Peak neoliberalism--apps, kiosks, gender politics, and "environmentalism" as a for-profit startup--to do something that civilized people used to just give away!
I'm more inclined to keep a cow as a pet than as food, and I don't even like guns, but thanks to a world of peckers like this, now I'm hoarding guns and planning to raise livestock.
When I was looking for a new job last time I kept hitting these sites for these little start-ups who on their site had lifestyle type "about us" areas of their site.
One noted how ecologically considerate. They didn't mention anything they actually do that was ecologically relevant. They did have a photo(s) in that section were the team was outside in the midday sun at some wire tables you'd find at some coffee shops with their laptops working away and laughing ... I guess one of them had a water bottle ... maybe that was what I was supposed to pick up from that.
Anyway the whole lifestyle brand / company thing is weird generally.
This feels one step away from a Juicero: take a basic function (actually dispensing water isn’t the hard part of the system), slap an “internet” on it to justify the value add, and attach some marketing terms about water filtration (no actual science or data presented).
I think the bigger story with Juicero was the runaway engineering of a product that ... didn't do its job that great for the cost / had some weird packets you had to buy.
If it had just been some marketing hype for a standard juicer, they might have been fine (with a budget).
This thing at least conventionally outputs water... not sure about it's viability, but it seems somewhat less absurd than Juicero.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I always carry a water bottle with me (a Wikipedia-branded one with 28 languages![1]) and hardly ever drink packaged water. So far I’ve managed. Certainly never needed a fucking app to drink water.
There are places (even in the US) where people legitimately go and get their water. There are also places where people don't (but probably should). I have gotten sick off of drinking water from a state which will go unnamed in this public forum (if you would like to know message me) after my college roommate who did in-depth research on municipal water systems for a wall street firm, told me never to drink water from that state (so yes, that one's on me)
Reminds me a lot of the water refill stations that the government has in desert areas of the United States (Kelso Junction, California leaps to mind). Except the government ones don't have advertising, and aren't connected to the internet.
I'm a little perplexed about why this needs to be internet connected. Hire someone to change the ads on the machines and you've made a small dent in unemployment, too.
And if an area doesn't have clean water, isn't it reasonable to believe it doesn't have internet connectivity, too?
I can imagine plenty of businesses that are more profitable (or even simply viable at all) with automation over the internet rather than paying someone to drive around and change static ads.
It’s the same reason we dig ditches with power equipment rather than shovels or spoons or have walk-up ATMs rather than bank tellers on the corner.
You can also put a remote-controlled box somewhere annoying to access quickly, like airside in an airport. That's much easier than dealing with the logistics of someone driving around.
I'll have to remember to look next time I'm there.
Where, specifically? It's not going to be on the railroad side. Depot side, road side, or opposite-from-depot side?
I mean, I always carry a five-gallon jug of water whenever I go out there, and it's always been more than enough, but... knowing a refill point could be really useful if I ever needed it.
Across from the abandoned post office. But the area under the spout isn't large enough to fit a five-gallon jug. It's more designed for the kinds of water bottles you might clip to a bicycle.
> "The problem is it'll take over $1 trillion to upgrade US drinking water infrastructure. So, the investment must generate a return in order to be self sustaining [...]"
I see this as not much different than those bus shelters that are paid for by JCDeaux in exchange for putting ads there.
Shelters should be free, and so should water fountains. But free doesn't mean nice. I've seen some poorly maintained bus shelters and water fountains.
If people want to slap ads on the side, and increase the quality, then that's great. If your VC funding, or ad funding can pay for a filter on a water fountain, even better.
I've already experienced advertisements on gasoline pumps. I would concede that it is not exactly the same thing - gas pumps are worse, because you're already paying for a product.
However, it is certainly just as annoying and invasive.
Do you ever stop and ask yourself "am I really making the world a better place by doing this?"
The reality is your attention had a cost, and the price of quality tap water is less than that cost.
We will also enable a donation based model for water. Future revenue generating opportunities include sparkling and flavored water at a fraction of the cost of what you would buy on the shelf at a convenience store. 65% of the cost of any beverage is packaging and transportation. By carrying your own bottle, you’ll save money, save the planet from plastic pollution, and yes, water will be free.
> The reality is your attention had a cost, and the price of quality tap water is less than that cost.
For some people, maybe. This seems like a mildly sociopathic way to look at it, though.
One could imagine a world where the same type of device was available free of charge without being ad supported. This is certainly a more difficult solution from a financial standpoint, but it would be indisputably better.
And, to some extent, it has been the status quo in many places already with standard water fountains. Admittedly, many of them now are in desperate need of an upgrade.
