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Submission + - Put Multiple Values in One Cell with Lists and Arrays in Excel 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Folks in Finance and other power Excel users were no doubt all atwitter over Microsoft's Thursday announcement of support for in-cell lists and arrays in Excel, including four new functions — FLATTEN, HAS, HASANY, HASALL — to manipulate them. From the home office in Redmond:

"Throughout Excel's 40-year history, you've only been able to put one value per cell. In this announcement, we're excited to share how that's changing with the release of lists, arrays in cells, and nested arrays, initially to Microsoft Excel for Windows and Mac Beta Channels. Many workbooks already try to pack multiple values into one cell. A project might list 'Carlos, Henrietta, Jacob' as three owners, or a Forms survey might return '2:00 PM; 2:30 PM; 3:00 PM' as one response. With lists, you can keep those values in one cell, while also keeping them separate for filtering, calculation and more."

If you haven't been keeping abreast of What's New in Excel, Microsoft has added a number of new features over the past years that enable Excel users to do things one might formerly have turned to programming languages and other computing environments to accomplish, including support for regular expressions, the LET and LAMDA functions, Python in Excel, and, of course, the obligatory AI support.

Which raises an interesting question: Is an Excel formula worth a thousand lines of AI-generated Python code? (especially if the latter is run in an overengineered infrastructure, such as an AI-generated complex CI/CD pipeline combined with cloud pipeline execution!)

Submission + - The brain is actually two completely separate organs (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: From Stanford Medicine:

"For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years."

The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. Scientists could never create hindbrain neurons.

"Previous attempts to make hindbrain neurons likely tried to coax forebrain and midbrain progenitors into hindbrain cells, which our study shows is not possible,” said researcher Rayyan Jokhai.

"The researchers’ breakthrough came from studying the earliest moments of embryonic development, during a stage called gastrulation when the body first takes shape. Jokhai and Dundes discovered that the hindbrain follows a separate developmental path, running in parallel to — rather than branching off from — the pathway that creates the forebrain and midbrain."

With this knowledge, researchers were able to create hindbrain neurons.

Comment Re:Easy, they don't have to be a box office hit (Score 1) 94

by asliarun (#65245739) Attached to: Why Are the Most Expensive Netflix Movies Also the Worst?

Netflix's goals are a little different. Yes, they expect to turn a profit on a film or series, but due to the nature of streaming, the movie itself is never a direct profit center. Under the Netflix model, a movie could have zero views and still be a smashing success if it induces more people to sign up or retain Netflix subscriptions.

Fair enough. But this specific movie is not an example of something that brings in new subscribers. There's nothing niche about it and nothing that targets a specific group of people or especially hobbyists or enthusiasts.

This is just a straight up bad movie, considering the amount of money that went into it.

For example, if Dune or LOTR were flop movies, I would agree with you and say that it still made sense for Netflix to finance those movies because those are cult classics and people will join Netflix just to see them. Or many of your vintage classic movies. Or Clint Eastwood Westerns. There are people who are super passionate about those genres and niches and even fans of those specific movies.

Comment Re:Which workers? (Score 4, Insightful) 47

by asliarun (#65239179) Attached to: Intel's Stock Jumps 18.8% - But What's In Its Future?

Seriously, just stop spreading BS. Intel cannot be remotely compared to AOL, and even your fear-mongering of "stock options getting stolen" is largely BS. For the record, Intel switched from stock options a long time ago to RSUs or restricted stock units. Intel has been in existence for decades and has made steady profits for shareholders for decades. Intel's employees have become literal millionaires - and thousands of them. You're comparing this to some BS based on some cherry picked anecdotal data or some skewed comparison with startups.

Intel is not a startup. It has been rock solid for literally decades - spanning the career lifetime of many many employees. People have literally joined Intel fresh out of college and have retired out of Intel and have seen massive wealth creation from stock options they received. Not the paranoid BS you are writing.

Show me ONE example in Intel's 55+ years of history where Intel's lawyers have screwed Intel's employees out of stock options? Otherwise you're just farting in the wind.

Submission + - Amazon to close newly unionized facility (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After opening it's first Quebec facility in 2020, Amazon will be closing all seven locations located within the province — just after it's Lachine location unionized. Amazon stated that it was done as a cost cutting measure and was going back to using local small businesses.

Submission + - Amazon Exits Quebec Operations, To Cut About 1,700 Jobs (msn.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: E-commerce giant Amazon.com is exiting its operations in the Canadian province of Quebec, leading to the loss of about 1,700 full-time jobs, the company said on Wednesday, prompting Ottawa to express its unhappiness. The online retailer will phase out operations across seven sites in the province — the only location in Canada with unionized Amazon employees — over the next two months. It will return to a third-party delivery model, relying on local small businesses, similar to its approach before 2020.

