Excel isn't great, but LO is far, far worse.

I use an old tool called KST for graphing. A lot of the little utilities I wrote create the metadata files to graph CSVs in KST.

Almost every post is by "anonymous", you can't even tell if it's just the same person replying to themselves. Most people have no account at all, and there is no public registration process. There is no voting system like Slashdot or Reddit, all posts appear in chronological order unless removed by an admin.

I don't think Slashdot is truly anonymous now. You can post as AC but must be logged in, so there is a record somewhere.

Per capita too, so it's not just the size of the US. Even the greater landmass and need to travel further is a choice to spread everything out and build cities that are reliant on cars, while destroying public transport as a matter of policy.

That said even Europe is put to shame by China. It's been a huge economic boon for them as well. Massive exports of their world-leading technology, and loads of cheap energy. People in the West are still claiming it's a choice between reducing CO2 and not wrecking the economy, while China out-capitalists them by doing both.

It's also including the brexhit period, when the UK shot itself in the dick and permanently crippled its economy. It remains to be seen how Trump's second term will end, but his tariff policy certainly seems a lot like the UK's innovative strategy of declaring sanctions on itself.

COVID misinformation was killing people. There are limits to free speech, such as fraud, bullying, and misinformation that gets people killed or permanently disabled. I'm not saying they got it right, but on the other hand at least they didn't wonder out loud on national TV if drinking bleach was a good idea.

As for gender affirming care, there is plenty of medical malpractice in all areas, but the current advice from all major medical organizations is that surgery should not be offered to children, and that other forms of care are appropriate and effective. Surgery for adults has an incredibly good success rate, with a low than average regret rate, comparing well with things like hip and knee replacements, and especially cosmetic surgery.

So be honest, what you mean is you think medical science, based on the experience, opinions, and research of experts who know far more than you do about the subject, is wrong.

4chan is an English language version of 2ch, a notorious Japanese website where every user posts anonymously. The guy who created it said that he thought everyone being anonymous stopped people relying on reputation and bullying individuals, instead they could only evaluate each post on its merits.

Of course what it actually lead to was a massive amount of trolling, doxing, harassment and so on. Not just on the site, but of people on other websites and IRL. 4chan is no different. It was where Gamergate (a misogynistic harassment campaign) started, for example.

So it's not a very nice place, but in this case it's an interesting test for the UK regulator. 4chan does not have any business interests in the UK, and it's doubtful that there is anything the regulator can legally do to make them pay or make them adopt age verification. So the next step is either an embarrassing climb down, or they start pressuring ISPs to block the site.

Replacing the USD as the reserve currency and currency for international trades is a high priority now for the EU and China, and probably other groups like ASEAN. The instability, the use of USD as a cudgel, the legal over-reach, and the general feeling that the US is both an unreliable partner and likely on a downward economic trajectory over the long term.

If it was just Trump for another few years they might wait it out, but even if he does hand over power at the end of his term, it doesn't seem like the Democrats or whatever Republican replaces him will be willing to undo the damage to any significant degree.

I can at least understand people wanting longer support for things they paid for. In Libreoffice's case they should ask for a refund.

There is also a case for key software like Windows 10 continuing to work simply because of the environmental impact of sending so many machines to landfill. Equally though it could be argued that there has been a general failure by the tech industry and open source community to offer a viable alternative for that hardware. Not a very good argument perhaps, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's an all round shit-show at the moment.

It's not just Excel files, it's massive files in general. A lot of engineers use Excel for handling CSV files, and Calc isn't a great replacement for that. It chugs quite badly on large but simple (no conditional stuff) data sets. Graphing is particularly bad.

I'm looking forward to these improvements.

I prefer ChromeOS for that. I didn't bother setting up remote access because I get zero tech support queries after the first week, when people need a little help setting their basic preferences like how sensitive the mouse/touchpad is.

It's the only OS I've ever found that really does Just Work (TM). At most a reboot fixes any issues.

Worse still, even if Trump doesn't get a third term, those satellites are expensive and supposed to last a lot longer than one term. Whoever inherits what's left of the US will have to decide between launching new ones with the proper equipment, or trying to make do with what other countries are willing to share. Which fortunately is a lot.

There used to be a lot of free to use chargers in the UK too, in the early days. We are well past that now though. You don't have to plan trips or really think about charging, there is plenty of it. At least in the south, I think up north it might not be quite so good.

Don't you remember that the Clintons were part of a global elite paedophile ring, based out of a pizza restaurant basement?

The fact that some guy went there, armed, and found nothing, hasn't disproven it for some dedicated QAnon followers. I'm sure it's just coincidence that Clinton's rival's name is definitely in the Epstein Files.

These are private companies that charge silly money for kerb side charging. They made running an EV as expensive as running a fossil.

It will create yet more divide between people who can afford a driveway or live where across pavement charging is allowed, and everyone else. Also going to contribute to parking wars because if people can't park where they can charge cheaply, they will be upset.

Why would they need to test that? If it works on one firewall server, it should work on them all. Besides, it's hardly difficult to block all outside access - it happens accidentally every few years, somewhere in the world.

And why would they test it for so long? It doesn't take that long to validate that it works, and the economic losses from such a long test must have been substantial. Think of all the financial transactions that were held up, all the orders delayed or diverted, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

If you were going to test such a system then this would be the stupidest way possible. Unless there is some evidence to suggest that it wasn't, it's almost certainly just a cock-up.