I believe this type of monetization simply fails to take into account the greater public good in the pursuit of profits.
I intend for this to be honest feedback from a consumer perspective, not an attack. I know I don't fully appreciate your business. Thanks for sharing your product with HN!
I can't see how this is any improvement over a drinking fountain. Drinking fountains typically dispense filtered water and the idea of obnoxious advertising on them is disgusting to me. On the other hand, if these machines dispensed a selection of flavored seltzer water I would see the value, probably use them and seek them out and not mind the advertising. I might even buy a reusable water bottle from you that was designed to hold the carbonation. I would be getting something I actually value and can't trivially get for free. I would also be really reducing my environmental footprint since I already drink filtered tap water, but do buy lots of canned seltzer.
Flavored seltzers appear to be big business right now. I have no idea if the unit economics could support it, but on the surface, the flavoring chemicals have to be incredibly inexpensive. Seeing something like this would absolutely catch my attention and I would tell other people about it.
It's an important problem to be working on and I wish you all the luck in the world.
Have you considered increasing revenue by price-discriminating with different levels of water?
For example, the "Platinum Premium ($29.99/mo)" water would be cold, filtered, and free of pathogens, the "Plus Preferred ($14.99/mo)" would be room temperature tap water, and "Tap Basics ($4.99)" would include a small dose of giardia.
You could pay local independent contractors a small fee to restock your kiosks with the protozoans, so then you wouldn't have to carry the labour overhead.
As for the price of water, it trades like a commodity just like oil. Water already has a price per oz that differs around the world. If you’re privileged enough to have tap water, you have the best least expensive water access on the planet. Over 1 billion people around the world aren’t so lucky. Check your snark at the door, please.
> Currently, the Tap Refill Station connects to an existing water supply line
Are you increasing access to clean drinking water, or are you profiteers freeloading on the back of public infrastructure? Consider that you are making the world worse, not better, please.
The last time I had to go through Union Station in DC, I tried to get water and it tasted like it had come from a pool. An unusually chlorinated pool. I almost threw up.
I also don't have reliably potable tap water where I live now.
If they're doing the filtration that the public infrastructure isn't, I'd hardly call that freeloading.
The last time I had to go through Union Station in DC, I tried to get water and it tasted like it had come from a pool. An unusually chlorinated pool. I almost threw up.
If regularly tested, heavily regulated water makes you throw up, you should see a doctor. Perhaps a specialist.
Chlorination cycles are part of the regulation. You're supposed to leave pitchers of water out overnight to evaporate the chlorine. But some fast food places hook their water supply straight to the tap.
Yes, we will release a web version of our map. We will also build an API to allow other apps, like Foursquare, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Open Street Maps, and Waze to add locations for water access points.
What will you be doing in places where the available water supply is so contaminated that your three-stage filtering doesn't render the water drinkable?
How much will you be paying in rent to the places where you put your water dispensers?
Have you accounted for the cost of water? It turns out that most water supplies aren't actually free, they're run by municipal or county water authoritities that tend to send a bill every so often.
1. increase water filtration or skip the pipes all together with an atmospheric water generator (makes water out of thin air)
2. I won't comment on this, but for a comp, LinkNYC (Free Wifi kiosks) pays hundreds of millions to its partner cities
3. Currently, cities are providing free tap water at water fountains (e.g. bus station, train station, library), the issue is not the cost of the tap water, but the cost to upgrade the infrastructure so that people trust it.
if i paid a 5 dollars per much subscription to tap would you offer me an "ad free" version where you use NFC or bluetooth or GPS to turn off the ad playing on the fountain? im half joking / half curious if this ever came up as a possible revenue stream during development.
How do you intend to respond to attacks against wire or antenna? What stops someone from disabling the advertisement function without interfering with water dispensing?
And while we're on the subject of internet-connected devices, how much thought have you given to black-hat hackers pwning water fountains remotely, or with a few minutes of physical access, to stream racy videos or promote their garage band's next show?
I wonder what the economics of "big box that does a task" are. Like Redbox or whatever it is someone wants to put in a big vending machine type thing are, finding locations and etc (water hook up or filling will be interesting).
It seems like it could be a very logistics heavy business and hard to account for a lot of things.
> The problem is it'll take over $1 trillion to upgrade US drinking water infrastructure.
That can't be possible — and I think estimation is way off. Even if there were a drinking fountain for every American (which I'm sure is an over-estimate by an order of magnitude as well), that would still imply an upgrade cost of $3,000 per drinking fountain. If there's a fountain for one in ten Americans; that's $30,000.
