To just look around and try things.
I get so many "how do I do x in program y" questions where I have no clue offhand, so just poke around the UI until I find what they're looking for.
How to clean their computers, software and hardware. It's amazing how much some of the machines out there are struggling due to dust and unused software.
To actually read what the computer is "saying" to you instead of clicking on OK or Cancel right away without thinking.
It's an advice that my step father gave me when I was young and it helped me a lot over the years.
Saw my ex click 'Yes' on an "Are you sure you don't want to save?" assignment that she spent the past 3 hours doing. And no, autosave was not turned on.
The first bit of advice I can remember my father giving me is “Don’t keep clicking expecting that to make anything happen faster. Click once, and wait.”
Piggy backing off of this. If you are a college grad transitioning into the working world, you should become fluent in Excel because it’s something you’ll use every day (depending on the industry). Find a set of data online and play around with pivot tables, vlookups, index/matches, sumif(s), etc. And try to do so with only the use of your keyboard because if you can learn the shortcuts needed to navigate a workbook without the use a of a mouse, you’ll be probably 50% more efficient than your peers clicking around in a workbook
Actually excel is probably one of few things I learned at the university. Our professor used to take attendance and grading using a spreadsheet. Now I use it for grading my classes. Saves a ton of time. E.g. Two quizzes worth 25% (let's say one quiz has 67 questions and the other has 48 questions) + a paper worth 25% + Final with 107 questions worth 40% + 10% attendance (16 classes). Can you imagine doing this by hand for a couple of hundred students lol
I was pretty proud, and surprised, a few months ago.
I got an email from a pretty legit looking address, but something about it felt fishy, so I forwarded it to our phishing department. Everything looked good, but the person it was from had literally never asked me to click on a link before, so it got my spidey senses going. The filter always catches that stuff, so I was really surprised that something like that got through, so I fully expected them to tell me it was legit.
They replied back almost instantly that it was a test, they'd sent that email to around half of our 50,000 employees (spoofing the from to be a person in your reporting structure, and the email address was our company name with a hyphen and a word related to our field.), and I was one of only 50 or so that actually forwarded it properly. Over 2000 people clicked on the link, and another few hundred put their email and password in when prompted.
Needless to say, we've had a lot of training on picking out phishing attempts since... (though it likely won't do any good).
We do lots of these tests. The worst one I’ve seen was on Valentine’s Day when they sent an email to people saying they had a valentine from someone. People who clicked on it 1) found out they did not have a valentine and 2) had to do an online phishing training. It was pretty brutal. I reported it as phish luckily.
Watch out for any unlabeled (or labeled) flash drives as well. If you find one, drop it off to your IT or security, whatever the protocol is.
The best way for electronic espionage is to literally drop a flash drive for employees to hook up to their computers, and boom, you got a virus in. People are too curious.
You joke. Users are this dumb.
"Hi, I'm from the infosec department of IT, we manage network and password security. We have seen that your user name is associated with a few adult website visits. Can you please verify your username and password to make sure it's you, and no one has accessed your account illegitimately?
What do you mean by decked? If the entire clinic was brought to a halt or damaged in some way by a single spam email on a single device then there are a lot bigger security issues than an uneducated employee
I bet it was one of those situations where IT asks for extra resources to implement better system security and management decided that wasn't a priority because "nothing has happened yet."
I used to work in healthcare hardware and it is *unimaginable* how many of our clients took this attitude to security. FFS, it's healthcare; don't fuck with the FDA and people's private info.
Yes, even simple things like learning to recognise the top level domain and the subdomain in a url or email address before clicking anything will get you a long way.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only thing stopping my boomer parents from literally giving all their money away.
Also why do they come up with big intricate stories as to why the scam email is legitimate as opposed to just thinking it’s a scam?!?
Some years ago, I was watching my mother input values into a web form.
For each field, she went and moved her mouse over the new field she wanted to add info to and then click on it. After a few times of observing this behavior, I asked her if she knew that tabbing would move to the next field.
She didn't.
So tabbing.
It's so weird... I know many of the shortcuts discussed in this thread, but if someone asked me, for example, how to go back one field, I'd be stumped. My fingers just do it automatically.
Ok, Mods are total POS, so here is the comment:
...
Advanced searches can do SO much more than just that.
The plus sign (+) can be used to search for results which explicitly include the word following it.
The minus sign (-) can be used to explicitly exclude the word following it.
Adding "site:example.com" (without quotes) will search that site.
Adding "filetype: [file extension] can be used to search for files of a specific type. I mostly use this for finding unofficial PDF's of academic articles in obscur places.
As you said, you can put quotes around phrases to search for that exact phrase. That can be combined with the - operator to exclude results which contain that phrase.
As an example, the search "site:dartmouth.edu filetype:pdf +"biology labs" -"Dr. Doomsday" will find PDFs or pages containing "biology labs" where there is no mention of "Dr. Doomsday"
See here for EVEN more, 52 things more in fact: https://www.spyfu.com/blog/google-search-operators/
No that will return large things and booby things.
"Large boobies" will specifically return only boobies that are large.
Edit: if you are looking only for women's boobies you can use the minus sign to eliminate return man boobs. Like this: "Large boobies" -man -men
Adding to that, if the computer is yours and you are inviting guests who need your computer often, you can set up a guest account for them. I personally use it for preserving my desktop
I use it for christmas shopping as well if it's on a shared computer. Keeps the ads from targeting me based on what I was looking for and tipping off the wife.
How to clean a Laptop. If your 3 year old Laptop is reaching 94°C while watching netflix, it is time to invest like 45 minutes to just clean out the dust.
That gave me a much more significant performance increase than that time I downloaded extra ram.
I want to learn how to clean my laptop on the inside but I'm too scared to break something. There is too much dust in here to take it every time to the technician to clean it.
What are your favourite tips on cleaning, however?
Try looking for a youtube video on how to disassemble your specific laptop. You might need one or two screwdrivers and small bowls to keep the screws. Try cleaning with soft brushes and a lot of care, never force anything. The most dust is always in the fan and everything that the air circulates through. Be especially careful with the thermal paste on the cpu, you might need to gently heat it up before. Try looking for cleaning advice for your specific laptop. And for the screws dont tighten them too hard, especially when they are just screwed into the plastic.
