on the devices.

Earlier this year, I noticed a new MAC address showing up on my router, one that was failing to authenticate.  Thinking that I might be seeing someone trying to hack into my network, I borrowed a field strength meter and tracked down the source – it was our new FJ Cruiser!  Something in the car is Internet enabled, but it doesn't have the password to our WiFi and can't get in.  I finally figured out that the radio/navigation system can use WiFi to upgrade its software.

Elsewhere in our house, the devices connected to our WiFi include a TV, a DVD/BlueRay player, a DVR, a thermostat, two DSLR cameras, a microwave oven, an alarm, a weather station, two LED light bulbs, several Kindles, and a variety of things you'd expect (laptops, iPads, iPhones, etc.).  In almost all cases, the fact that the device was WiFi-enabled was incidental to our purchase.  In most of the cases, connectivity turned out to be either essential or desirable for the devices function.  In a few cases (like the microwave oven), we didn't need or want the connectivity, and we ignored it (I don't really care if I have the latest update to the mashed potato reheating algorithm).

My office has one of our Internet-connected LED lamps in it (a LIFX device).  Sometimes the bulb's software crashes and the lamp starts blinking – and every time it does, I wonder if a hacker has attacked my lamp :)  There are things that a malicious attacker could do might cause us some harm.  For instance, if a hacker could get into our Nest thermostat, they could find out whether we're home or not (the Nest knows when we walk past it).  Not good.  There are more things like that to worry about. 

Still, though, the number one Internet security concern I have is related to web site security, especially for our financial accounts.  There someone could do some real harm...

Frost Forest...

Frost Forest...  Via Twisted Sifter...