For context, most modern Elkay drinking fountains are around $1,000.
I think this overwhelming figure serves to enhance the point of the author but I think it bares no basis in reality.
Drinking fountains aren't all there is to drinking water infrastructure. If your tap water has never come out yellow, reeking of chlorine, tasting like dirt, etc., consider yourself lucky.
But drinking fountains add some funny flavors of their own. And what incentive is there to avoid that?
I don't think it's just the water fountains themselves, but the pipes and all the other infrastructure associated with transporting water.
Instead of having a central location where water is filtered and distributed from, Tap is trying to have filtering occur at each endpoint in a more distributed manner.
Atmospheric Water Generators will also allow us to decentralize where water is filtered and distributed from. Literally made from thin air and requires no pipes. We will add these to our fleet in the future.
It's really difficult to take you seriously after seeing this. I thought you were trying to avoid plastic waste, and improve public confidence in the piped municipal water supply.
Who's paying the power bill for these planned AWG units?
Rome has at least 2,500 public fountains installed in the 1800s that dispense potable water. Remarkable that 150 years ago they didn't think to monetize these, think of the missed revenues.
Did you all read the article? Their goal is to reduce plastic bottles, and they notes that bottled water is a Veblen good: people trust it BECAUSE there is a business model, more than they trust a random pipe that offers up free water.
So they monetized the pipe, they say, not because they wanted money, but because they want people to stop giving money to their competitors (plastic/chemical companies).
Please do question their motive, but at least understand what they are saying.
People don't trust a random pipe that serves up free water literally because of the business model of selling a basic commodity like water.
"Ewww look at that dirty TAP water ugh, get some beautiful island fresh water in this bottle!" Of course, it's the same water anyway, but now someone has made money off it.
Capitalism (and since saying that word makes people so mad, let's say "capital seeking behavior" instead) is so hilariously perverse, we've now got advertisement supported tap water, because we advertised tap water v1.0 into obsolescence. And then realized tap water v2.0 (bottled water) actually had unintended consequences (plastic). So THIS time it'll work! Tap Water v3.0!
Water is a vital human necessity. It's literally impossible to live without it. Is it possible to have that just be a public service? The idea that everything needs to generate revenue just feels absurd when just having a water fountain would help people stick around longer and be happier.
Also, why is it the size of a vending machine? That feels impractical.
I think a lot of the comments here are unnecessarily snarky to the point of being unhelpful. If I’m the operator of some public place - let’s say an arcade or a store - every square inch of my store that isn’t being monetized is inefficient, and for as much as I might like to put a water fountain in as a courtesy, why wouldn’t I do the same thing and get revenue for it at the same time?
No one argues that water in the best case should be free and that it’s in the public interest to provide it, but that’s just not realistic in a lot of cases. And in this specific case, the net good provided supersedes whatever argument people have against the commercial aspects, IMO. If it’s this or a vending machine or another rack of clothes, isn’t this better?
> No one argues that water in the best case should be free and that it’s in the public interest to provide it, but that’s just not realistic in a lot of cases.
I disagree. I don't believe there is a single good reason for why our world has both trillions of dollars of wealth but also people without access to clean drinking water. It's just not right.
> the biggest problem we have in putting water on the map is a fundamental mistrust of drinking sources
I've never met anyone who wouldn't use a public water fountain to fill up a bottle they had. Not saying they don't exist, just that it's not "the biggest problem".
The biggest problem is obviously forgetting to bring your water bottle with you everywhere you go. When that happens to me I buy a disposable bottle and refill it till I lose it. Why don't we just require that all disposable water bottles are built to be reused? With wide mouths so they can be cleaned, maybe even compatible with Mason jar lids.
The proliferation of potable water will hitch-hike on other economic expansion projects in the future and (hopefully) we'll see new cost sharing models developed for public infrastructure that are more suited for the future.
The tap project is a noble effort, so nothing is taken away from it, but we're going from phonograph records to HD streaming with logistics in what amounts to a very short period of time and skipping radio, TV, casettes and DVD's in the process.
When all of the pieces come together, the ingredients for rural metropoles/metropoleis to sprout up where the will exists should provide a more reasonable approach than some of the current inferior innovations/policies/codes[1] that they currently have in place for growth and sustainability.
Energy (renewables), water (desalinated), connectivity (low orbit satellite), sustainability (new construction/models/raw materials/resources) and logistics (ML, drones, autonomous roads/vehicles) should make it a whole new ballgame (without having to destroy or burden the existing system).