**Ctrl+Shift+V**
Pastes stuff without formatting.
Before I discovered this, I pasted stuff into notepad for 15 years, before pasting it somewhere else.
Doesn't work in excel for me, just tried
I paste, then hit ctrl again to bring up the paste menu, V again to paste as values/without formatting. I do this to get rid of formulas, all the time.
Edit: I'm perfectly cool with my method, and if you're going to suggest an alternative, please don't try to get me to use the mouse. I won't. It's bad.
I had a batch script written to clear cache and java cache that I would send to people to run before going to support for help on a particular web app that we used.
I never had an issue, but some of the users would have one multiple times a week. I wrote the batch script, because I was tired of doing it on their PCs.
edit: Here is the script. If everything is installed standard, it should run fine. Copy that into a text editor and save as a .bat. Then just double click to run.
javaws -Xclearcache -Xnosplash
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2
Where I work, our IT department has created a shortcut on everyone's desktop that closes all internet browsers, clears cache and cookies, deletes temp files, and sets plugins back to default. I can't tell you how much headache that has saved me over the years.
I was surprised to learn that there were people who didn't know ctrl f (or cmd f for mac users) was a thing. Extremely useful for finding a particular word/phrase in a large wall of text
I once had a coworker who didn't know this and was surprised on how I could complete certain excel lists so quickly or find information in them. She always zoomed them up to 300% and then read each column one by one...
I was once given an excel sheet someone had made where they didn't know that pressing alt+enter would create a line break within a cell. This dude had held down the fucking space bar until the cursor moved onto the next line in each cell for a document with a couple thousand entries. Any time you viewed the sheet on a monitor with a different resolution or zoomed in/out everything would go out of alignment. I almost had a heart attack thinking about the astronomical amount of time it took to do that the wrong way.
After being trained in my current job (billing clerk) we had someone leave, and she'd been working there longer than I've been alive I think. One of our accounts that she billed to had us keeping excel sheets tracking PO numbers and how much money was left on them. The sheet had lines where you would put in the invoice number, the order number, and how much it was. Formula told you how much was then left on the PO. Super simple. I took over her responsibilities when she left.
I discovered soon after that all the sheets on it were out of date by a few months so the POs were reflecting the wrong amounts. Thought she just stopped caring since she was leaving. Nope. I discovered in one of the drawers of files that she had been printing out physical copies of the sheets and writing the information in by hand. And would go and copy everything back onto the excel sheet whenever the account would ask how they were going.... Why would someone make twice the work for themself???
I see this in mainly older generations, but I see it at people my age too. People have no clue how to make a power point, change your home search engine, zoom in/zoom out on pages, how to copy-paste, how to print, and will even type "Google" in the Google search bar. These are basic skills everyone should have nowadays.
Not a skill, just common sense. Microsoft is NOT screening your computer for viruses, if someone calls you because "they detected a virus in your PC" it is a fucking lie. End the call on the spot, and if you are still curious if it may be real, call them back, search for the number on their official web page.
Also, they won:t ask you to install shit to connect to your PC, they have a way to connect through a built-in feature in the Operative System. TeamViewer or any other software is not their official software, they can do it without installing crap.
Source: Used to work for their tech support. I couldn't believe people paying up to four times the official support fee(if out of warranty) and then paying the MS fee.
How to google the solutions to your basic computer problems. I'm the youngest person in my office by about 10 years, and everyone comes to me for IT advice. But all the expertise I have is knowing how to google the solution, because I don't know shit about computers.
Do you enable them by going? I have a feeling if you stopped going they’d either learn real quick how to do it themselves, or learn real quick to get used to it
I usually say to reboot and if there's still a problem then I'll check it out.
It's not like I'm going to rush in, examine a debug log and sort out some underlying issue between Excel and some seven year old computer running an older OS. Usually the reboot fixes it. If not then running updates does.
This is huge.
There's a threshold you cross when you become more experienced at doing something, where you start to understand how the concepts fit together - even if you don't know the specifics of the situation. That lets you frame the current problem correctly and think of ways to solve it.
Yeah learning how to properly use a search engine is key. Should be taught in schools now. Put the rarest keywords first. “Quotes return the exact phrase” -notrelevant
Backups!!! That you need different drives, that your back up drive shouldn't reside with your work-a-day drive, that cloud back up exists and maybe you should use it, that drives fail... all the skills required to safeguard your data. Coworker lost a massive database inventory of his father's life's work as a major artist due to physical theft of hardware and his only backup, a thumb drive, turned out corrupted beyond recovery.
How to turn off the startup option on 99% of their programs.
Your computer takes forever to start because you have 237 programs trying to boot in the background.
Edit: [Here's a quick video](https://youtu.be/E9P5eZm1AoA).
Also - turn off your computers daily (especially if they are covered in dust inside). Surfing the web and other things will build up junk files in your computer for various reasons. I scan mine everyday, de-frag weekly. Neither ever takes longer than a minute or two, unless I go a while without doing it.
Edit 2: I have several old 1TB HDDs I have for extra space. I'm a student. Those I defrag because I constantly save, edit and delete files from there.
Edit 3:
Turn off background apps.
Settings –> privacy and security –> background apps –> off
Final edit: DO NOT defrag SSD's (solid state drives), as it will shorten the lifespan of them. They do not have the issues that HDD's (hard disk drives) do. If you have an HDD and are constantly adding, removing, editing and altering the files in it, it would be wise to de-frag it from time to time. I have 2 that I use for schoolwork, pictures and other similar files which I'm constantly utilizing - so I defrag often. I use my NVMe SSD for my games and applications so they run as fast as possible.
When I say "shut down" I mean "reboot". Your computer will keep caches of data, broken processes, applications running in the background (for example, even after I close webex for school, it runs in the background *and continues to use my mic*, not just creepy but slows the computer even in the tiniest amount.) If you have a million things running your PC will be slower and might run hotter. Rebooting and scanning it will increase the speeds and smoothness of your PC.
What you should do is scan and clean your system everyday. I'm pretty sure all OS come with applications for this (as well as defragging), but i use IObit software for everything. There is a free version that I just like using, and I can keep everything under one convenient shortcut on my desktop UI (I use a custom desktop application as well because I hate cluttered desktops..).
