jvb

• jvb 29 Jan 2026 5:23 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: RobvG’s comment on: You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

  Yeah I think that is part of it! Excimer lamps are really cool. They do all sorts of other stuff too, monkeying with the glass composition, gas mix, voltage waveform, etc. It’s pretty optimized—I’m hopeful that other bulb manufacturers will copy them(/​have the market incentive to bother copying them), a lot of these optimizations are totally public information that’s been published in journals since the 90s.

  I’m hopeful that we can start a slow rollout of international shipping in the next few days/​weeks, we’re setting things up with DHL right now

• jvb 29 Jan 2026 5:09 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: RobvG’s comment on: You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

  Not knocking the Lantern at all, but I have to correct you there—Lantern outputs ~30 mW, Aerolamp outputs 100 mW.

  But yes, I’m excited for the V2 Torches! They could be a really great portable solution. Aerolamp can be used portably but I’d really prefer that people only do that if they’re going to put it 8+ feet up and not just leave it on a countertop...

  It’s a fair point about nonparametric lamp failures. We aren’t really seeing many of them with the ushio bulb+ballast but you never know—this industry is young and there’s lots to learn

• jvb 29 Jan 2026 4:56 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Sanjay’s comment on: You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

  We’re hopeful to change that soon

• jvb 29 Jan 2026 4:55 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: RobvG’s comment on: You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

  This paper shows up to 10k hours for the Ushio B1 bulb: https://​​www.jstage.jst.go.jp/​​article/​​lsj/​​50/​​7/​​50_394/​​_pdf this poster extends the data and shows an L70 of around ~13.5k hours: https://​​cdn.shopify.com/​​s/​​files/​​1/​​0694/​​8637/​​9189/​​files/​​240617_Yagyu_ICFUST_Poster2V2.pptx?v=1751931924 I’ve also seen a fair amount of testing from OSLUV that makes me personally believe these publications—Ushio sank 10 years of R&D into their emitter, and it’s really good. It’s also expensive, limited in some ways, and only available from one manufacturer, but it definitely seems to have great stable output and impressive lifespan. But fair point about the electronics—the lifetime estimate is based on the bulb lifetime. Aerolamp hasn’t even existed for 10,000 hours. This is why we have a no-questions-asked return/​​replace policy—if your lamp fails we’ll send you a new one.

• jvb 25 Dec 2025 3:10 UTC

  20 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tessa A 🔸’s comment on: You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

  The Nukit torches put together have about half the output of Aerolamp. I expect Nukits (and most other non-USHIO KrCl bulbs) to last about 1-2k hours while the USHIO bulb should last 10k-14k hours. All published at reports.osluv.org

  There’s no other salient differences. Multiple small lamps spread out the light more and are easier to set up portably, and might be safer in low-ceilinged (<8ft) spaces. If you plan to use the lamps intermittently (like at one-off events and appointments, a few times a year or a few hours at a time) then the torches may make more sense. EDIT: The old torches are discontinued now, V2s to come soon, and might have better output/​lifetime characteristics. Exciting if so!

  I estimate that an Aerolamp in a 250 sqft room will deliver about 1000 CFM CADR with respect to flu/​covid, while a high-quality air purifier will deliver ~250 quietly or ~400 loudly. So an Aerolamp is roughly twice as cost effective on a $/​CFM basis (in quiet mode) or on par (in loud mode).

  That being said—and I say this as an Aerolamp founder—absolutely, absolutely get an air purifier first, and a far-UVC lamp as an additional supplement. I like the Levoit 200S personally. For one thing all estimates of far-UVC efficacy are based on the assumption of a well-mixed room—an air purifier will provide that, eliminate any air chemistry concerns from the UVC, and will provide other health benefits as well.

  What links here?