I do like the fact that tap wants to test and report on water quality, but profitability trumps health. They [utility companies] probably don't want to be reminded of whats in the water. They already know.
[1]I'm more concerned with the accumulation of prescription meds, but heres a pfas nugget instead. Perhaps the expiration date has passed on public water stewardship.
85 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadI'm more inclined to keep a cow as a pet than as food, and I don't even like guns, but thanks to a world of peckers like this, now I'm hoarding guns and planning to raise livestock.
Thanks a lot SV!
if the shoe fits.
One noted how ecologically considerate. They didn't mention anything they actually do that was ecologically relevant. They did have a photo(s) in that section were the team was outside in the midday sun at some wire tables you'd find at some coffee shops with their laptops working away and laughing ... I guess one of them had a water bottle ... maybe that was what I was supposed to pick up from that.
Anyway the whole lifestyle brand / company thing is weird generally.
damn ads everywhere..
If it had just been some marketing hype for a standard juicer, they might have been fine (with a budget).
This thing at least conventionally outputs water... not sure about it's viability, but it seems somewhat less absurd than Juicero.
[1] https://store.wikimedia.org/products/wikipedia-language-wate...
I'm a little perplexed about why this needs to be internet connected. Hire someone to change the ads on the machines and you've made a small dent in unemployment, too.
And if an area doesn't have clean water, isn't it reasonable to believe it doesn't have internet connectivity, too?
It’s the same reason we dig ditches with power equipment rather than shovels or spoons or have walk-up ATMs rather than bank tellers on the corner.
Where, specifically? It's not going to be on the railroad side. Depot side, road side, or opposite-from-depot side?
I mean, I always carry a five-gallon jug of water whenever I go out there, and it's always been more than enough, but... knowing a refill point could be really useful if I ever needed it.
Are you sure it isn't satire?
[1] https://www.samuelianrosen.com/investments
If what you're saying is you don't work for a VC firm, well then, OK.
Shelters should be free, and so should water fountains. But free doesn't mean nice. I've seen some poorly maintained bus shelters and water fountains.
If people want to slap ads on the side, and increase the quality, then that's great. If your VC funding, or ad funding can pay for a filter on a water fountain, even better.
https://findtap.com/
AMA
However, it is certainly just as annoying and invasive.
Do you ever stop and ask yourself "am I really making the world a better place by doing this?"
The reality is your attention had a cost, and the price of quality tap water is less than that cost.
We will also enable a donation based model for water. Future revenue generating opportunities include sparkling and flavored water at a fraction of the cost of what you would buy on the shelf at a convenience store. 65% of the cost of any beverage is packaging and transportation. By carrying your own bottle, you’ll save money, save the planet from plastic pollution, and yes, water will be free.
For some people, maybe. This seems like a mildly sociopathic way to look at it, though.
One could imagine a world where the same type of device was available free of charge without being ad supported. This is certainly a more difficult solution from a financial standpoint, but it would be indisputably better.
And, to some extent, it has been the status quo in many places already with standard water fountains. Admittedly, many of them now are in desperate need of an upgrade.
I believe this type of monetization simply fails to take into account the greater public good in the pursuit of profits.
I can't see how this is any improvement over a drinking fountain. Drinking fountains typically dispense filtered water and the idea of obnoxious advertising on them is disgusting to me. On the other hand, if these machines dispensed a selection of flavored seltzer water I would see the value, probably use them and seek them out and not mind the advertising. I might even buy a reusable water bottle from you that was designed to hold the carbonation. I would be getting something I actually value and can't trivially get for free. I would also be really reducing my environmental footprint since I already drink filtered tap water, but do buy lots of canned seltzer.
Flavored seltzers appear to be big business right now. I have no idea if the unit economics could support it, but on the surface, the flavoring chemicals have to be incredibly inexpensive. Seeing something like this would absolutely catch my attention and I would tell other people about it.
It's an important problem to be working on and I wish you all the luck in the world.
For example, the "Platinum Premium ($29.99/mo)" water would be cold, filtered, and free of pathogens, the "Plus Preferred ($14.99/mo)" would be room temperature tap water, and "Tap Basics ($4.99)" would include a small dose of giardia.
You could pay local independent contractors a small fee to restock your kiosks with the protozoans, so then you wouldn't have to carry the labour overhead.
Are you increasing access to clean drinking water, or are you profiteers freeloading on the back of public infrastructure? Consider that you are making the world worse, not better, please.
I also don't have reliably potable tap water where I live now.
If they're doing the filtration that the public infrastructure isn't, I'd hardly call that freeloading.
