Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »

Welcome to the Power Users community on Codidact!

Power Users is a Q&A site for questions about the usage of computer software and hardware. We are still a small site and would like to grow, so please consider joining our community. We are looking forward to your questions and answers; they are the building blocks of a repository of knowledge we are building together.

Posts by matthewsnyder‭

67 posts
83%
+8 −0
Q&A What is a good browser suitable for every-day use that respects user privacy and freedom?

What is a good browser suitable for every-day use that respects user privacy and freedom? This browser should: Respect user privacy. Ideally no telemetry, or at least opt-in telemetry. Does not...

4 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

80%
+6 −0
Q&A What technical steps can I take to reduce Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and discomfort from heavy computer use?

I use computers heavily, both for work and out of personal habits. It's probably typical for me to spend ~60 hours a week at a computer (how depressing, I know). Over the years, this has caused so...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Alexei‭

77%
+5 −0
Q&A How do I check email without depending on a mail client?

I use email frequently, for many things, some of them important (banks, work). From what I've seen, all the offline mail clients (like Thunderbird, Evolution, Kmail) suck for a power user - mail fi...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question email
77%
+5 −0
Q&A Hardware for occasional direct control of personal server

Sorry if the title is weird, please feel free to suggest a rephrase. I have a personal server in my closet. I host various software on this for my family's use. The vast majority of the time I con...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Journeymangeek ‭

77%
+5 −0
Meta Are non power users questions welcome in Power Users?

I think the way to interpret the site name is not "this site is for power users only", but rather "this site is for any aspiring power user". It doesn't really matter if you're not an expert, and ...

posted 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
75%
+4 −0
Q&A Synchronize OTP across multiple devices

A lot of sites these days use OTP. I'm not very familiar with this, but you normally install an app like Google Authenticator on your phone. The app serves an OTP code on demand which you enter alo...

2 answers  ·  posted 2mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 2mo ago by Zoe‭

75%
+4 −0
Q&A What is a good browser suitable for every-day use that respects user privacy and freedom?

Firefox family browsers. These have good compatibility because Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari are the browsers most commonly tested by web developers. With more obscure browsers, many commercial...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by mcp‭

Answer
75%
+4 −0
Q&A In FreeCAD, can you set units per-document?

I use metric units in some projects, imperial in others. It's annoying having to keep switching global units every time. Is there a way in FreeCAD to set the units per-document? When I open a docu...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by H_H‭

Question freecad
75%
+4 −0
Q&A What technical steps can I take to reduce Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and discomfort from heavy computer use?

I think there are two aspects to this: Modifying your choice of hardware and software for various tasks, and improving quality of ergonomics in the chosen *ware. In sum, for me it comes down to avo...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How do I check email without depending on a mail client?

This is a broad topic, and I can't address all the details fully in one post. Instead, I will post an overview with enough keywords in each area, and leave it to the reader (and other questions) to...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How do I find a good KVM switch?

I regularly use two computers with the same keyboard and monitor(s) with a KVM switch. With one button press, the KVM switch can transfer both the video output (monitors) and input (keyboard and mo...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question hardware kvm
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How to change default comment char for INI in VS Code?

When I set a file's language as "INI" in VS Code, and use the "comment" command, it uses ; as the comment character. Is there a way to make it use # instead?

1 answer  ·  posted 2mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 2mo ago by Michael‭

71%
+3 −0
Q&A How to record both audio output and input as separate channels in Audacity?

Is it possible to record both audio in and out with Audacity? I am imagining that after configuring it somehow, I would end up with two concurrent audio tracks: One for what the microphone heard, ...

0 answers  ·  posted 4mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question linux audio recording
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How to disable line breaks in HTML tag content?

When I type HTML in VS Code, it adds linebreaks to the content of the tag when it is over a certain length. How can I disable this? I tried setting html.format.wrapAttributes to preserve and html....

0 answers  ·  posted 6mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

71%
+3 −0
Q&A How can I make moving from Chrome to Firefox as simple as possible?

Firefox is apparently able to automatically import all that: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox I personally don't use these auto-imports. I find that browser migration ...

posted 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A My hard drive is screeching, now what?

My hard drive is making a screeching/scraping/scratching sound. Is this bad? Will it explode? What I do? How do I figure out which hard drive is doing it, if I have multiple?

2 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by Lundin‭

Question hard-drive hardware
71%
+3 −0
Q&A Is there a memory book for humans?

LLMs (AI) have limited context windows which makes it challenging to include all necessary context in the prompt. A common solution is a memory book. The memory book stores arbitrarily large amoun...

2 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by Zer0‭

71%
+3 −0
Q&A Best practices for small, internet-critical company's ISP for maximal uptime

Your only real option here is redundancy. Besides what manassehkatz explained already, you can also open a second office in a different location. It seems unlikely that internet would fail in two ...

posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How can I separate a home LAN to isolate resources?

I have a home network, including a server (not on public internet) that runs various services. For example, a Nextcloud instance with family photos. Currently, the server is connected to my router...

0 answers  ·  posted 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question home-networking
71%
+3 −0
Q&A Low cost programmatic access to US brokers

Are there US stock brokers that allow programmatic access for retail investing? I would like to be able to connect to my broker's API to check my stock portfolio and place trades. I'm not looking ...

0 answers  ·  posted 11mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 11mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

71%
+3 −0
Q&A Easiest way to set up a mailing list

What is the easiest way to set up a mailing list? The goal is to send an email to one address, and it gets automatically re-sent to everyone who is currently subscribed to that list. Ideally, the ...

1 answer  ·  posted 12mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 12mo ago by manassehkatz‭

Question email
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How can I filter GitHub commits by date range, in a friendlier way than git log?

I would handle this with git bisect. Assuming you have a known good old commit C_GOOD (this would be your "since") and a known bad new commit C_BAD (this would be your "until"), git bisect start C_...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A How do I make animated dotted lines ("marching ants") in images on my web page?

SVG apparently has an <animate> tag which can do this. The thing you would animate is the offset of the points/dashes on the line. This is called <stroke-dashoffset>. It sounds like y...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
71%
+3 −0
Q&A What is a good browser suitable for every-day use that respects user privacy and freedom?

qutebrowser Qutebrowser is a small, independent project that is not a fork of any major browser. It is notable in being designed for keyboard-only navigation, inspired by the Vimium extension, whi...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
66%
+2 −0
Q&A Alternative to Cheese that allows custom capture directory?

After posting this, I realized that I could simply replace ~/Pictures/Webcam with a symlink. Perhaps this is what the devs intended, in some Zen/Koan way... I would still like to know if there is ...

posted 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer