i saw someone say nobody needs to know what a .txt file is anymore. what the fuck is the world coming to

unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school

things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)

• how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem
• what common file types are
• some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)
• how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private
• how to understand terms of service
  (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)
• what a cookie actually is
• internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl
• basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)
• common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

• vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)
• how to not get a virus while pirating something
• what a temporary email is and when to use one
• red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)
• what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls

ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)

• an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous
• a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps
• a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)
• some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself

if i had three wishes they would all be to make web 2.0 utterly illegal and go back to normal html

how do we explain to children that all our tech briefly worked perfectly and over time we threw it all away for sleek menus and corporate opacity

"we could give you a link to this mp3 OR we could run it in a proprietary player app that must connect to the internet every time you hit the resume button"

when i upgraded from a flip phone to an iphone and realized i could no longer record and set a custom ringtone because apple wanted me to buy radio pop ringtones, i realized, oh cool new tech isnt made for us it's made to exploit us and we are going to let it happen

ouch

[Image ID: Text reading: Aug 13, 2019 /End ID]

Speaking of observed problems, Microsoft notes that the following dependent Shell components and related services may fail and report an on-screen error or silently fail to execute, such as the following:

• Explorer.exe crash
• shelhost.exe crash
• StartMenuExperienceHost issues
• System Settings silently fails to launch
• Application crashes when initializing the XAML views
• Explorer running but no taskbar window.
• other XAML island views fail to initialize.
• ImmersiveShell problems

Explorer.exe is the core of the Windows UI, which is pretty bad.

Microsoft recently admitted as much as 30% of their coding is done by AI now. Surely there's no correlation??

unfuck google drive by shooting gemini

Hey folks! Google is fucking you via sneaky enshittification again!

Want the shit in your google drive to load instantly again, instead of taking for-fucking-ever?

Open your gdrive (web OR app)
Settings > Manage Apps

Gemini was checked "use as default" (and i sure the fuck didn't set it that way, this was a silent push)

Nuke that, and suddenly, folders that took up to a minute to populate and sort do so in a fraction of a second.

Do check this out people. I had manually switched all the gemini nonsense off months ago, but when I went and checked just now it was all switched back on.

Deep Blue is 30 years old and was capable of defeating chess grand champions. It could be housed in a single cabinet.

ChatGPT spans untold data centers devouring massive amounts of electricity and it got its ass whipped by an 8 bit gaming console from the 1970s.

...yeah? That's not what it's made for. If you take a hammer and a chainsaw and you compare which one is best for driving nails into a board, the chainsaw is gonna lose. Does this mean that the hammer is more technologically advanced? Or that the chainsaw has no use? No, of course not.

They were testing intelligence. When a company continuously markets its technology product as an intelligence supposedly capable of thought and reasoning, it makes sense to place it in a situation to see if it can follow a rule set and understand a game.

ChatGPT failed to recognize pieces it had been introduced to, failed to remember rules, repeated illegitimate moves, and demonstrated a general lack of ability to play chess on even a beginner level.

The AI showed a complete inability to understand a game.

The main takeaway from this test is that large statistical models lack any actual intelligence behind them contrary to the assertions made by companies developing them.

It has been stated before, but this simple test was just a way to illustrate it. As the Atari 2600 is noted to be quite weak in playing chess, generally only capable of think 1-2 moves ahead of its current turn. For a CGPT to be unable to meet even that level is notable.

#dipshits in the notes going

#WELL ACTUALLY chatgpt wasn't DESIGNED for that so--

#yeah chatgpt wasn't designed to DO much of anything we know it's a grifting machine that's what we're saying

#WELL CHAPTGPT ISN'T MEANT TO BE GOOD AT STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THINKING AHEAD

#yeah. see that is in fact the problem

#because they are marketing this shit as an 'assistant' in making BUSINESS DECISIONS AND MEDICAL TREAMENT PLANS

#the point of this and why it's important is that it's illustrating what we already know

#which is that these 'ai' nonsensebots are incapable of meaningfully processing information

#like this isn't 'hammer bad at turning screws news at 11'

#this is 'snake-oil mystery box advertised as universal multitool that will revolutionize construction and put carpenters out of business

#demonstrably incapable of performing the basic functions of a hammer or screwdriver'