  • Aero­drop: far-UVC lamp giveaway by Austin (26 Jan 2026 17:03 UTC; 54 points)
  • Aero­drop: far-UVC lamp giveaway by Austin Chen (LessWrong; 26 Jan 2026 17:03 UTC; 34 points)

• jvb 26 Jan 2024 19:27 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Do­ing a Ba­sic Life-Fo­cused Cost-Benefit Analysis

  This is great! You should consider doing a whole series of posts like this, especially focusing on common misconceptions—the time cost thing was something I fuzzily knew about, but hadn’t ever explicitly considered as the single major cost of a policy, such that money cost can be basically ignored.

  I’m surprised that a policy only fails the cost-benefit test if the FTE cost five times more expensive than the benefit, and anything less ineffective than that is simply not a priority. What’s the reasoning behind that?

• jvb 11 Jan 2024 19:02 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ljusten’s comment on: Are Far-UVC In­ter­ven­tions Over­hyped? [Founders Pledge]

  We discussed this, but it might make more sense to add/​expand the section of the main GUV article: https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Ultraviolet_germicidal_irradiation Maybe opening a discussion in wikitalk about whether it merits its own page, too?

• jvb 28 Nov 2023 20:36 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Rockwell’s comment on: Are pas­ture-raised eggs real?

  Anecdotally, some of the worst conditions I’ve seen were on “pasture-raised” farms.

  I’m very surprised by that anecdote actually! Would you mind elaborating? I was prepared for “better than other certifications, but still awful” but not “worse, actually”

  I’m also curious for your personal take on “beef and dairy only” diets from a welfare impact perspective

• jvb 26 Jul 2023 14:23 UTC

  9 points

  7 ∶ 0

  on: Un­der­wa­ter Tor­ture Cham­bers: The Hor­ror Of Fish Farming

  I just wanted to note that I’m very glad people are still producing evocative, classic-EA-style pieces like this. Thank you!

• jvb 24 Jul 2023 19:25 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Biose­cu­rity Re­source Hub from Aron

  Thank you for doing this. However, there are some inaccuracies and misconceptions in the UVC section. I won’t list them all here—chief among them is the equivocation between far-UVC and conventional UVC—but if I had comment access I could go through it.

  I wrote a few of the reports you link to (though the executive summary is deprecated and does not represent our current thinking—this one does) so I will go ahead and answer the questions you asked in the doc to avoid unnecessary duplicated work:

  What makes inexpensive, energy-efficient UVC light on the market ineffective?

  Operational difficulty. Trained technicians are required to install upper-room systems safely, and such technicians are in short supply. Installing it in-duct has the same issues, with additional validation and transparency problem. Check out Jesse’s post on this subject.

  Do they emit unspecific or varying wavelengths?

  No, they emit nearly monochromatically at 254 nm.

  What is the efficiency of different Upper-room UVC devices?

  You’ve already read Zollner, so you know the base emitter efficiencies. Low-pressure mercury is around 40%, UVC LEDs aren’t really in use for upper-room GUV but they vary by wavelength and commercial stage and usually hover around 1-10%--though big caveat, efficiency is not the only important factor, and the issues UVC LEDs have with reliability are much more restrictive than the efficiency itself. Check out this 2021 DOE report for a less rosy outlook than Zollner’s—personally, I think the UVC LED industry is being far too optimistic in their predictions about UVC LEDs ever getting as efficient and cheap as white LEDs.

  However, the louvers required to use cylindrical LP mercury lamps for upper-room GUV actually cause quite significant efficiency losses, down to 10%. Check out Kowalski (2009) Chapter 9--there hasn’t really been a ton of innovation since then.

  How can we ensure that certain light wavelengths are harmless?

  I won’t get into the specifics of what safety studies are considered the standard of evidence here. You do it the normal way—run the intervention (exposure to UV light), and check the endpoints of interest. Here is an extreme exposure study, here is a long-term exposure one in mice, there are many more—here’s a review, though it is from 2021. You would also need to think about environmental effects—for example, UV wavelengths below 240nm produce small (but increasing at lower wavelengths) amounts of ozone, which can then react with compounds in the air. UV can also degrade various materials, though shorter wavelengths don’t penetrate as deeply.

