I mean sure but it’s the same issue, smaller scale at that point. You slashed the distance, but also the demand.

The big problem is always going to be getting the land anyway

I’m all for high speed rail in the US, but comparing the land area of the two countries is not really that relevant.

China’s network is really focused on about a third of the land area. US could do the same, but the big population hubs are separated and on opposite sides of the country, so it’s less ideal - lot of track to connect the two. It’s like 2-3x the distance to connect LA/NYC vs Chongqing/Shanghai.

China also has 4x the population of the US. So the cost/benefit to build this out is simply much more favorable for china.

Most importantly, China’s autocratic government can clear the red tape to get big projects like this done. Just getting the land rights to build the right track could kill a transcontinental project in the US. But that decision is consolidated in the Chinese government. This cuts time and cost immensely.

Yeah I’ve done that in a few cases where python is the better tool for the job (pulling new data, cleaning up in a consistent way, and generating reports), but it’s not a great solution for certain workstreams. Especially if you are collaborating with other people who aren’t tech savvy

Probably. Even the Mac version of Office is slightly shittier.

And it works. I’d love to have a Mac at work, but I absolutely need the windows version of excel to do my job effectively

I’ve tried a bunch of spreadsheet programs. They are all painful to use compared to excel.

Sure, you can type up some basic calcs in LibreOffice or Numbers or whatever, but none of these could replicate the stuff I do daily for work in excel unfortunately.

That said, the lack of suitable alternatives did get me to learn Python for personal use. And that opened up a whole new world for things I do at work too. Things that would have been a headache in excel are a couple lines in Python. It’s great (obviously very different use cases from typical spreadsheets)

Same in the US. It’s called a homestead exemption

Wtf are you talking about

Yes… Americans are to blame for the BBC show…

If the problem is a lack of suitable alternatives, that’s not the user’s fault. Google even snapped up Waze.

They need to use something. You suggesting they should just go make their own Google Maps?