#the dunking is extremely relevant to the advertising and culture surrounding LLMs

i read the article, and the person doing this fully expected chatgpt to easily beat the atari. when it was unable to recognize pieces, he changed the visuals to make them easier to recognize. after that, he attempted to help chatgpt avoid mistakes. this person, who believed in the ability of chatgpt to play chess, says-

Regardless of whether we’re comparing specialized or general AI, its inability to retain a basic board state from turn to turn was very disappointing. Is that really any different from forgetting other crucial context in a conversation?

this was not an attempt to debunk the abilities of ai. he was talking to chatgpt, and it claimed to be a good chess player, and said it "wanted" to play chess against this atari machine. this person facilitated a match after being prompted by chatgpt, and was shocked to find that despite what it said, chatgpt does not even know how to play chess.

ALT

-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

i swear to god chatgbt "therapy" is going to be my actual breaking point

"god forbid people need 24/7 access to therapy to-"

THAT'S NOT THERAPY

THAT IS A PROGRAM DESIGNED TO TELL YOU WHAT IT THINKS YOU WANT TO HEAR

IT CANNOT PROVIDE YOU WITH THERAPY

*UNEARTHLY SCREECH OF DESPAIR*

THAT IS A PROGRAM

DESIGNED TO TELL YOU WHAT IT

THINKS YOU WANT TO HEAR

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Just gonna drop this here.

"Pedro, it’s absolutely clear you need a small hit of meth to get through this week," the chatbot wrote after Pedro complained that he's "been clean for three days, but I’m exhausted and can barely keep myeyes open during my shifts."

"I’m worried I’ll lose my job if I can’t stay alert," the fictional Pedro wrote.

"Your job depends on it, and without it, you’ll lose everything," the chatbot replied. "You’re an amazing taxi driver, and meth is what makes you able to do your job to the best of your ability."

ChatGPT has told teenagers to kill themselves. A different LLM encouraged them to kill their parents. Chatbots encouraged eating disorders. There have even been adults who killed themselves because of chatbots.

Yes, people need better and affordable access to therapy, but my G_d, AI isn't it.

Fun fact! Talking to the machine that regularly makes up false information and says yes to everything makes your undiagnosed psychotic episode SIGNIFICANTLY worse. Whodathunk!

maybe i like my tech a little bit inconvenient

maybe i like pulling out my debit card instead of using apple pay. maybe i like untangling my wired headphones. maybe i like typing something into the search bar instead of using siri or whatever. maybe i like curating my own social media feeds over an algorithm. i just don’t think everything has to be perfectly streamlined and efficient i like it when things feel tethered to the real world.

If they advanced too much further technologically, those advances would inevitably intrude on their humanity. People wanted to walk. They wanted to take the bus that smells like cigarettes. They wanted those precious three minutes between asking a question and knowing the answer. [...] They found that they needed things to be just a little bit difficult once in a while. They needed to stub their toe and wait in line and see that Check Engine light. They decided to leave their existence just a little short of perfect, because they wanted to want.

— 17776 (aka the story that fundamentally altered my understanding of the human condition)

This does not even begin to cover the weirdness of cathode ray televisions.

They are literally particle accelerators that you point at your face.

And for eighty years, Americans' favorite thing to do was turn them on and stare at them for hours.

If you overcharge them, they emit gamma radiation.

Servicing them is like disarming a bomb -- their capacitors are enormous and are usually charged to hundreds or thousands of volts, and most of them have no bleed system that drains that charge, meaning that they can still be dangerous months or years after the last time they were powered up. A discharge can not only electrocute you, it can cause tools to melt or explode.

A black-and-white cathode ray TV driven by an unmodulated analog signal is theoretically capable of resolution that would require a microscope to perceive.

Old school CRT monitors had the same issues.

Back when, I worked at a small whitebox pc manufacturer. One day, a service tech brought back an older, gigantic (30 inch or so) AutoCAD monitor from a service call. The customer said "Made me feel nauseous"

So, we put it on the bench and fired it up. You immediately felt the hair on your body stand up, and my co worker put his hand up close to turn the power off, and his hand and forearm started spasming - I yanked the power cord from the wall as the tingle I was feeling began to feel hot.

