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Veritasium · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Repair, teardowns & right to repairMicroeconomics & behavioral economicsTech industry & business models

What it is

Veritasium explores planned obsolescence, from the Phoebus lightbulb cartel to printers and phones. It explains how companies deliberately shortened product lifetimes and why products aren't better.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Commenters link it as the engaging go-to explainer on planned obsolescence and the lightbulb cartel.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “Veritasium has an awesome video on planned obsolescence here.”

    Covers the light bulb cartel with fines for long-lasting bulbs.

    somenameforme, 2022-05 · Strong recommendation · in “Engineers investigating NASA’s Voyager 1 telemetry data”

  2. “Veritasium made a video that reviews the history and presents the topic in an engaging way.”

    Engaging review of the Phoebus cartel history.

    infogulch, 2021-04 · Recommendation · in “Phoebus Cartel”

  3. “Veritasium video on planned obsolescence which is interesting”

    Interesting video on planned obsolescence.

    ComradePhil, 2022-03 · Recommendation · in “EU to make it mandatory to use customer-replaceable batteries in household items”

  4. “Worth watching if you have 15 minutes”

    Story of how companies colluded to shorten lightbulb life.

    deltasevennine, 2022-08 · Recommendation · in “Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: phoebus cartel, lightbulbs, obsolescence, consumer products, history

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