Just to nitpick that a bit, they have a lead. To me, a moat is some other axis of advantage that makes it hard for a rival to compete directly.
So for example Tesla has/had a lead in EV tech, but their supercharger network is a moat because it’s very difficult for a rival to compete with, even if they have equivalent EV tech.
I know there isn’t established terminology for this. It is a nitpick, but I think a lead is already a term we have, and moat has connotations of being in some way ‘unfair’. To me, just creating a better product isn’t unfair in any meaningful way, while moats in some circumstances can represent anti trust issues.
So like, would that not suggest that Google has a moat with AI, as it is already intertwined with our email, calendars, etc... (if they ever make their AI public)
It makes it all the more interesting that Google is currently losing to an upstart. They have a MASSIVE advantage in data and moats, but cannot execute on novel products to take advantage of it, despite also hiring a significant chunk of the talent in the market as well.
But perhaps at this stage Google's not meant to / need to build cutting edge products, but rather focus on commoditizing the ones that prove profitable.
> t makes it all the more interesting that Google is currently losing to an upstart
How is Google "losing" when they are not even in the same market? Are you expecting Google to develop and sell access to an LLM API or use AI internally to enhance it's other products (which it jas been doing to great effect)
Yes, no one can build a car from scratch in their garage, but there are plenty of companies with enough capital to build their own cars and sell them to people.
OpenAI has a lead on Bard, LLaMA and friends, but I would expect that to close in the next few months or years.
Parking permits in Montreal require you to have a home in the neighborhood you wish to park in. So this won't affect homeless people as they aren't parking there to begin with.
It could be if the money goes towards helping to build food production systems as opposed to buying food. I wonder if charities do this? Buying food just kicks the can down the road for sure.
That won't help either. The problem in those areas is local and national corruption. If you bring farming equipment into an impoverished third-world community and teach them how to use it, the local warlord/drug gang just comes in after you've left and steals or destroys the farming equipment.
It's an unfortunate fact of reality that foreign aid, though very well-intentioned, benefits the rulers and generals of corrupt governments more than it benefits their citizens. See "The Dictator's Handbook" by Mesquita and Smith.
No it doesn't. Any food production systems requires significant upkeep and security. As long as it's not solved bottom up the problem will continue to exist. Just look at the dilapidated schools in Africa. The gangs/corrupt governments will simply steal the food production facilities.
The only solution is to uplift the entire country, anything highly targeted will not work.
This is the right question. Warehouse roofs are designed to counter snow load and wind uplift at "x" mph. Once those forces are exceeded, you can expect damage.
this might be a bit silly but... maybe not... could you siphon off a little bit of power from the panels to heat an array of heating wires just enough to melt snow on impact and then it'd drip off like rain?
Not at all. Afaik you won‘t even need wires for that. You can occasionally feed energy into the panels which produces a bit of heat there. It wouldn’t even have to melt (a lot) of snow - just enough that the bulk of it slides off.
That snow will then still be on the warehouse roof though.
But I wonder if some "maintenance bot" could eventually become established that's designed around the benefits of the regular grid structure. Perhaps "walking" from socket to socket like a gravity-well capable descendant of Canadarm? Wouldn't start as snowplows, but for maintenance tasks at lower frequency, large solar parks could even make very expensive units worthwhile, and from there the magic of mass market might bring prices down sufficiently far.
The parent comment is that the roof is designed for the structural load of the snow load and not much else. Solar panels need ballast, racking, thick teck cable, etc and can easily overload the structural design. I’ve just gone through this on a warehouse I own. Cheaper to build over the parking lot than add structural reinforcements for every column.
