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Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

I totally enjoyed that Shkreli video. Didn't watch it all but I think I will.

I always wondered how do you do this horizontal or vertical fill with formula's using the keyboard?

This inspired me to look for more Excel hacking videos on YouTube.

It's worth watching his entire finance series and even his chemistry series if thats your thing: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...

Yes he acts like a giant dick, but he's got great knowledge of how to analyse an investment, and recommends great books and so on. If his life would've turned out a little different and he was less publicly abrasive, he could've been celebrated as a child prodigy or an investment wizard...sort of like this Japanese trader cis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-e1MxcjFDk (an amazing guy).

Yeah, everyone condemns Martin Shkreli, but having watched the video Benjammer5 linked to, he seems like a regular bright dude / techbro (ugh..). I would not be surprised that a significant number of people who lambasted Shkreli, if given a similar situation, would end up making the same choices for that $$$.

I have found that most people make horrid moral decisions when it comes to money/career. They go into this weird denial, or fall back on, "Hay--it's legal!". I've had my fill of people like this, including a particularly greedy sister.

It seems like ethics, and morals are just missing in some people, and most of these people wear ties, and do it all in a legal fashion.

I have watch a few of his videos months, maybe a year ago? It seems like it was a while ago.

I watch his videos for two reasons; He was obviously opening up his life to the world, and I was curious to what this guy was all about.

I came away with, like myself, he seems to have a real lack of friends. And like myself, he definetly needs a girlfriend. Not someone he could buy, but an honest caring relationship. I definetly got the feeling he wanted people out of his league, and it really bothered him. Maybe I'm completely wrong?

So, on the topic of people making horrid decisions when it comes to money, I recommend a movie called "The Box" inspired by a sci-fi short novel by Richard Matheson called "Button! Button!" (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Z...). Not a spectacular moving, but two hours or so well invested, I believe.

>I have found that most people make horrid moral decisions when it comes to money/career. They go into this weird denial, or fall back on, "Hay--it's legal!"

I was just having a discussion with someone last night who was complaining about executive bonuses (in health insurance specifically), and how he thought that was unfair. He then went on to describe how he's moving into government work for the high pay, low effort, and how he would try to do the same pension spiking practices that's got California in so much trouble. After all, it's not illegal.

Were it not my house, I feel like I might have put my head through a wall.

definitely

> If his life would've turned out a little different

You know you can say the same thing about Pablo Escobar, and Hitler, and many others. Just because someone has an innate talent at something, perhaps even a genius, does not make them worthy of the rhetoric "if only things had turned out a bit different for them...". People do what they do, we shouldn't question what they could have done.

Stipulating that Shkreli is guilty of securities fraud, theft, and is a dick of a person, it's still awful to compare him to people who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds or millions.

I wasn't making any direct comparison, just making a general point using well-known historical figures.

In fact ... You induced Goodwins Law.

Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches 1"—that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will ...

If Hitler had a video series about how to do public speaking, I would watch that, and I hope every politician would.

His method is known. This is why the study of history is important.

Ctrl+R fills right from the leftmost selected cell. Ctrl+D fills down from the topmost selected cell.

Thanks!

And OpenOffice used to omit those, if memory serves.

(Checking ... Libre Office 4.4 has Ctrl-D ... ah well.)

Holy crap that's super useful. For whatever reason I never could figure out (or remember) a shortcut for the 'filldown button'. Instead I would copy the cell I wanted, and then control+arrow my way to the fill destination, shift+control+arrow my way back, and then paste.

This way is a lot simpler and should cause fewer mistakes.

Handy in conjunction with End,<arrow key>, which offhand (I don't have Excel on this PC) does something like: find the next entirely blank row/column in that direction, then extend selection to it (exclusive). If you've got gaps you can just repeat it.

So, if you've got one column filled in for every row, and one row filled in for every column, you can quickly select the whole box and fill it down from the first row.

You don't need to press end to enter end mode - holding down ctrl toggles it. So you can hold down ctrl and use arrow keys and, like it does with text, it will jump entire logical blocks - either continuous cells with content or continuous empty cells. Add shift as well as you select all that stuff instead of just bouncing across it.

Good point. That's probably a better tip, given that you can do the same thing with text.

I think the fill handle is the only thing in Excel that doesn't have a keyboard shortcut.

At least, that was the case in 2000.

Most of the time if you want to apply the same formula, you don't necessary want to carry the formatting, select the range, F2, CTRL ENTER.

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