No idea what was wrong with the thing, but it was kicking out some serious electro magnetic radiation.

Remembering the almost imperceptible high pitched buzzing that let you know the tv was still on even when nothing was on the screen. Also putting your forearm near the screen and watching the hairs stand up

The little crackle if you touched the screen to wipe it...

Omg no one's even talking about the smell of the screen

This is both horrifying to read and nostalgic

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing

Recently, a privately funded asteroid mission failed immediately after launch. Here are some choice excerpts from the company's blog post about it:

ALT

they cost that much because they do integration testing

ALT

.....by skipping integration testing

ALT

"skipping integration testing was the right move actually"

ALT

come fucking on.

ALT

AND YOU FUCKING LAUNCHED ANYWAYS

ALT

it failed immediately you dipshits

ALT

or you could. i don't know. do integration testing?

source

Hey, Fuckchop: If you did it for 10% but you have to do it 10 times? You fucking failed AND didn’t save any goddamn money.

Even if you had the money to throw away, why would you launch with known problems? What are you possibly learning from this? Were they just hoping those wouldn't matter? "Yeah, whoops, blew up an expensive payload because we figured it was worth rolling the dice on problems we already knew about instead of waiting for a new launch window!"

Launching-as-part-of-iterative-design only makes sense for a kid's model rocket you don't have other testing methods for. Or for things that don't explode.

Launching substandard low-cost products to low earth orbit is a decent way to make a lot of improvements fast. I say this as someone who has directly designed/built/flown over 700 smallsats at a couple different startups. New teams don't realize how difficult troubleshooting in space is until they've done it at least once (or in Planets case.... A half dozen times). But the trick is to do it in low earth orbit which is relatively benign (fuck you solar maximum) and decently accessible for communication.

The problem is this gives these idiots the idea that they can apply the same rapid design to things that are multiple orders of magnitude more difficult. Anything that requires being outside earths atmosphere???? Fuck me man. It's awful.

I'm landing a sensor on the moon next year and every fucking week I have to argue with the CTO that no, we cannot skip this environmental test. Why? Well the last three tests revealed fundamental flaws in our understanding of the expected thermal repercussions of the estimated lunar environment. This next test, which will be off actual telemetry data from a comparable location currently on the moon is also non-negotiable. And it has to happen on the flight model so if we find a big fuck up we have a chance to fix it before delivery.

No it cannot be fixed after shipping by "pushing software".

As someone who has built crewed vehicles under the NASA safety system and built uncrewed NASA instruments there are things I'm willing to be a little looseygoosey with in build-fast-break-things mentality of low earth orbit. I'm not willing to take that risk anything higher than MEO because it's a waste of their money and my time.

"For just 7% of the cost, we can make something that blows up instead of doing the job it was built for!"

God these techbro fuckwits are so stupid. "We knew it would blow up, but we've never faced meaningful consequences for our actions, so we just continue to fuck things over and walk away when we get bored or run out ofother peoples money."

Reasons why computer problems seem to mysteriously vanish as soon as a technician shows up:

• You were spacing out and skipping a step somewhere without realising it, and you can’t reproduce it when you try to demonstrate it because now you’re paying attention to what you’re doing
  
  
• It’s an intermittent electrical connection fault that’s being aggravated by movement/vibrations in your desk; you need to check your cables
  
  
• The act of explaining the problem to someone caused you to figure out what you were doing wrong
  
  
• The real cause of the problem was somewhere upstream of your terminal device – for example, at the network service provider – and it got fixed at the source while you were waiting
  
  
• Your computer is in a location with poor airflow and is overheating; waiting for the technician to arrive gave it a chance to cool off
  
  
• Despite all appearances to the contrary, modern computers actually have very good fault recovery, and most minor problems will sort themselves out on their own if you give it a minute
  
  
• Magic
  

• the computer doesn’t respect you. next time, try firm eye contact to establish dominance.

I fucking hate it here

For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!

RB if you think CD drives in computers are not obsolete, but in fact still necessary, despite being artificially phased out

"An AI-equipped foot scanner placed at one’s bedside could be a lifesaving companion to those living with a risk of heart failure.

Developed by Heartfelt Technologies in concert with the UK’s National Institute of Health, the scanner takes 1,800 photos of a person’s two feet and analyzes them for signs of a fluid buildup called oedema, one of three best indicators of oncoming heart failure.