Submission + - Federal Court (Finally) Rules Backdoor Searches of 702 Data Unconstitutional (eff.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The district court found that regardless of whether the government can lawfully warrantlessly collect communications between foreigners and Americans using Section 702, it cannot ordinarily rely on a “foreign intelligence exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant clause when searching these communications, as is the FBI’s routine practice. And, even if such an exception did apply, the court found that the intrusion on privacy caused by reading our most sensitive communications rendered these searches “unreasonable” under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US person’s 702 data.

Submission + - Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election (brennancenter.org)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The influence of wealthy donors and dark money was unprecedented. Much of it would have been illegal before the Supreme Court swept away long-established campaign finance rules. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision that swept away more than a century’s worth of campaign finance safeguards, turns 15 this month. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it the worst ruling of her time on the Court. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently expressed disapproval of the ruling, with at least 22 states and hundreds of cities voting to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Citizens United reshaped political campaigns in profound ways, giving corporations and billionaire-funded super PACs a central role in U.S. elections and making untraceable dark money a major force in politics. And yet it may only be now, in the aftermath of the 2024 election, that we can begin to understand the full impact of the decision.

Submission + - Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy (404media.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If it wasn’t already obvious, the last 72 hours have made it crystal clear that it is urgent to build and mainstream alternative, decentralized social media platforms that are resistant to government censorship and control, are not owned by oligarchs and dominated by their algorithms, and in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere easily and without restriction. [...] Mastodon’s ActivityPub and Bluesky’s AT.Protocol have provided the base technology layer to make this possible, and have laid important groundwork over the last few years to decorporatize and decentralize the social internet.

The problem with decentralized social media platforms thus far is that their user base is minuscule compared to platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, meaning the cultural and political influence has lagged behind them. You also cannot directly monetize an audience on Bluesky or Mastodon—which, to be clear, is a feature, not a bug—but also means that the value proposition for an influencer who makes money through the TikTok creator program or a small business that makes money selling chewing gum on TikTok shop or a clothes brand that has figured out how to arbitrage Instagram ads to sell flannel shirts is not exactly clear. I am not advocating for decentralized social media to implement ads and creator payment programs. I’m just saying that many TikTok influencers were directing their collective hundreds of millions of fans to follow them to Instagram or YouTube, not a decentralized alternative.

This doesn’t mean that the fediverse or that a decentralized Instagram or TikTok competitor that runs on the AT.Protocol is doomed. But there is a lot of work to do. There is development work that needs to be done (and is being done) to make decentralized protocols easier to join and use and more interoperable with each other. And there is a massive education and recruitment challenge required to get the masses to not just try out decentralized platforms but to earnestly use them. Bluesky’s growing user base and rise as a legitimately impressive platform that one can post to without feeling like it’s going into the void is a massive step forward, and proof that it is possible to build thriving alternative platforms. The fact that Meta recently blocked links to a decentralized Instagram alternative shows that big tech sees these platforms, potentially, as a real threat.

Submission + - TikTok is censoring anti-Trump content (newsweek.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: After going dark for 12 hours in response to a U.S. law saying it must divest from Chinese ownership, TikTok came back on line when the new administration took office. However, once up and running, users found one unexpected change. Anti-Trump content is now being censored. Words, phrases, and videos which were readily accessible pre-blackout were now unavailable or being removed entirely.

A post on X, formerly Twitter, which has received 4.5 million views at the time of reporting, claims that "TikTok is now region locking Americans from looking up things like "fascism" and "Donald Trump rigged election"."

The post includes two screenshots of the TikTok app. The screenshot is of the search page, and in both the search term is "Donald Trump rigged election." The post states that: "On the left are results from a device in America, and on the right are results from one in the UK."

The post on the left shows a results page stating "No results found," while on the left it shows two videos of the President.

Another post from the account Dustin Genereux said that, "Censorship on TikTok is at an all time high with accounts being deleted, posts going back years being flagged, people losing access to the creator fund for saying anything Anti-Trump, MAGA, Elon, etc. But free speech and all that right?"

Comment The solution to the Fermi Paradox (Score 0) 222

This is a tiny step in the right direction, but laws overall seem to protect the near-term, profit-based corporatocracy. It's a sad commentary on humanity.

I'm convinced that the highest likelihood answer is that humanity destroys itself. Expediency will be the destruction of our species.

Comment Chicken and Egg (Score 0) 277

by greengrocer (#64733728) Attached to: Ford Cancels Electric SUV, Delays EV Pickup

EVs face a big obstacle: National charging infrastructure lags behind demand. And I don't believe it will be expanded until more EVs are on the road but consumers must buy more EVs to encourage investment in the national charging infrastructure. I think this and not the high cost of EVs is the greatest hurdle to EV adoption. Battery storage costs have dropped by 50% over the last decade, likely due to solar storage demand. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.euronews.com%2Fgreen...

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