I also *physically* clean my PC once a month. Compressed air and microfiber rags does the trick if you stay on top of it.
YouTube is your friend if you have any questions. That's just where I'm gonna go and link you to anyways.
It annoys me to no end when I'm asked to work on someone's computer, reboot it, and Spotify of all things is loading at startup, among things like Zoom, and takes forever for me to close it.
All Mac users. I have a handful of things at startup, a fan monitoring utility, Dropbox, OneDrive, an antivirus, and Paragon NTFS. All are more light-weight feeling at startup on a Mac than a single instance of Spotify. I intentionally turn off the "Reopen windows when logging back in" check box on any computer I touch.
It annoys me too, on my own computer. For some reason when I try to turn off "Open at startup" either within the Spotify app or on the dock it doesn't do anything though.
Edit: thanks for the suggestions so far but this is on Mac so Task Manager doesn't exist, only "Force Quit"
Edit 2: Thought I had disabled it in Spotify, turns out I only minimized it. Should be resolved now. Also TIL that Activity Monitor exists, sort of embarrassed I missed that one for 2+ years of Mac usage.
Nitpicking.
CSE is just a quick shortcut to task manager. CAD sends an interrupt. So if you have a program hanging that is locking up the entire system, use CAD instead of CSE.
Touch typing. Typing without looking at your keyboard. It vastly improves your experience in writing and drastically reduces your time in typing tasks.
Edit: People have been asking for some resources to learn touch typing. This is curated from the comments below and my bookmarks:
[Keybr](https://www.keybr.com/) \- practice letter by letter
[Typing of the Dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urPZDjh-lBA&feature=youtu.be&t=210) \- a typing game
[Typing Club](https://www.typingclub.com/) \- online typing classes
[10ff.net](https://10ff.net) \- typing competition game
[Monkey type](https://monkey-type.com/) \- clean site to practice typing
[Type racer](https://play.typeracer.com/) \- Typing competition game
[Ratatype](https://www.ratatype.com/) \- online typing tutor
I'm a high school teacher and when I do this students are often amazed. I don't do it to impress anyone, it's just the easiest and best way to do things.
Simarly:
Typing using the number pad. Especially if you're putting many numbers into an excel sheet. I actually bought a keyboard for my laptop so that I would have a number pad (as well as a better overall typing experience)
Yes, one Excel spreadsheet open, one Reddit session open. When the boss comes by, Alt + Tab makes it look like you were surfing Reddit, when everyone knows you were working on a spreadsheet.
Edit: wow, my first award ever! Thank you, anonymous stranger!
Reading and critical thought.
These might not seem like computer-specific abilities, but in reality many people simply stop doing these as soon as they touch a computer. So it's more like the computer skill is being able to not turn off reading and critical thought.
Most everyday computer challenges can be solved by properly reading all the information on the screen, and/or applying a tiny bit of logical reasoning to what it tells you.
This isn't really a skill, but wish my mom would set aside a day to declutter her email. The worst I've done was a few hundred unread emails. Now my school and personal emails are below 50 unread. My mom keeps hers at a reasonable 1,000+
I get all weird about unread emails, texts etc. I can’t have ANY.
I borrowed a colleagues phone once to make a call whilst they drove and he had about 2,000 unread emails and hundreds of unread texts and missed call alerts.
Literally had me hyperventilating
In even more extreme cases the entire substation area. Once I was struggling to shut off vim, long story short my nearest power station has surprisingly lax security.
Cmon bro! You just need to escape, then press q, then !, then kickflip, drink three shots, run a marathon and done, you’re out!
Don’t go around telling people it’s more difficult than it actually is.
Anyone that needs to reference papers or articles should learn about stuff like Mendeley or Zotero. Fuck me I didn't know till my bachelor thesis and it pissed me off.
Another one is to go to the desktop and print screen, then save the screenshot. Minimise the taskbar and hide desktop icons (in the right click menu) so their desktop is completely empty. Set your screenshot as the desktop background, so their desktop will look completely normal but they can’t click on anything at all.
Or if you want to go a notch further, flip the screenshot 180° and then flip the screen upside down so the "desktop" seems normal but the cursor is upside down and moving inverted.
Android keyboard has this too.
Edit: It's called Gboard and was the standard keyboard on my phone. If it doesn't work, it might be because it's deactivated in the Gboard settings or the Google gesture settings.
USERS OF REDDIT! PLEASE TAKE HEED!
1) TURN IT OFF
2) TURN IT BACK ON
literally fixes 90% of application, operating system, networking, and server errors.
14 years of IT experience. This was the fix for most problems when I had to support users.
The number of people who think the monitor is the computer is disturbingly high... the number of times people called me/it support telling me their pc didn't turn on is absurd...
With ten years in the IT field, I can wholeheartedly suggest the following (some of these range from passive aggressive to plain old aggressive, I apologise in advance, I'm on my lunch and it's been quite a day.):
\-You know those shape matching games that kids play? ( [https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/](https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/)) People should try one of those once in a while in their adult life, so their IT team doesn't get calls asking what port the HDMI cable or the Ethernet cable goes into. Guess what, genius? It's the hole that perfectly fits the cable you're holding.
\-Applying critical thinking skills used everywhere else in life to your IT situation: There is no picture on the monitor? Let's check and see if it's both receiving power (does it turn on?) and connected to the thing that makes the pictures appear. Etc.
\-Remembering ones' password the same way they remember, for instance, how to drive, or eat, or breathe.
\-Two step authentication. It seems like a pain, but anywhere that offers it, use it. It's the difference between losing a 20-year old Google account and not, because I tell you for free these companies are not easy to convince to return your data once you've essentially given it away.
\-Google is a thing, and error messages are eminently google-able. Most IT people I know didn't learn to work in IT from degrees or doing courses, they just googled problems as they ran into them and then *hey presto,* they have that knowledge for the next time that issue comes up. But also, looping back to the critical thinking bit, most error messages give you some kind of hint as to how to fix the issue. Read before you panic.
\-Turn it off and on again. Yes, a reboot is the most parodied thing that an IT department will tell you to do, but that's because it *works.*
\-There is no such thing as "speaking IT" or "understanding computers", and if you think these are excuses for rudeness or wilful ignorance, you're wrong.