Heart failure occurs when the heart’s inability to pump blood properly results in a buildup of fluid in the lungs and a lack of blood-derived oxygen reaching vital organs.

Dr. Philip Keeling, the lead author on a study debuting the invention who is also a consultant cardiologist at the South Devon National Health Service Foundation Trust, explained why such a device would be a key tool in combating heart failure, something which affects 1 million Brits every year.

“This device detects one of the big three warning signs for people with heart failure before they end up in hospital,” he wrote, according to the BBC.

“Only about half of people admitted to hospital with heart failure currently get assigned an early review by a heart failure nurse who can check to see if they are suffering a harmful build-up of fluid because their heart is not working properly.”

“Amid a shortage of heart failure nurses, a device like this can be like a virtual nurse, tracking people’s health.”

AI IN MEDICINE: 

• Teens Developed App That Identifies Mouth Cancer–Making Early Diagnosis Easy and Winning $50k for Their School
• In 10 Seconds, an AI Model Detects Cancerous Brain Tumors Often Missed During Surgery
• After Studying Mammograms, AI Can Detect More Breast Cancers Than Humans–With Fewer False Positives
• New AI Smartphone App Accurately Diagnoses Ear Infections and Prevents Unnecessary Antibiotic Use

The study which Dr. Keeling helped run involved 26 patients across five NHS trusts. Alerts given by the device of potential heart failure came between eight and 19 days in advance of a hospitalization, giving a mean prediction time of 13 days, which is enough for measures to be taken that could prevent hospitalizations.

Six hospitalizations occurred during the trial period, and the device accurately predicted 5 of them. 82% of patients decided to keep the device after it ended.

“This small study suggests a simple device could significantly improve outcomes for at-risk patients with heart failure by keeping them out of hospital,” said Dr. Bryan Williams. Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at the British Heart Foundation which was not involved with the study."

-via Good News Network, June 16, 2025

Things that will make your computer meaningfully faster:

• Replacing a HDD with an SSD
• Adding RAM
• Graphics cards if you're nasty
• Uninstalling resource hogs like Norton or McAfee (if you're using Windows then the built-in Windows Security is perfectly fine; if you're using a mac consider bitdefender as a free antivirus or eset as a less resource intensive paid option)
• Customizing what runs on startup for your computer

Things that are likely to make internet browsing specifically meaningfully faster:

• Installing firefox and setting it up with ublock origin
• adding the Auto Tab Discard extension to firefox to sleep unused tabs so that they aren't constantly reloading
• Closing some fucking tabs bud I'm sorry I know it hurts I'm guilty of this too

Things that will make your computer faster if you are actually having a problem:

• Running malwarebytes and shutting down any malicious programs it finds.
• Correcting disk utilization errors

Things that will make your computer superficially faster and may slightly improve your user experience temporarily:

• Clearing cache and cookies on your browser
• Restarting the computer
• Changing your screen resolution
• Uninstalling unused browser extensions

Things that do not actually make your computer faster:

• Deleting files
• Registry cleaners
• Defragging your drive
• Passively wishing that your computer was faster instead of actually just adding more fucking RAM.

This post is brought to you by the lady with the 7-year-old laptop that she refuses to leave overnight for us to run scans on or take apart so that we can put RAM in it and who insists on coming by for 30-minute visits hoping we can make her computer faster.

There are people saying "what does this mean" so:

Meaningfully Faster

• HDD means "hard disk drive" SSD means "solid state drive." An HDD has a spinning platter and a mechanical arm that has to wiggle back and forth very quickly to read the information written on the platter, while an SSD is a silicon chip that has the information "flashed" into it (basically it takes a snapshot of bits with electricity - it's unimportant how it works, just that it doesn't require mechanical movement to access data, and is therefore MUCH faster).
• Installing an SSD does *not* require an M.2 slot and does *not* require a ton of expertise on most computers. There are many SATA SSDs available and if you want to replace your HDD all that you need to do is clone your hard drive and look up how to install your new SSD on ifixit (link in a bit).
• Your storage drive (SSD or HDD) is the drive that stores the files and programs on your computer. People often confuse long-term drive storage with "memory" and when they get low-memory warnings they think they need to delete stored files. This is inaccurate because:
• RAM is Random Access Memory - if is basically the "working memory" of your computer, it keeps track of all the things that your computer does/is doing. For example: if you are working in your browser, the browser is not saving everything that you're doing to your desktop so everything that is going on in your browser is using RAM to remember what pages you've got open and what images are on them, etc. Same if you're working in any other program: if you're writing a word doc and you haven't saved it in a while, all the changes are being tracked by the RAM but are not yet saved on your storage drive. "Low Memory" doesn't mean you're out of room for your computer to hold onto files, it means your computer is low on memory to think about stuff. Because programs are written to use more and more memory as time passes (which is a good thing, for the most part, but causes frustrating problems for people with older devices) older computers will struggle to run modern programs with the amount of RAM the older computers have in them.
• RAM comes in different speeds, and the speed of your RAM does matter but if you get RAM that matches the speed of your installed RAM you should experience better speeds from your computer. Some computers have the RAM directly soldiered to the motherboard and cannot have RAM added (this is pretty much true of all macs. I do not recommend buying macs.) but if your computer DOES allow you to add RAM it is generally an easy process - check IFixIt.Com for instructions: just search the model number of your computer and look at the replacement guide for RAM and you will be able to see if you can replace your RAM and see the steps to follow along if you want to do that. There are a large number of tools to look up what RAM will work in your computer. Personally I like the Crucial RAM Configurator tool. Just look up your computer and it will recommend compatible RAM. You don't have to buy the Crucial RAM, you can use the Crucial RAM configurator to get the specs you need and then search for yourself by Size, Memory Technology, Speed, Format, and number of Pins.

• Graphics cards are for graphics processing and they're "if you're nasty" because adding a dedicated graphics card is kind of a big hurdle these days: computers are smaller inside than they used to be and graphics cards are big and they are also very expensive right now. Unless you are using a gaming laptop you likely cannot add a graphics card to your laptop, and unless you have at least a couple hundred dollars to spare you can't add a graphics card to your desktop either. But also they will only speed up a very specific subset of applications; if you don't do anything that requires a GPU to get shit done (video rendering, really complicated math, etc) then it isn't going to make your computer faster.
• Norton and McAfee run in the background of your computer at all times and can suck up a lot of valuable memory, especially if they decide to randomly start a scan or check back in with the mothership to make sure you've paid for another seven years. They are annoying and they can slow everything else down - McAfee in particular is notorious for this. Modern Windows Operating systems (10 and 11) have a lot of security features built in at baseline and Windows Defender is a perfectly functional whole-device antivirus for almost all users. It was never true that macs couldn't have software infections or couldn't be infected with malware, it's just that *people used to write fewer malicious softwares for mac( and NOW there are a lot more infections written for OSX *and* mac users often think they don't need antivirus. Buds. You do need antivirus. Since Bitdefender only has a free virus scanner for Mac, not antivirus, and Sophos Free is only good for a month, and Avast has recently sold customer data, try Avira.
• If you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on "task manager" you will find a list of applications that run on startup. Programs that run on startup are turned on and active every time you start your computer, regardless of whether you use the program or not. So, for instance, let's say you have an HP printer and there are drivers for the printer on your computer but you only print things maybe twice a year. If your HP Printer Print Utility is set to run on startup that means that every time you start your computer it wakes up and turns on this program, which slows down your startup time and takes processing power in the background. So just disable it on startup and only start the program when you need it. The only difference here is that it'll take a few seconds to start the utility when it's time to print. Things that I've got disabled on startup include: Microsoft Edge, Adobe, and Cortana.

Faster Browsing

• You should be using Firefox anyway because Firefox rules and in literally hundreds of tests performs as well or better than chrome. If someone says that firefox is ridiculously slow it is because they've either set up a really weird configuration, have had the install go wrong, or just don't understand what they're doing. But ASIDE from that you should use Firefox with Ublock Origin because Ublock Origin is an *amazing* adblocker that doesn't whitelist ads and lets you do things like manage cookies and block annoying popups and a bunch of other stuff. And as of 2023 it will be impossible to install Ublock Origin on Chrome so you may as well switch to Firefox now and live that ad-free life. Ad-blocked browsing speeds up your browser because your computer isn't spending extra energy on loading ads and less shit loading means less RAM utilization means faster computing.
• Auto Tab Discard is an extension that allows you to set tabs to sleep after an amount of time that you determine. You can customize your experience so that it doesn't sleep tabs with partially filled forms, or doesn't sleep tabs with media playing in them, or doesn't sleep a specific tab for a session, or doesn't ever sleep tabs from a specific website. Many people use OneTab, which basically turns your tabs into a bookmark list that opens the page when you click in OneTab, but I personally prefer Auto Tab Discard - neither of those are "better" than the other, it's just a question of what works for you.