  I do want to stress, however, that ‘harmless’ shouldn’t be the bar; nothing on this earth is ‘harmless’.

  What is the current cost of UVC lamps, and how have prices trended in the past? What is the expected cost reduction?

  I am going to assume you mean far-UVC lamps specifically. If you want to get one fast, $2500. If you want to get one that’s more reasonably priced, you can’t right now, but in the imaginable future you can get them from Acuity or Beacon. Good luck actually buying the Acuity one, though—I think they’re basically only B2B, and so is the source supplier Ushio who actually makes the lamp that all these fixture manufacturers are selling.

  They cost only a couple hundred bucks or so to produce, so that’s probably what the cost floor is in the near to medium term future. Solid-state sources will have different scaling economics, but they don’t exist yet.

  What light bulbs currently emit UVC light? How much energy do these lightbulbs require?

  Basically just those Ushio bulbs. All the alternatives are worse or don’t exist yet. They consume 12 watts.

  Could pathogens mutate and evolve under UVC, creating resistant bacteria?

  Probably not, nobody in the UV world is really worried about this. GUV is not new. This is unlikely because the mechanism of inactivation is pretty fundamental to life (for both conventional GUV and far-UV), which is not how most antibiotics work. It is imaginable to me that constant exposure to far-UV specifically might promote biofilm-forming bacteria to form biofilms more, but I believe the Esvelt lab is currently looking at this.

  What are the projected timelines for this technology? What is the projected timeline for setting up UVC lights in offices?

  I don’t know what it means to have a projected timeline for a technology; that’s too general a question. If you want far-UV, you can contact FarUV Technologies. It will not be cheap but it will be faster than alternatives. If you want upper-room, there are plenty of suppliers you can ask. Here’s one I found on google. I know Kaleem Ahmid has done office installations in the past.

• jvb 23 May 2023 22:36 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MatthewDahlhausen’s comment on: ASHRAE Stan­dard 241 Con­trol of In­fec­tious Aerosols

  Could you elaborate on what you consider to be the specific marginal improvements of newer UV-C technologies?

• jvb 9 May 2023 16:26 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: G_Klw’s comment on: First clean wa­ter, now clean air

  We (the biosecurity team at Convergent Research) also have curated a number of specific, tarmac-ready far-UVC projects with teams and timelines attached, that range from a few 100k to a few million and address various bottlenecks in far-UVC adoption. We’ve got a whole catalogue of 1-pagers if any funders reading this are interested :P

  I think I have a slightly different read on USGOV’s interest in far-UVC than Gavriel does. ~Every agency we’ve spoken to so far has gone “cool, but not our problem,” which I understand to mean that far-UVC is not being prioritized even within the already-deprioritized category of pandemic funding. Hell, even NIAID isn’t interested. This might change, of course...but no real idea of what might be a turning point. That being said, the CDC doesn’t seem actively unfriendly to the tech, so there is hope?

• jvb 17 Feb 2023 18:42 UTC

  9 points

  5 ∶ 0

  in reply to: quinn’s comment on: No­body Wants to Read Your Sh*t: my fa­vorite book of writ­ing ad­vice, con­densed for your convenience

  I think karma is awarded more by generality of subject matter than writing style per se? This post I spent a few hours on (including the hour I spent rereading the book) has x3 the karma of another post I put up around the same time that represents the outcome of about a year of part-time research.

  And this is perfectly natural! Everyone on the EA forum has some reason to care about good writing, only some small subset of people on the EA forum have some reason to care about genetic engineering detection.

• jvb 16 Feb 2023 18:29 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tessa A 🔸’s comment on: More un­der­grad­u­ate or just-grad­u­ated stu­dents should con­sider get­ting jobs as re­search techs in aca­demic labs

  Very good to know! I’ve never heard of a US master’s program being paid.

