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Industrial Internet of Things: West and China

We know of the Internet of Things (IoT) – it refers to interconnected devices that “talk” to each other. Like the wearable fitness sensors that report back to your smartphone. A decade or so back, there was also talk of the industrial variant of it, the so called Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), writes Nicholas Welch: “The belief was that the falling cost of cloud computing, sensor costs, and machine learning — coupled with new connectivity technologies such as 5G or IPv6 — would lead to a revolution.” Revolution in what? In manufacturing efficiency, in predicting when an equipment would have problems (say your washing machine or a wind turbine) and then proactively sending the service guy to fix it, in reducing system downtime and thus productivity increases. Add data analytics on top of that, and we should have had massive productivity increases. So why didn’t that happen?   Simply put, there are too many different players whose systems needed to be integrated. (1) ...
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Nitopadesha #3: Judging Decisions

In one of the tales in Nitin Pai’s Nitopadesha , an elephant sees a tiger getting ready to attack a deer and its fawn. If she thumped the ground, the deer and her fawn could escape. But that would mean the tiger would instead attack a stag on the other side. The question of the story: what should the elephant do? Either choice would mean the death of someone.   The tale takes us through the way one would assess. Is saving two lives better than saving one? But saving two lives means sentencing the stag to death – who gave the elephant the authority to decide that? Round and round the arguments go. The moment one has an argument for one, there is a counterargument for the other. We might have the luxury of time, but the elephant has to make a choice within moments. Worst of all, not making a choice still leads to the deer’s death.   No, it’s not a Vikram - Vetaal story with a right answer. Instead, the moral is to remind us that governance is hard and involves such decisions. ...
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Sad State of SFC's

The Union Finance Commission is the entity that recommends how to split the tax pool between states and the center. Less well known are the State Finance Commissions (SFC) that were constituted in 1992 to decide on the next level – how to split the tax pool between the state and local governments.   Few states have bothered to reconstitute SFC’s every 5 years, as called for in the 73 rd and 74 th amendments to the constitution. Further, the recommendations of the SFC are delayed, on average, by 16 months. Worse, SFC members are usually serving politicians and bureaucrats, which means bias is almost certain. If SFC’s recommend increasing the money given to local governments, then the recommendations are always rejected by (who else) the state government.   The problem, as Pranay Kotasthane says starts with those constitutional amendments: “These amendments left the devolution of funds and functions to local governments at the discretion of the state government. And...
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Nitopadesha #2: Markets

An interesting story in Nitin Pai’s Nitopadesha is the “The Case of the Wilting Orchards”. A wise but unconventional cat is invited to a kingdom where the orchards had started dieing slowly and the vegetable gardens were failing. What was the cause, they wanted this cat to find out.   After going all over town, the cat mentions that that a large number of rats were moving up and down a hill in the town. Do you know why, he asked his host. To prospect for gems which are abundant in this region, his host responded, but can you get back to the mystery at hand. After thinking a bit, the cat says he had found the answer! The rats, he said, are digging everywhere searching for gems. Their digging is damaging the roots of the trees and plants. The gemstone hunters are either unaware or don’t care about the side-effect of their activity.   What is the solution, asked his hosts. Should we kill the rats? No, said the cat, they are just earning their livelihood and that is not w...
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CRISPR #3 - How Humans Use It

What could possibly be an application of a defense mechanism like CRISPR found in bacteria? To answer that, we first need to understand how the CRISPR system works. In the earlier blog , we understood that at a high level. But now we need to understand the details.   Scientists identified the pieces that played different roles: tracrRNA : It acts as a handle to latch onto the attacking virus. CRISPR RNA, aka crRNA : It uses the latched on tracrRNA and in turn acts as the guide to identify the attacking virus. Think of it like the torch that highlights the point to attack. CRISPR associated enzyme, aka Cas enzyme : This is the scissor like enzyme that uses the guide crRNA to cut up the attacking virus. See how it works? The tracrRNA attaches itself to the virus. The crRNA uses the tracrRNA to identify the virus to the Cas enzyme, who then cuts up the virus, scissor like.   Now we can get to the application that humans have devised based on this ancient bacterial...
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How Venice Became a Powerhouse

The timing of Tim Harford’s brief history of Venice couldn’t have been better – it was right before our upcoming Italian vacation (including Venice).   How did some “muddy, flood-prone islands in the middle of a lagoon”, a region that “lacked wood, minerals, metals, even arable land” develop into a major European power?   First , of course, via trade. With Egypt, Levant (middle east) and beyond Constantinople to the Black Sea ports. The Pope’s embargo on trading with the Muslims was just ignored – Venice intended to do whatever was advantageous.   Second , muscle power. Trade usually needed the threat of violence. Venetian naval power secured trading privileges in the various sea lanes connected to Venice; and also acted as a deterrent to pirates.   Third , organizational and execution skills. In 1201, the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, was approached to ferry an enormous crusader army to Cairo. Dandolo got Venice to work around the clock to build 5...
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Chip Wars #6: No End in Sight?

Pranay Kotasthane feels the chips war is unwinnable by either side. China cannot hope to build the entire chip industry in-house – there are too many things to be built from grounds-up, starting from the tools for chip design, the chip manufacturing equipment, the expertise in all aspects, the barrier of existing copyright and trade secrets… There are way too many hurdles, he writes in When the Chips are Down .   The US, by trying to move every key piece of the chip industry into Western locations, will make the cost of all chips higher. And lose all the expertise built over decades in niche areas in other parts of the world. Additionally, can the US government keep pouring money and subsidies to move everything to the West? For how long? Further, banning the sale of certain items to China will result in the loss of a huge market, right around the time when Europe ages and its market share declines. Lastly, history tells us that even private semiconductor companies can’t predic...
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