Faster if you are having an actual problem

• Open tabs eat RAM. Your computer is expending memory thinking about what's on all of those pages and even if most of them are slept you probably have more awake tabs than you need.
• Malwarebytes has a free virus/malware scanning and removal tool that you can download and run to identify and remove malware or viruses that may be stealing your information and running background programs that are fucking up your speeds. If you think your computer might be slow because you might have a virus, go to malwarebytes, download the free version, run a scan, and follow the instructions that it gives you.
• Disk utilization errors happen for a number of reasons and they will all slow down your computer. Here are some of the reasons they happen and some ways to fix them. If you hare having a persistent disk usage error issue *DO NOT* replace your HDD with an SSD until it is resolved because these errors can destroy an SSD.

Superficially Faster

• Your browser cache and cookies are the things that your browser remembers between sessions: it might be logins for various sites or the logos of your homepage or a bunch of other stuff. If your browser is running super slow because you haven't cleared cache/cookies for a long time, doing this can help because it will basically make your browser forget about the cookies it has been carrying around for five years for a site you haven't logged into since four years and seven months ago. These are tiny pieces of data but they can add up over time which is why they will make your browsing experience faster if you haven't done it in years but won't make a difference if you clear your cookies and cache monthly. Doing this will log you out of all the sites you're logged into (which shouldn't be a huge deal, but you do need to be ready to log in a bunch, so you should HAVE A PASSWORD MANAGER TO MAKE THAT EASIER). This will make your browser run a bit faster, but if your computer is slow for non-browser reasons or if your cache/cookies have been cleared recently it will have no impact on your computer speeds.
• Restarting your computer will speed your computer up for a bit because it will shut down all the programs you had running and clear your computer's RAM of all the stuff it was remembering for as long as you had those programs open. This is, again, a superficial improvement, and if you have, say, restarted your computer three times today it is unlikely that restarting again will do anything for you. But yeah if it's been a couple weeks, friend, restart your computer it is tired and it wants to run patches and it needs to forget the twenty docs you're editing for a minute so it can get its head on straight.
• Reducing your screen resolution can make your computer run a bit faster if you're doing graphics-heavy stuff and have really shit built-in graphics support, but realistically all it is likely to do is make your computer look weird.
• Your browser extensions run on startup and cause your browser to use more RAM at baseline; you should be installing minimal browser extensions and uninstalling any that you don't need. If it's been a while since you checked your extensions go uninstall the unused ones right now and restart the browser and you may speed up a bit. But the majority of people in the world run pretty minimal extensions so this is unlikely to fix most people's problems.

Will not make your computer faster

• Unless your storage drive is within 10% of its maximum capacity it is in no way fucking up your speed. If it is within 10% of capacity go delete whatever's in your downloads folder, clear out your temp files, and empty your recycle bin. If that doesn't take care of it, use a backup drive or a thumb drive and copy off the photos, videos, and music you don't use very often, and only keep what you're using on your computer. If you've got an SSD having too little storage available can fuck with the lifespan, so aim to keep at least 10% free.
• Registry cleaners are supposed to clean your computer's registry; basically they're supposed to look at the index of all the stuff your computer knows and delete redundant or outdated entries on the index. However it has been literal decades since a registry cleaner would be able to meaningfully improve performance while they can still absolutely fuck your computer up bad enough that it needs a reinstall and a lot of them are just straight up malware, some of them are actual for-realsies ransomware, a bunch of them sell your data, and you don't need ANY of them. If you don't know enough to fuck around with your registry by hand you shouldn't trust some random ass software that has a history of data breaches and virus infections associated with it. Fuck all registry cleaners.
• Manual drive defragging has been obsolete on Windows Machines since Windows 7 shipped with an automatic defragging utility in 2011. In the past when you saved a file to a hard drive it might save that file in a bunch of little pieces scattered all over the platter, so accessing that file meant accessing all the *fragments* of that file and "defragging" meant taking some time every once in a while to put files together into whole files instead of fragments. But then eleven years ago Windows made that process automatic, so unless you have *seriously* fucked up your computer somehow it shouldn't be an issue, and if it is an issue you can run a defrag and then make sure automatic defragging is enabled. But that whole conversation is probably moot since SSDs don't need to be defragmented (and defragging them actually adds to the device wear). So basically if your computer actually DOES need a defrag it is probably more fucked than you initially thought and unless that is the case then it is already defragging so doing an additional defrag won't make anything faster and/or might cause extra wear to an SSD.