  I wonder if the interest in US-based PhDs has something to do with the larger US academic offerings—or maybe it’s just that unusually energetic people are both more likely to have early research experience and more likely to go to the US.

• jvb 16 Feb 2023 18:06 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: No­body Wants to Read Your Sh*t: my fa­vorite book of writ­ing ad­vice, con­densed for your convenience

  It’s actually quite remarkable—the way we teach writing to students is anti-useful. You could possibly do a worse job than we’re currently doing but I don’t immediately see how.

• jvb 16 Feb 2023 18:00 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Akash Kulgod’s comment on: No­body Wants to Read Your Sh*t: my fa­vorite book of writ­ing ad­vice, con­densed for your convenience

  There’s something of a pepperoni airplane effect here. Everyone wants to think they’re Proust. I analogize it to the Picasso thing—you need to “learn the rules” before you can usefully take the training wheels off and start “breaking” them. Scare quotes intentional.

  I disagree re: Murakami (haven’t read the others). I find him to be communicating extremely clearly. The actual book is full of specific examples of things that we think of as artful and indirect but that are actually bending the full force of themselves into conveying a very bright and specific concept.

• jvb 8 Feb 2023 15:33 UTC

  13 points

  3 ∶ 2

  on: Speedrun: Develop an af­ford­able su­per PPE

  I worked with Cass on the project mentioned and moving the needle on PPE seems much harder than I initially thought. The demand/​scale thing is a real killer. There might be some solution here but it seems really muddled to me and I don’t think it’s throwing scrappy young engineers at it. Though of course the funding situation is different now too.

• jvb 21 Jul 2022 16:24 UTC

  26 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA Prob­a­bly Shouldn’t Try to Ex­er­cise Direct Poli­ti­cal Power

  Good post—not least because I think this gives me insight into what the skeptics of EA-in-politics are thinking. I have a few responses:

  It seems to me that two things are being conflated here: EAs individually running for office, and EA as a movement exercising political power. The latter, I agree, sounds like a terrible idea, for all the reasons you point out. But most of the arguments you bring up don’t apply to the former. My model of EA in electoral politics looks a lot more like individual EAs (who are themselves pre-selected for being unusually charismatic, well connected, or otherwise well-fit for politics) behaving as basically conventional politicians, being team players, but making EA issues their top priorities on the rare occasions when they come up. That’s perfectly consistent with pulling the rope sideways.

  There’s a lot of middle ground between making EA as a movement a faction of the Democratic party and limiting EA involvement in politics to lobbying (though I think we should of course also be doing lobbying.)

  As far as I know, advocates for EAs running for political office are much more excited for EAs to run as Republicans than as Democrats, for precisely the reasons you outline (and several others).

  Finally, I want to comment that things like the Flynn campaign were always longshots, and that’s fine; this is a numbers game and is largely going to be paying off over decades, not years.

• jvb 28 Jun 2022 20:35 UTC

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Com­mu­nity Builders Spend Too Much Time Com­mu­nity Building

  Completely agree, and I’ll second the impression that EA marketers primarily activate and recruit other EA marketers.

  Another way to frame this dynamic -

  If someone is making the claim to you that these problems are the overwhelmingly most important things to do with your life, then why aren’t they working on them? In a way it almost feels self-defeating. The people who best activated and motivated me to work directly on hard problems were people who themselves were working on them.

  This is all anecdotal, of course, but I do think we need an epistemically healthier model of community building, for these and other reasons.

• jvb 16 Sep 2021 18:54 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: axioman’s comment on: More un­der­grad­u­ate or just-grad­u­ated stu­dents should con­sider get­ting jobs as re­search techs in aca­demic labs

  I think this is pretty much the case for many (especially non-STEM) fields in the US, too—my sense is that it’s a consequence of funding/​competition.