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Any time I see an article about China's tech doom I'm skeptical. Are there any solid, trustworthy sources for statistics on these matters? Where should I be looking for signal?
Specific and non-apocalyptic phrases from the article are
* "Technology startups are finding it harder to attract venture capital"
* "slowest quarterly revenue increase since 2014"
* "Deals are taking longer: a round of funding once raised within a month is taking six"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an infrastructure problem. A startup isn't going to solve this. Between lack of water and unsafe water, I'm not sure that the proportion in the US is much different.
Well not really. I stay in a place where water drought is a looming dark cloud on the horizon, so from that perspective.. 1. Affordable device that harvests water from air Water wastage is a huge problem, so.. 2. IoT devices that detects leakages in main pipes 3. IoT water meters for individual apartments in housing societies. One of the major problem is water is not metered per households in large apartments, so the…
Is there a risk of significantly altering the local water cycle if everyone is doing this? Same with extracting moisture from air, I suppose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your result is including all infractions of any type across the board and indicates that poor water safety is rare and isolated. To get the total sum, it's compiled over 34 years, and says: "relatively few community water systems (3–10%) incur health-based violations in a given year." It also states that in the most dense parts of the country, urban regions, there are rarely problems. As well as this conclusion: "Gen…
"In 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards" The number given for water access issues in China was 3.5% of the population (which is 'infrequent'...) That's why I ventured that the situation there is not that bad proportionally to population. Why arguing on something that isn't even the main point of my initial comment... It's exhausting. It also fe…
Last time I looked at this, yes, the US has very high standards and tends to meet them. Western Europe does as well, and also tends to meet them. ISTR there wasn't a systematic difference between the two, either; this chemical's limit might be slightly high here, but some other chemical's limit would be slightly lower. It looked more like what you'd expect from two similarly-concerned regulators that simply have no reason to coordinate than either side having higher standards.
You can't just look at violations. That procedure always makes things look bad because even just one violation is a violation, even just one error is an error, oh no! You have to look at the system holistically, and, yes, US water is pretty darned good when you look at it that way. You can't just look at problems but pretend to yourself or others that you're looking holistically at the situation.
(The Internet trains people to go "Oh, so we should just stop worrying about it then?" when someone says it's going pretty well, but what I'm actually saying is that our current level of concern is pretty much correct. It shouldn't be lowered. But there isn't much compelling reason to raise it globally, either. Only locally in certain places in response to local issues.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an infrastructure problem. A startup isn't going to solve this. Between lack of water and unsafe water, I'm not sure that the proportion in the US is much different.
Well not really. I stay in a place where water drought is a looming dark cloud on the horizon, so from that perspective.. 1. Affordable device that harvests water from air Water wastage is a huge problem, so.. 2. IoT devices that detects leakages in main pipes 3. IoT water meters for individual apartments in housing societies. One of the major problem is water is not metered per households in large apartments, so the…
I used to work for a company that does this: http://gwfathom.com/
They replace traditional water meters with smart meters and then provide software tooling around monitoring and managing them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inclusion of the term "IoT" was deliberate, monitoring water (distribution, use, misuse, quality) remotely and at a scale precisely is the problem that IoT can solve.
There's no "IoT" problem here. You can have plenty of automated systems monitoring your infrastructure without the security nightmare of making them accessible on the public internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an infrastructure problem. A startup isn't going to solve this. Between lack of water and unsafe water, I'm not sure that the proportion in the US is much different.
> Between lack of water and unsafe water, I'm not sure that the proportion in the US is much different. Care to show me the figures on that? I don't believe for a second that the US and China are comparable on freshwater when it comes to quality and supply. The US is among the top several nations on freshwater per capita and has a truly vast supply of inexpensive, safe water. Flint was/is such a big deal because it's…
Saw an interesting documentary the other day. "what lies upstream" [0] about water quality. No idea of the validity of it, as no further research was performed, but it had me convinced it is a serious issue.
Assuming the documentary was factual and not sensationalised , the issue is much bigger than Flint.
But as you mention at the end of your comment, I thought (before watching the doc) with the US wasn't water available on the country as a whole, but in specific areas, due to building in arid desert areas.
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> By one count 48 million people in China lack sufficient drinking water. The number of people facing severe drinking water shortages doubled to 5.9 million in early 2008 because of a severe winter drought. China has more than a fifth of the world's population but only 7 percent of its fresh water. Not from the article, but if there was a startup needed and one that could jump start their sector there, a significant…
Unrelated, but interesting in this context: Michael Burry, one of the guys who predicted 2007 housing bubble (and made good money thanks to that), is investing in water. Looks like he might be right again.
> By one count 48 million people in China lack sufficient drinking water. The number of people facing severe drinking water shortages doubled to 5.9 million in early 2008 because of a severe winter drought. China has more than a fifth of the world's population but only 7 percent of its fresh water. Not from the article, but if there was a startup needed and one that could jump start their sector there, a significant…
Access to resources historically is a problem "solved" by military action. VCs will only get in on the action when the resources are secured, and they find a way to insert themselves into the action.
> By one count 48 million people in China lack sufficient drinking water. The number of people facing severe drinking water shortages doubled to 5.9 million in early 2008 because of a severe winter drought. China has more than a fifth of the world's population but only 7 percent of its fresh water. Not from the article, but if there was a startup needed and one that could jump start their sector there, a significant…
Unrelated, but interesting in this context: Michael Burry, one of the guys who predicted 2007 housing bubble (and made good money thanks to that), is investing in water. Looks like he might be right again.
Any time I see an article about China's tech doom I'm skeptical. Are there any solid, trustworthy sources for statistics on these matters? Where should I be looking for signal?