VBA for Word is bad, but VBA for Excel graphs is worse. At small companies that can’t justify the cost of any software outside Office, people will go to great lengths to get Excel to support data analysis. Not being in that situation anymore is one of my top satisfaction items with having changed jobs from a small to a large company.
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I used to work at a place where one of their test machines generated a cert in Microsoft Word with test results. They were having their lab technicians manually type in something like eight fields of information to flesh put the cert. I managed to hack together a Word VBA plus Python script to interface with the OpenOffice database I had set up so the techs only had to type in one field, and the script filled in the rest.
It was kind of a monstrosity under the hood, but it worked pretty slickly, and given the available tools I was glad the option existed.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Fediverse@lemmy.world•Beware, another "wonderful" conservative instance to "free us" has appeared English17·10 days agoThanks for sharing. I’m glad you are feeling less miserable now.
Before it was collected as a compendium of official parts, sure, but most of the individual books (both the ones that made it into the current version and additional ones that ended up being rejected) were around. The Old Testament ones were already written down, and most of the Gospels were at least oral tradition very early on.
I believe it was over one hundred years before the Gospels were all written down, and early Christian sects had passionate disagreement over which texts were official or hearsay, but it’s not like they were completely without religious texts.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are some backhanded compliments that are very subtle?3·11 days agoIf you don’t say anything, they assume you agree with them. It’s a fine line between letting them know you (maybe respectfully) disagree, vs. actively debating, but in some cases I think it’s worthwhile to try to let them know you aren’t inside their bubble. Agree outright dickishness is unhelpful, but so much depends on the specifics of the relationship and circumstances of delivery.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Uplifting News@lemmy.world•Cleanup Group Says It's on Track to Eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage PatchEnglish2·11 days agoThere are shades of gray. I consider burying it in well managed landfills (what is done with the very large majority of plastic in developed countries) significantly more environmentally responsible than dumping it into the local river (what is done with most plastic in many developing countries) or ocean (fishing nets, cruise ships).
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Uplifting News@lemmy.world•Cleanup Group Says It's on Track to Eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage PatchEnglish1·11 days agodeleted by creator
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What would a world look like if recycling reached 100%?5·24 days agoBy what metric? Recycling gives a new use to discarded materials, so the material might be 100% not-discarded, but new energy is still consumed in the recycling process. This is why reducing and re-using are more powerful levers than recycling.
There is also the detail of whether a material is truly “re” cycled back to the original use, or is “down” cycled to a use with less rigorous technical requirements.
I’ve occasionally been part of training hourly workers on software new to them. Having really, really detailed work instructions and walking through all the steps with themthe first time has helped me win over people who were initially really opposed to the products.
My experience with salaried workers has been they are more likely to try new software on their own, but if they don’t have much flexible time they usually choose to keep doing the established less efficient routine over investing one-time learning curve and setup time to start a new more efficient routine. Myself included - I have for many years been aware of software my employer provides that would reduce the time spent on regular tasks, but I know the learning curve and setup is in the dozens of hours, and I haven’t carved out time to do that.
So to answer the question, neither. The problem may be neither the software nor the users, but something else about the work environment.
The skills of both writing useful minutes and prioritizing actually sending them out are frustratingly rare. An average meeting with five or six people has even odds of not including someone with both of those skills. I can see where reliably having a mediocre AI summary might be an advantage over sometimes having superb human-written minutes and sometimes having nothing.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•Economist picked to lead Bureau of Labor Statistics ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacksEnglish4·26 days agoAmid the racism and misogyny is published work that recessions are when the opposition party is in power. Presumably “economic boom” is when the “correct” party is in power, regardless of “traditional” economic data. Oh, and he’d like to see the US deploy nukes. Bolding is mine.
Antoni’s academic work is also sparse, causing concern from prominent economists. Last year, he co-published a report that purported “the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022,” which economists across the political spectrum have criticized.