If regularly tested, heavily regulated water makes you throw up, you should see a doctor. Perhaps a specialist.
How much will you be paying in rent to the places where you put your water dispensers?
Have you accounted for the cost of water? It turns out that most water supplies aren't actually free, they're run by municipal or county water authoritities that tend to send a bill every so often.
2. I won't comment on this, but for a comp, LinkNYC (Free Wifi kiosks) pays hundreds of millions to its partner cities
3. Currently, cities are providing free tap water at water fountains (e.g. bus station, train station, library), the issue is not the cost of the tap water, but the cost to upgrade the infrastructure so that people trust it.
And while we're on the subject of internet-connected devices, how much thought have you given to black-hat hackers pwning water fountains remotely, or with a few minutes of physical access, to stream racy videos or promote their garage band's next show?
It seems like it could be a very logistics heavy business and hard to account for a lot of things.
That can't be possible — and I think estimation is way off. Even if there were a drinking fountain for every American (which I'm sure is an over-estimate by an order of magnitude as well), that would still imply an upgrade cost of $3,000 per drinking fountain. If there's a fountain for one in ten Americans; that's $30,000.
For context, most modern Elkay drinking fountains are around $1,000.
I think this overwhelming figure serves to enhance the point of the author but I think it bares no basis in reality.
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w...
But drinking fountains add some funny flavors of their own. And what incentive is there to avoid that?
Instead of having a central location where water is filtered and distributed from, Tap is trying to have filtering occur at each endpoint in a more distributed manner.
Who's paying the power bill for these planned AWG units?
Map: https://www.fontanelle.org/Mappa-Fontanelle-Roma-Lazio.aspx
Let's stop trying to monetize everything.
So they monetized the pipe, they say, not because they wanted money, but because they want people to stop giving money to their competitors (plastic/chemical companies).
Please do question their motive, but at least understand what they are saying.
"Ewww look at that dirty TAP water ugh, get some beautiful island fresh water in this bottle!" Of course, it's the same water anyway, but now someone has made money off it.
Capitalism (and since saying that word makes people so mad, let's say "capital seeking behavior" instead) is so hilariously perverse, we've now got advertisement supported tap water, because we advertised tap water v1.0 into obsolescence. And then realized tap water v2.0 (bottled water) actually had unintended consequences (plastic). So THIS time it'll work! Tap Water v3.0!
As a group, we can’t go backwards in the Hegelian dialectic, only forward.
Rome's population is 2.8M so that's 1120 people per fountain.
Zürich has a population of 409k and 1200 fountains, so only 341 per fountain.
Also, why is it the size of a vending machine? That feels impractical.
No one argues that water in the best case should be free and that it’s in the public interest to provide it, but that’s just not realistic in a lot of cases. And in this specific case, the net good provided supersedes whatever argument people have against the commercial aspects, IMO. If it’s this or a vending machine or another rack of clothes, isn’t this better?
I disagree. I don't believe there is a single good reason for why our world has both trillions of dollars of wealth but also people without access to clean drinking water. It's just not right.
I've never met anyone who wouldn't use a public water fountain to fill up a bottle they had. Not saying they don't exist, just that it's not "the biggest problem".
The biggest problem is obviously forgetting to bring your water bottle with you everywhere you go. When that happens to me I buy a disposable bottle and refill it till I lose it. Why don't we just require that all disposable water bottles are built to be reused? With wide mouths so they can be cleaned, maybe even compatible with Mason jar lids.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkwing_Duck
I know a few people like this but I don't understand it. Why is the water coming out of a faucet not safe, here in NYC?
Read up on Coke's "Cap the Tap" program and you'll see why I started Tap
The tap project is a noble effort, so nothing is taken away from it, but we're going from phonograph records to HD streaming with logistics in what amounts to a very short period of time and skipping radio, TV, casettes and DVD's in the process.
When all of the pieces come together, the ingredients for rural metropoles/metropoleis to sprout up where the will exists should provide a more reasonable approach than some of the current inferior innovations/policies/codes[1] that they currently have in place for growth and sustainability.
Energy (renewables), water (desalinated), connectivity (low orbit satellite), sustainability (new construction/models/raw materials/resources) and logistics (ML, drones, autonomous roads/vehicles) should make it a whole new ballgame (without having to destroy or burden the existing system).
I do like the fact that tap wants to test and report on water quality, but profitability trumps health. They [utility companies] probably don't want to be reminded of whats in the water. They already know.
[1]I'm more concerned with the accumulation of prescription meds, but heres a pfas nugget instead. Perhaps the expiration date has passed on public water stewardship.
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2019_pfas_contamination...