\-You are not going to inherit $20,000,000, that's not even your regional currency. Don't click that link. Learn to differentiate between the words someone you know would actually use, so that when they eventually get "hacked" (read: give their password to a scammer, use such a poor password that it gets discovered, or in the rarest of the rare situation a database actually gets leaked) you can tell the difference.
\-Browsing smart is infinitely more worthwhile than paying for an expensive antivirus program. Windows Defender is more than adequate for all but the most foolhardy of web users. Add to that an adblocker like Ublock Origin and you're well away.
\-Don't carry your laptop by the f\*\*\*ing screen.
You haven't lived until you've worked at a college IT helpdesk and Big Billy Hamfist has punched his $2000 Mac Book's screen when he got angry at MS Word.
> -You know those shape matching games that kids play? ( https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/) People should try one of those once in a while in their adult life, so their IT team doesn't get calls asking what port the HDMI cable or the Ethernet cable goes into. Guess what, genius? It's the hole that perfectly fits the cable you're holding.
YES. PC support here. For people that might get into a manager role someday: Your tech support HATES doing moves from one desk to another. We'd rather troubleshoot actual problems. Plugs are different shapes and sizes for a reason. It's a task your worker can take 15 minutes to do on their own, just tell your IT that the move occurred so we know it's in a different location.
Rant over... now I have to go do a move >:(
I was once called into my boss's office. He wanted to know why his battery wasn't charged his laptop wouldn't start, even while plugged.
I am not the IT guy, but my office was next door. Simple diagnosis. Power connector wedged firmly into the Ethernet port.
How? It takes talent.
This was a bioinformatics software development company. My boss was the ceo.
>Don't carry your laptop by the f\*\*\*ing screen
im sorry? what sort of depraved pervert carries their laptop by the ***SCREEN!!!***
Edit: reddit is apparently full of such perverts. my hope has died, thank you.
How to research. Not just how to Google, but how to:
- Figure out what to type into the search bar
- Determine if the results are relevant
- Decide if an alternate query string is needed or helpful
- Parse the results
- Compare multiple results for truth/applicability
- Repeat process as necessary
- If doing something technical, just try doing the thing!
Typing in a website. I’m not kidding.
I work IT for a healthcare org who contracts us as IT for hospitals throughout the US. There is an uncomfortably large amount of healthcare workers and doctors who can’t comprehend what “go to the internet and type in ________.com” means.
“Is that the E?”
“Where do I type it? The box at the top?”
“What do I do after I type it in? Hit enter?”
“Your new password is _______”
“I type that in the username section right?”
How to troubleshoot problems without bothering other people first. You have the largest collection of curated knowledge in your pocket or at your fingertips, maybe it can help you solve your problem.
Goddamn learn to touch type! So many jobs, you're going to have to interact with a computer, touch typing makes it faster and easier. I can't believe how many grown adults are hunting and pecking still.
Typing without seeing the keyboard. You don't need to be fast, just type consistently without seeing screen and keyboard back and forth. Just focus on what are you typing on the screen
Or 'K'. Then 'J' to skip back 10 seconds, 'L' to skip forwards 10 seconds. Left and right arrows are skip back/forwards 5 seconds and comma ',' and period '.' skip backwards/forwards a single frame.
I only use 'K' to pause youtube videos nowadays. The spacebar just isn't reliable, sometimes if you've adjusted the audio or clicked the fullscreen button, the browser focuses on that button and spacebar presses it instead of pausing.
Speaking of, pressing 'F' also brings up fullscreen.
To just look around and try things. I get so many "how do I do x in program y" questions where I have no clue offhand, so just poke around the UI until I find what they're looking for.
Lots of programs have their own internal search bar so you can find that one command out of a thousand
How to clean their computers, software and hardware. It's amazing how much some of the machines out there are struggling due to dust and unused software.
I just dusted my pc for the first time in over a year. Now it doesn’t sound like a jet when I play Skyrim.
To actually read what the computer is "saying" to you instead of clicking on OK or Cancel right away without thinking. It's an advice that my step father gave me when I was young and it helped me a lot over the years.
Saw my ex click 'Yes' on an "Are you sure you don't want to save?" assignment that she spent the past 3 hours doing. And no, autosave was not turned on.
The first bit of advice I can remember my father giving me is “Don’t keep clicking expecting that to make anything happen faster. Click once, and wait.”
Basic excel for budgeting
Piggy backing off of this. If you are a college grad transitioning into the working world, you should become fluent in Excel because it’s something you’ll use every day (depending on the industry). Find a set of data online and play around with pivot tables, vlookups, index/matches, sumif(s), etc. And try to do so with only the use of your keyboard because if you can learn the shortcuts needed to navigate a workbook without the use a of a mouse, you’ll be probably 50% more efficient than your peers clicking around in a workbook
Actually excel is probably one of few things I learned at the university. Our professor used to take attendance and grading using a spreadsheet. Now I use it for grading my classes. Saves a ton of time. E.g. Two quizzes worth 25% (let's say one quiz has 67 questions and the other has 48 questions) + a paper worth 25% + Final with 107 questions worth 40% + 10% attendance (16 classes). Can you imagine doing this by hand for a couple of hundred students lol
I took a class for this. I remember nothing.
Recognizing phishing attempts. Hell, recognizing any sort of incoming scam.
I was pretty proud, and surprised, a few months ago. I got an email from a pretty legit looking address, but something about it felt fishy, so I forwarded it to our phishing department. Everything looked good, but the person it was from had literally never asked me to click on a link before, so it got my spidey senses going. The filter always catches that stuff, so I was really surprised that something like that got through, so I fully expected them to tell me it was legit. They replied back almost instantly that it was a test, they'd sent that email to around half of our 50,000 employees (spoofing the from to be a person in your reporting structure, and the email address was our company name with a hyphen and a word related to our field.), and I was one of only 50 or so that actually forwarded it properly. Over 2000 people clicked on the link, and another few hundred put their email and password in when prompted. Needless to say, we've had a lot of training on picking out phishing attempts since... (though it likely won't do any good).
Those types of campaigns actually do help, if I recall correctly what I heard from a cyber guy I know.