Sometime in mid-2019… the account’s username changed to “phdofbombsaway” with the display name “Dr. Curtis LeMay.” The profile image also changed to what looks to be a nuclear explosion. The username and display name appear to be a reference to “Bombs Away LeMay,” a reference to the Cold War general and his controversial stance promoting the use of nuclear weapons. LeMay ran alongside segregationist George Wallace on his 1968 presidential ticket for the far-right American Independent Party.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What do you think of imitation and lab-grown meats?5·27 days agoI do not believe it is possible for cultured meat to ever be cheaper than industrially farmed meat. An animal as an integrated system has too many inherent efficiency advantages over a lab culture, even an industrially-scaled lab culture.
- Animals have immune systems. Lab cultures have to be grown in a sterile environment, which increases costs.
- Animals have digestive systems and can extract only the needed nutrition from common plant materials. Lab cultures have to be fed pre-digested and carefully proportioned nutrients, which increases costs.
- Animals have extensive circulatory systems that efficiently get nutrients to cells and remove their waste. Lab cultures are centrifuged, which doesn’t scale as well.
- Animals have integrated waste processing and excretion systems. Lab cultures have to run external kidney loops, which not only increase costs but are less efficient.
Cultured meat will come down in price, maybe from 10x animal meat to 2-3x, but it’s always going to be a novelty/luxury and will never compete on price as long as industrial animal farming practices are legal.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet - Why are people freaking out about Cracker Barrel ?English2·29 days agoThe article is calling out the logo outrage as a distraction from the Epstein files.
The process of stoking outrage has another effect: It crowds out the news cycle. Most Democrats I know would be shocked at how little the average Republican knows about Trump’s actual conduct and his actual wrongdoing. Republicans can, however, cite chapter and verse about left-wing outrages and left-wing overreactions to Trump.
That creates a reality where they simply can’t conceive of how any reasonable, rational person would vote Democratic or oppose the president and his policies.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•whats the cheapest legal way to dispose of my dead body so i can stick it to the funeral industry?31·1 month agoWhen one of my grandfathers died, none of his children or ex-wives wanted anything to do with a funeral or burial arrangements. My parents found a place that accepted his alcoholism-ravaged body, and they took care of things. I’m not sure of the details, and seems likely it wasn’t a medical school, but some organization took the body “last minute”.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Uplifting News@lemmy.world•FTC Sues Gym Chains for Making It Hard to Cancel MembershipsEnglish20·1 month agoAn appeals court blocked the rule, and Trump’s FTC had argued in support of it. They haven’t appealed the ruling, though. https://www.businessinsider.com/ftc-blocks-subscription-trap-click-to-cancel-ftc-rule-2025-7
Trump’s FTC filed a brief in March supporting the negative option and click-to-cancel rule, writing that consumers “face unnecessary obstacles from sellers who force them to endure multiple phone calls, long hold times, and countless automated menus. Studies show that most Americans pay hundreds annually for unwanted subscriptions.”
FTC’s commissioner Mark Meador took a different tone last week when he wrote in a post on X following the 8th Circuit’s ruling: “The FTC’s click-to-cancel rule, which would have made it much easier for consumers to get rid of unwanted online subscriptions, isn’t going into effect for one reason: the Biden FTC cut corners and didn’t follow the law. Process matters.”
This suggests that the FTC likely won’t appeal the ruling…
The cost is a big turn off for most people. At grocery stores near me, the Impossible and Beyond products are more than double the price of the meat products they are imitating. In part because livestock feed is hugely subsidized by the government.
If the plant-based meat alternatives could gain efficiency through scale and experience to lower the cost below animal meat, we would see way more people trying them and finding what dishes they work best in, which would feed back into scaled market demand. But I don’t see that kind of explosive growth potential at current price levels.
Growing meat cells in a lab and selling them as food is illegal in the states you reference.
What Beyond does in processing plant material into something that resembles some meat products is still legal everywhere.
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.comto Technology@lemmy.world•‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharingEnglish53·2 months agoDifferent people and relationships can have different solutions that work for them. That’s OK!
The increase in diagnosis has happened in less than one generation. Genetic drift from altered reproductive behavior would take multiple generations. The speed of the diagnosis shift rules out social changes to mate selection and childbearing rates.