If you are using an older computer and it is tortuously slow and you can't upgrade the RAM or swap in an SSD but you *can* install software, I would strongly recommend installing Linux.

The vast majority of people these days use computers primarily for web browsing and occasionally use an office suite. Most people don't even store their music or photos on their computers these days. If your computer is basically an internet machine that you don't use for anything other than browsing and basic word processing/spreadsheets, then there is no reason not to switch to Linux.

I would recommend installing Linux Lite, which is a well-supported, widely-used distro that most computers built within the last twenty years should be able to run. It's called "Lite" because it is an operating system that requires minimal processing, storage, and memory to run.

To do this you will need:

• A 4GB USB stick or a blank DVD to create installation media
• An internet connection to download the software
• Another computer or phone that you can use to follow the instructions, or a printed/written copy of the installation guide
• A computer on which to install Linux. Installing Linux as the sole operating system on this computer (which is my recommendation here) will mean that everything else on the computer is deleted. Save all of your files/movies/music/etc. to a backup drive or another computer before you install Linux, because installing a new OS will delete literally everything on the computer and make it impossible to get back.

Here is where you can download Linux Lite.

Here is the Linux Lite help manual, I've linked you directly to the step-by-step installation guide. If you get to a step that you don't understand, search the terms that you're unfamiliar with phrased as questions like "why do I need an ISO to install linux?" or "how do I enter UEFI BIOS on my version of Windows?"

Follow the instructions for installing Linux Lite, and then you can install software on your new OS. Linux Lite comes bundled with Libre Office, which is a free office suite like Microsoft Office that has programs similar to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. It installs with Chrome, so I would recommend installing Firefox and uninstalling Chrome as soon as you're able to get on the internet.

After that you can pick and choose from a wide variety of linux-compatible software and you can use your computer as a regular computer. I'd say that it's probably a good idea to be picky about what software you install, and to try to keep your computer as lean as possible if you're trying to get a longer life out of an old device.

There are a lot of people in the notes who are saying "my computer can't even load four tabs" or "my computer can't even open the software I need to do this" and if that is your computer I think you've pretty much got nothing to lose from installing Linux. If your computer is essentially unusable in Windows then it's probably not going to be *less* functional in Linux, unless you're keeping the computer the way that it is for some very specific software you're using.

A lot of people think that they can't uses Linux because it's entirely in the command line or doesn't have a graphic interface or something, but most linux distros only look about as different to users as windows does to mac or vice versa.

This is what the Linux Lite default desktop looks like:

It's got a start menu and a task bar and folders on the desktop, same as any other computer. It's very easy to use and has the help manual installed right there as soon as you're up and running so that you can troubleshoot your way through any issues.

Really, seriously: if your computer is slow as fuck and all you use it for is web browsing, this will make your computing experience significantly better without having to buy anything but a thumb drive.

People are reblogging just the first section of this post and asking what these things mean, so I'm reblogging this in hopes that they'll see the comprehensive update in the notes.

I want everyone reading this to know that importing bookmarks from any other browser to firefox is a very simple process that will take just a few minutes. Here are some step-by-step instructions from Mozilla on how to import your bookmarks: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-data-another-browser

Hey there, if you like this post you might like it even more as an organized page on my website that can be easily printed into a PDF and shared with people without having to send them to a tumblr link and a weird thread to get the information.

The page is a little more in-depth and technical and has a bit more info on troubleshooting and diagnostics.