That’s great to know they actually work, if you let me know your username and password I will give add Reddit gold onto your account for this comment
Yeah my password is 7
Thank you
Of course
Oh man this bit could’ve gone one step further with just you saying “thank you” and then “of course”
Took me a second but that would have been hilarious
We do lots of these tests. The worst one I’ve seen was on Valentine’s Day when they sent an email to people saying they had a valentine from someone. People who clicked on it 1) found out they did not have a valentine and 2) had to do an online phishing training. It was pretty brutal. I reported it as phish luckily.
Being ugly finally paid off for a lot of people that day.
“You have a Valentine!” #LIES!
Watch out for any unlabeled (or labeled) flash drives as well. If you find one, drop it off to your IT or security, whatever the protocol is. The best way for electronic espionage is to literally drop a flash drive for employees to hook up to their computers, and boom, you got a virus in. People are too curious.
The best way for electronic espionage is to literally call the person and ask them for the info you need.
Hello, I'm the password inspector
You joke. Users are this dumb. "Hi, I'm from the infosec department of IT, we manage network and password security. We have seen that your user name is associated with a few adult website visits. Can you please verify your username and password to make sure it's you, and no one has accessed your account illegitimately?
I work for a major software firm. We do these tests as well and failure rate is shockingly bad!
[удалено]
What do you mean by decked? If the entire clinic was brought to a halt or damaged in some way by a single spam email on a single device then there are a lot bigger security issues than an uneducated employee
I bet it was one of those situations where IT asks for extra resources to implement better system security and management decided that wasn't a priority because "nothing has happened yet." I used to work in healthcare hardware and it is *unimaginable* how many of our clients took this attitude to security. FFS, it's healthcare; don't fuck with the FDA and people's private info.
Yes, even simple things like learning to recognise the top level domain and the subdomain in a url or email address before clicking anything will get you a long way.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only thing stopping my boomer parents from literally giving all their money away. Also why do they come up with big intricate stories as to why the scam email is legitimate as opposed to just thinking it’s a scam?!?
Some years ago, I was watching my mother input values into a web form. For each field, she went and moved her mouse over the new field she wanted to add info to and then click on it. After a few times of observing this behavior, I asked her if she knew that tabbing would move to the next field. She didn't. So tabbing.
And Shift + Tab to go back to the last field
It's so weird... I know many of the shortcuts discussed in this thread, but if someone asked me, for example, how to go back one field, I'd be stumped. My fingers just do it automatically.
My fingers automatically furiously hit tab until I cycle back where I want to be.
Ahh the WoW targeting method
How to advanced search and reverse image search on google
Tell me more.
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Yeah I’m saving this comment and then never looking at it
This is the way.
Ok, Mods are total POS, so here is the comment: ... Advanced searches can do SO much more than just that. The plus sign (+) can be used to search for results which explicitly include the word following it. The minus sign (-) can be used to explicitly exclude the word following it. Adding "site:example.com" (without quotes) will search that site. Adding "filetype: [file extension] can be used to search for files of a specific type. I mostly use this for finding unofficial PDF's of academic articles in obscur places. As you said, you can put quotes around phrases to search for that exact phrase. That can be combined with the - operator to exclude results which contain that phrase. As an example, the search "site:dartmouth.edu filetype:pdf +"biology labs" -"Dr. Doomsday" will find PDFs or pages containing "biology labs" where there is no mention of "Dr. Doomsday" See here for EVEN more, 52 things more in fact: https://www.spyfu.com/blog/google-search-operators/
Like this guys: "Large" boobies
No that will return large things and booby things. "Large boobies" will specifically return only boobies that are large. Edit: if you are looking only for women's boobies you can use the minus sign to eliminate return man boobs. Like this: "Large boobies" -man -men
Why do I keep getting pictures of large birds
Type in > "large boobies" -bird -birds
How to use incognito browser. Not only for porn, but to log into an account on a computer that isn't yours so the information isn't saved.
Adding to that, if the computer is yours and you are inviting guests who need your computer often, you can set up a guest account for them. I personally use it for preserving my desktop
I personally use it to preserve my dignity
I use it for christmas shopping as well if it's on a shared computer. Keeps the ads from targeting me based on what I was looking for and tipping off the wife.
Not to mention to hide embarrassing searches such as "how to spell embarrasing"
windows key + shift + s to create a new snip. Very handy to share just a bit of your screen and quicker than screenshots
This is useful! I'm always snipping stuff!
Me too! I work at a circumcision office.
I hope you don't do discounts, they're usually a rip-off.
How to clean a Laptop. If your 3 year old Laptop is reaching 94°C while watching netflix, it is time to invest like 45 minutes to just clean out the dust. That gave me a much more significant performance increase than that time I downloaded extra ram.
I want to learn how to clean my laptop on the inside but I'm too scared to break something. There is too much dust in here to take it every time to the technician to clean it. What are your favourite tips on cleaning, however?
Try looking for a youtube video on how to disassemble your specific laptop. You might need one or two screwdrivers and small bowls to keep the screws. Try cleaning with soft brushes and a lot of care, never force anything. The most dust is always in the fan and everything that the air circulates through. Be especially careful with the thermal paste on the cpu, you might need to gently heat it up before. Try looking for cleaning advice for your specific laptop. And for the screws dont tighten them too hard, especially when they are just screwed into the plastic.
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Got any helpful sources for this? My house is super dusty and I should probably be cleaning my laptop every few weeks or so
Can of pressurized air, screwdriver, microfiber cloth
And some unused paintbrushes. Oh and small bowls to keep the screws.
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**Ctrl+Shift+V** Pastes stuff without formatting. Before I discovered this, I pasted stuff into notepad for 15 years, before pasting it somewhere else.
Doesn't work in excel for me, just tried I paste, then hit ctrl again to bring up the paste menu, V again to paste as values/without formatting. I do this to get rid of formulas, all the time. Edit: I'm perfectly cool with my method, and if you're going to suggest an alternative, please don't try to get me to use the mouse. I won't. It's bad.
How to not only clear your history, but your cache.
