David Shiller

  Los Angeles is grappling with a severe streetlight crisis, with about 1 in 10 of its 225,000 streetlights out of service and a repair backlog of roughly 33,000 open service requests, many due to copper wire theft and vandalism. Residents in multiple neighborhoods have been left in darkness for months, with the average repair [...]

  There is a shortage in AI memory chip supply, due to the explosive growth in AI server memory demand. DRAM and NAND prices have surge up to 70%. This memory shortage will not directly constrain basic lighting components (LEDs, drivers, optics), but it is likely to slow availability and raise costs for “smart” and [...]

  Maine’s LD 1934, titled “An Act to Promote Responsible Outdoor Lighting,” enacted in January 2026, establishes strict, comprehensive regulations to reduce light pollution from new or replaced public outdoor lighting, both residential and commercial. The law mandates specific lighting standards, including a 0.1 lux limit on light trespass into wilderness areas and a required [...]

  Photometrics AI has integrated real-time bird migration data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s BirdCast platform into its street-lighting optimization system to automatically dim lights during peak migration events and reduce fatal bird collisions with buildings. The collaboration aims to turn what has often been episodic “lights out” campaigns into an ongoing, automated operational [...]

  LightNOW has recently reported on the new Maine Dark Sky Law enacted in January, as well as a new proposed Hawaiian Dark Sky bill. Both set restrictive / aggressive requirements at night, for both residential and commercial outdoor lighting. The American Lighting Association is tracking more than a dozen Dark Sky state bills across [...]

  A strict new statewide light pollution bill has been introduced in the Hawaii State House, HB 1579. This latest proposed dark sky state legislation aims to protect human health, astronomy, and native wildlife, such as sea turtles and seabirds, that are disoriented by bright coastal lighting. Context HB 1579 would apply statewide to outdoor [...]

  DALS Power Stems are patent-pending, quick-connect stems that simplify pendant installation by delivering both electrical power and structural support without any wiring required. Each stem screws directly into the canopy, no cutting, no splicing, no guesswork. Installers simply select the lengths they need, combining 6”, 12”, and 24” increments to achieve heights from 6 inches [...]

  Smart-home technology is becoming a tougher proposition for consumers because manufacturers increasingly disable or degrade products remotely, when they no longer see them as financially viable, even if the hardware still works. This undermines trust in connected devices, since buyers risk losing key “smart” features—or entire services—after purchase, due to business decisions beyond their [...]

  Quantum sensing uses uniquely quantum properties of light and matter—such as superposition, entanglement, and squeezed states—to measure physical quantities (like phase, displacement, fields, or photon number) with sensitivities that can surpass classical sensors. In photonics, new interferometry-based schemes with quantum light can simultaneously estimate multiple parameters of an optical network (e.g., phase shifts and [...]