The priciest bit of rail per mile is in cities because of the stations and land use, but even those are one time costs. If we magically moved two cities in Japan 5x further apart, it wouldn’t cost 5x the amount to install the rail to connect them. When considering maintenance costs, a comparison to highways wouldn’t be close.

Rail infrastructure across America is mostly dedicated to freight, with passenger travel taking a literal back seat. Comparing rail to air isn’t exactly apples to apples considering how artificially cheap domestic air travel is permitted to be.

California’s rail situation is an entire can of worms on its own. My underlying point is that the type of cities shown in this post are possible everywhere. All it really takes is willpower.

Given several more developed nations have solved the distance problem using trains, I don’t think space between cities is much more than a talking point. Need somewhere to put the farmlands anyhow.

For what it’s worth, dense infrastructure is possible everywhere, even in large spaces like the United States. It just doesn’t get built because the people tasked with making such decisions choose not to for various reasons.

Presumably such a site would be visually obvious as parody. Having it give jokey answers in as a caricature would be one thing. If you dressed it up as a professional legal advice service for opinions on criminal law from Alan Shore, that could be problematic.

At a certain point of information sharing, we should want a high bar for the ones providing the answers. When asking nuanced questions, we should want for the answer to come from knowledge, not memory. I made an example in this other comment.

I’m not sure I agree with your ‘right answer’ bit. Personally, I’d prefer dumb people to be protected in a similar way that I want the elderly protected from losing their savings from an email scam.

‘Should I use one teaspoon of salt in this recipe, or two?’

Two is ideal.

‘Do dogs like chicken wings?’

Wild dogs regularly hunt small animals like hare or chicken for food.

One of these answers results in a bad cake, the other results in a hurt dog. Potentially inaccurate answers aren’t much of a problem when the stakes are low, but even a simple question about what to feed a pet could end with a negative outcome.

I could see the argument for things that aren’t particularly important, but to continue with the legal example, it seems akin to asking a practicing lawyer a question and asking someone that watched Boston Legal when it aired and can quote James Spader.

Unfortunately, with the potential for a hallucinatory response, anything beyond quite simplistic queries shouldn’t be relied on with more weight than a crutch of toothpicks.

Hey, be nice to the big company. This policy of shooting an email doesn’t undermine the profitability their addictive money machine. Won’t you think of the shareholders Mister Curtis?

Only a matter of time before these advanced printers begin printing themselves, then we’ll have to develop a 4D printer to fight them off!

I imagine an image of the Teletubbies vacuum with a label on its nozzle reading ‘apps’, a label on its hose reading ‘advertisers’, and a third label on the tank that reads ‘data brokers’.

Good idea. I just looked at a drive I bought six months ago and it’s up 40% or so. Wish I’d have got two now.

Are you suggesting only agnostics should govern?

Talarico said in the interview he wants the separation of church and state to return as the current blend diminishes both.

Must be some Big Cane executives.