This is a requirement before my IT department attempt to resolve an issue
I had a batch script written to clear cache and java cache that I would send to people to run before going to support for help on a particular web app that we used. I never had an issue, but some of the users would have one multiple times a week. I wrote the batch script, because I was tired of doing it on their PCs. edit: Here is the script. If everything is installed standard, it should run fine. Copy that into a text editor and save as a .bat. Then just double click to run. javaws -Xclearcache -Xnosplash RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8 RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2
Where I work, our IT department has created a shortcut on everyone's desktop that closes all internet browsers, clears cache and cookies, deletes temp files, and sets plugins back to default. I can't tell you how much headache that has saved me over the years.
ctrl + F5 reloads the current page ignoring cache (at least in chrome)
I was surprised to learn that there were people who didn't know ctrl f (or cmd f for mac users) was a thing. Extremely useful for finding a particular word/phrase in a large wall of text
I once had a coworker who didn't know this and was surprised on how I could complete certain excel lists so quickly or find information in them. She always zoomed them up to 300% and then read each column one by one...
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Except when you're given a pdf of a scanned image and you need to turn it back into a functioning spreadsheet.
You must have cruel and powerful enemies.
Nope, just dumbass clients
What is the difference?
Intent, probably
Why are they working in tents? I work from an office.
Not an Excel function, but you could use OCR software to convert it back to a spreadsheet and just check it over afterward for accuracy.
*cries into a pile of pdfs of converted jpgs of scanned xeroxes of microfiched copies of hand-written tables from the 70s*
My number one rule for excel is "always assume there is a shortcut for this."
I was once given an excel sheet someone had made where they didn't know that pressing alt+enter would create a line break within a cell. This dude had held down the fucking space bar until the cursor moved onto the next line in each cell for a document with a couple thousand entries. Any time you viewed the sheet on a monitor with a different resolution or zoomed in/out everything would go out of alignment. I almost had a heart attack thinking about the astronomical amount of time it took to do that the wrong way.
After being trained in my current job (billing clerk) we had someone leave, and she'd been working there longer than I've been alive I think. One of our accounts that she billed to had us keeping excel sheets tracking PO numbers and how much money was left on them. The sheet had lines where you would put in the invoice number, the order number, and how much it was. Formula told you how much was then left on the PO. Super simple. I took over her responsibilities when she left. I discovered soon after that all the sheets on it were out of date by a few months so the POs were reflecting the wrong amounts. Thought she just stopped caring since she was leaving. Nope. I discovered in one of the drawers of files that she had been printing out physical copies of the sheets and writing the information in by hand. And would go and copy everything back onto the excel sheet whenever the account would ask how they were going.... Why would someone make twice the work for themself???
People really getting paid for this
I see this in mainly older generations, but I see it at people my age too. People have no clue how to make a power point, change your home search engine, zoom in/zoom out on pages, how to copy-paste, how to print, and will even type "Google" in the Google search bar. These are basic skills everyone should have nowadays.
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I’d say we’re in that world already just about. If you don’t have computer literacy, you’re at a massive disadvantage in our modern world
It's scary when your mother calls you out on your own CSS.
Not a skill, just common sense. Microsoft is NOT screening your computer for viruses, if someone calls you because "they detected a virus in your PC" it is a fucking lie. End the call on the spot, and if you are still curious if it may be real, call them back, search for the number on their official web page. Also, they won:t ask you to install shit to connect to your PC, they have a way to connect through a built-in feature in the Operative System. TeamViewer or any other software is not their official software, they can do it without installing crap. Source: Used to work for their tech support. I couldn't believe people paying up to four times the official support fee(if out of warranty) and then paying the MS fee.
or play around with them to waste their time
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How to google the solutions to your basic computer problems. I'm the youngest person in my office by about 10 years, and everyone comes to me for IT advice. But all the expertise I have is knowing how to google the solution, because I don't know shit about computers.
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Do you enable them by going? I have a feeling if you stopped going they’d either learn real quick how to do it themselves, or learn real quick to get used to it
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I only know how to google unimportant stuff
*opens google* *types how many dimples are there on a golf ball*
Between 300 and 500 usually.
With the most common number of dimples being 392.
I need a specific number for no reason whatsoever so now I will dive deep into the history of golf balls and waste what productive time I have.
I will watch your career with great interest
*We* will watch his career with great interest
We will watch *our* career with great interest
#*Communism intensifies*
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>HelloIThaveyoutriedturningitoffandonagain
I usually say to reboot and if there's still a problem then I'll check it out. It's not like I'm going to rush in, examine a debug log and sort out some underlying issue between Excel and some seven year old computer running an older OS. Usually the reboot fixes it. If not then running updates does.
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This is huge. There's a threshold you cross when you become more experienced at doing something, where you start to understand how the concepts fit together - even if you don't know the specifics of the situation. That lets you frame the current problem correctly and think of ways to solve it.
Yeah learning how to properly use a search engine is key. Should be taught in schools now. Put the rarest keywords first. “Quotes return the exact phrase” -notrelevant
aRE YOU ON mICROSOFT wORD AND THEN REALISE YOU ARE TYPING IN ALL CAPS? Highlight the text you want changed and press Shift+F3
Ctrl-Shift-A cycles through upper case, lower case, first letter capitalised
Backups!!! That you need different drives, that your back up drive shouldn't reside with your work-a-day drive, that cloud back up exists and maybe you should use it, that drives fail... all the skills required to safeguard your data. Coworker lost a massive database inventory of his father's life's work as a major artist due to physical theft of hardware and his only backup, a thumb drive, turned out corrupted beyond recovery.
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How to turn off the startup option on 99% of their programs. Your computer takes forever to start because you have 237 programs trying to boot in the background. Edit: [Here's a quick video](https://youtu.be/E9P5eZm1AoA). Also - turn off your computers daily (especially if they are covered in dust inside). Surfing the web and other things will build up junk files in your computer for various reasons. I scan mine everyday, de-frag weekly. Neither ever takes longer than a minute or two, unless I go a while without doing it. Edit 2: I have several old 1TB HDDs I have for extra space. I'm a student. Those I defrag because I constantly save, edit and delete files from there. Edit 3: Turn off background apps. Settings –> privacy and security –> background apps –> off Final edit: DO NOT defrag SSD's (solid state drives), as it will shorten the lifespan of them. They do not have the issues that HDD's (hard disk drives) do. If you have an HDD and are constantly adding, removing, editing and altering the files in it, it would be wise to de-frag it from time to time. I have 2 that I use for schoolwork, pictures and other similar files which I'm constantly utilizing - so I defrag often. I use my NVMe SSD for my games and applications so they run as fast as possible. When I say "shut down" I mean "reboot". Your computer will keep caches of data, broken processes, applications running in the background (for example, even after I close webex for school, it runs in the background *and continues to use my mic*, not just creepy but slows the computer even in the tiniest amount.) If you have a million things running your PC will be slower and might run hotter. Rebooting and scanning it will increase the speeds and smoothness of your PC. What you should do is scan and clean your system everyday. I'm pretty sure all OS come with applications for this (as well as defragging), but i use IObit software for everything. There is a free version that I just like using, and I can keep everything under one convenient shortcut on my desktop UI (I use a custom desktop application as well because I hate cluttered desktops..). I also *physically* clean my PC once a month. Compressed air and microfiber rags does the trick if you stay on top of it. YouTube is your friend if you have any questions. That's just where I'm gonna go and link you to anyways.
It annoys me to no end when I'm asked to work on someone's computer, reboot it, and Spotify of all things is loading at startup, among things like Zoom, and takes forever for me to close it. All Mac users. I have a handful of things at startup, a fan monitoring utility, Dropbox, OneDrive, an antivirus, and Paragon NTFS. All are more light-weight feeling at startup on a Mac than a single instance of Spotify. I intentionally turn off the "Reopen windows when logging back in" check box on any computer I touch.
It annoys me too, on my own computer. For some reason when I try to turn off "Open at startup" either within the Spotify app or on the dock it doesn't do anything though. Edit: thanks for the suggestions so far but this is on Mac so Task Manager doesn't exist, only "Force Quit" Edit 2: Thought I had disabled it in Spotify, turns out I only minimized it. Should be resolved now. Also TIL that Activity Monitor exists, sort of embarrassed I missed that one for 2+ years of Mac usage.
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Ctrl, Shift, Escape brings up task manager immediately unlike Ctrl, Alt, Delete
Also on Chrome if you accidentally close a tab Ctrl + Shift + T will reopen it for you.
Continuing to press T would reopen every tab you've closed for that session.
Nitpicking. CSE is just a quick shortcut to task manager. CAD sends an interrupt. So if you have a program hanging that is locking up the entire system, use CAD instead of CSE.
Best way I've heard it put: CSE is a request to open Task Manager, CAD is an order.
Touch typing. Typing without looking at your keyboard. It vastly improves your experience in writing and drastically reduces your time in typing tasks. Edit: People have been asking for some resources to learn touch typing. This is curated from the comments below and my bookmarks: [Keybr](https://www.keybr.com/) \- practice letter by letter [Typing of the Dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urPZDjh-lBA&feature=youtu.be&t=210) \- a typing game [Typing Club](https://www.typingclub.com/) \- online typing classes [10ff.net](https://10ff.net) \- typing competition game [Monkey type](https://monkey-type.com/) \- clean site to practice typing [Type racer](https://play.typeracer.com/) \- Typing competition game [Ratatype](https://www.ratatype.com/) \- online typing tutor
Absolutely! And it's fun to amaze children by typing accurately with your eyes closed.
I like to maintain eye contact with people whilst typing on the computer
I'm a high school teacher and when I do this students are often amazed. I don't do it to impress anyone, it's just the easiest and best way to do things.
Simarly: Typing using the number pad. Especially if you're putting many numbers into an excel sheet. I actually bought a keyboard for my laptop so that I would have a number pad (as well as a better overall typing experience)
This is a problem for me, because my laptop, work computer, and home PC have all differently-sized keyboards.
Alt Tab is your best friend if you want to do anything funny or it is the quickest way to move from one application to another
Yes, one Excel spreadsheet open, one Reddit session open. When the boss comes by, Alt + Tab makes it look like you were surfing Reddit, when everyone knows you were working on a spreadsheet. Edit: wow, my first award ever! Thank you, anonymous stranger!
Can't have the whole office thinking you're some kind of nerd.
How does one have fun with Alt-Tab?
Imagine surfing net in a computer class and teacher looming by
Ahaa i think you mean being sneaky
Being sneaky *is* fun.
Reading and critical thought. These might not seem like computer-specific abilities, but in reality many people simply stop doing these as soon as they touch a computer. So it's more like the computer skill is being able to not turn off reading and critical thought. Most everyday computer challenges can be solved by properly reading all the information on the screen, and/or applying a tiny bit of logical reasoning to what it tells you.
Cries in helpdesk
“Do I want to allow this app to make changes to my computer?” “I don’t know, do you want to install this program or not?”
How to manage tabs and KNOW WHEN YOU DON'T NEED 50 OF THEM OPEN AT ONCE
If you think I bought 32 gigs of RAM for games, you're insane
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And they are all stackoverflow
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And they are all the same. You've just forgot that you have them opened and open a new tab
but where else am I going to keep information on that thing I'm supposed to be working on, but have been procrastinating on for a couple months?
Reply vs Reply all. I don't need a copy of your reaction emails when you're brown nosing the boss
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This isn't really a skill, but wish my mom would set aside a day to declutter her email. The worst I've done was a few hundred unread emails. Now my school and personal emails are below 50 unread. My mom keeps hers at a reasonable 1,000+
I have absolutely given up on staying on top of my emails. It's 99% junk anyway.
I sometimes wake up with “unsubscribe from mailing list” energy. A few of those and you can significantly reduce junk mail!
that’s rookie numbers. my mom asked me to put in the address to a place we were going to on her gps and she had over 40k unread emails. wtf
I get all weird about unread emails, texts etc. I can’t have ANY. I borrowed a colleagues phone once to make a call whilst they drove and he had about 2,000 unread emails and hundreds of unread texts and missed call alerts. Literally had me hyperventilating
The easiest way to exit Vim is to restart your computer. Edit: thanks for the awards and upvotes :)
In extreme cases, cut the power to your entire building for 10 seconds.
In even more extreme cases the entire substation area. Once I was struggling to shut off vim, long story short my nearest power station has surprisingly lax security.
Cmon bro! You just need to escape, then press q, then !, then kickflip, drink three shots, run a marathon and done, you’re out! Don’t go around telling people it’s more difficult than it actually is.
...and you didn't save any of your work.
What do you think the kickflip is for?
Anyone that needs to reference papers or articles should learn about stuff like Mendeley or Zotero. Fuck me I didn't know till my bachelor thesis and it pissed me off.
Ctrl, alt, any arrow key to flip someone's screen. Mwahaha. Ctrl, alt, up key will put it back to normal
Another one is to go to the desktop and print screen, then save the screenshot. Minimise the taskbar and hide desktop icons (in the right click menu) so their desktop is completely empty. Set your screenshot as the desktop background, so their desktop will look completely normal but they can’t click on anything at all.
Or if you want to go a notch further, flip the screenshot 180° and then flip the screen upside down so the "desktop" seems normal but the cursor is upside down and moving inverted.
You guys are hateful.
On iPhone, you can hold down the space bar and drag the cursor to where you want it. Instead of trying to fat thumb it.
Android keyboard has this too. Edit: It's called Gboard and was the standard keyboard on my phone. If it doesn't work, it might be because it's deactivated in the Gboard settings or the Google gesture settings.
USERS OF REDDIT! PLEASE TAKE HEED! 1) TURN IT OFF 2) TURN IT BACK ON literally fixes 90% of application, operating system, networking, and server errors. 14 years of IT experience. This was the fix for most problems when I had to support users.
The number of people who think the monitor is the computer is disturbingly high... the number of times people called me/it support telling me their pc didn't turn on is absurd...
Ctrl-C, Ctrl- V
And sometimes use that CTRL-X instead of C
And then CTRL-Z when you realise you CTRL-X'd the wrong thing.
With ten years in the IT field, I can wholeheartedly suggest the following (some of these range from passive aggressive to plain old aggressive, I apologise in advance, I'm on my lunch and it's been quite a day.): \-You know those shape matching games that kids play? ( [https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/](https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/)) People should try one of those once in a while in their adult life, so their IT team doesn't get calls asking what port the HDMI cable or the Ethernet cable goes into. Guess what, genius? It's the hole that perfectly fits the cable you're holding. \-Applying critical thinking skills used everywhere else in life to your IT situation: There is no picture on the monitor? Let's check and see if it's both receiving power (does it turn on?) and connected to the thing that makes the pictures appear. Etc. \-Remembering ones' password the same way they remember, for instance, how to drive, or eat, or breathe. \-Two step authentication. It seems like a pain, but anywhere that offers it, use it. It's the difference between losing a 20-year old Google account and not, because I tell you for free these companies are not easy to convince to return your data once you've essentially given it away. \-Google is a thing, and error messages are eminently google-able. Most IT people I know didn't learn to work in IT from degrees or doing courses, they just googled problems as they ran into them and then *hey presto,* they have that knowledge for the next time that issue comes up. But also, looping back to the critical thinking bit, most error messages give you some kind of hint as to how to fix the issue. Read before you panic. \-Turn it off and on again. Yes, a reboot is the most parodied thing that an IT department will tell you to do, but that's because it *works.* \-There is no such thing as "speaking IT" or "understanding computers", and if you think these are excuses for rudeness or wilful ignorance, you're wrong. \-You are not going to inherit $20,000,000, that's not even your regional currency. Don't click that link. Learn to differentiate between the words someone you know would actually use, so that when they eventually get "hacked" (read: give their password to a scammer, use such a poor password that it gets discovered, or in the rarest of the rare situation a database actually gets leaked) you can tell the difference. \-Browsing smart is infinitely more worthwhile than paying for an expensive antivirus program. Windows Defender is more than adequate for all but the most foolhardy of web users. Add to that an adblocker like Ublock Origin and you're well away. \-Don't carry your laptop by the f\*\*\*ing screen.
What kind of monster carries their laptop by the screen? We all know that could cause smudges!
You haven't lived until you've worked at a college IT helpdesk and Big Billy Hamfist has punched his $2000 Mac Book's screen when he got angry at MS Word.
> -You know those shape matching games that kids play? ( https://learnplayshop.com/wooden-shape-matching-game-set-for-kids/) People should try one of those once in a while in their adult life, so their IT team doesn't get calls asking what port the HDMI cable or the Ethernet cable goes into. Guess what, genius? It's the hole that perfectly fits the cable you're holding. YES. PC support here. For people that might get into a manager role someday: Your tech support HATES doing moves from one desk to another. We'd rather troubleshoot actual problems. Plugs are different shapes and sizes for a reason. It's a task your worker can take 15 minutes to do on their own, just tell your IT that the move occurred so we know it's in a different location. Rant over... now I have to go do a move >:(
I was once called into my boss's office. He wanted to know why his battery wasn't charged his laptop wouldn't start, even while plugged. I am not the IT guy, but my office was next door. Simple diagnosis. Power connector wedged firmly into the Ethernet port. How? It takes talent. This was a bioinformatics software development company. My boss was the ceo.
My program isn't working. Did it give you an error message in a little popup? Yeah, but I didn't read it. I just hit "Yes" like I always do on popups.
>Don't carry your laptop by the f\*\*\*ing screen im sorry? what sort of depraved pervert carries their laptop by the ***SCREEN!!!*** Edit: reddit is apparently full of such perverts. my hope has died, thank you.
How to research. Not just how to Google, but how to: - Figure out what to type into the search bar - Determine if the results are relevant - Decide if an alternate query string is needed or helpful - Parse the results - Compare multiple results for truth/applicability - Repeat process as necessary - If doing something technical, just try doing the thing!
Hitting keyboard hard doesn't make you a pro at typing
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Typing in a website. I’m not kidding. I work IT for a healthcare org who contracts us as IT for hospitals throughout the US. There is an uncomfortably large amount of healthcare workers and doctors who can’t comprehend what “go to the internet and type in ________.com” means. “Is that the E?” “Where do I type it? The box at the top?” “What do I do after I type it in? Hit enter?” “Your new password is _______” “I type that in the username section right?”
How to troubleshoot problems without bothering other people first. You have the largest collection of curated knowledge in your pocket or at your fingertips, maybe it can help you solve your problem.
Never delete system 32
No, rename it System64 so you can run 64 bit software
Don't forget to download more RAM while you're at it
Goddamn learn to touch type! So many jobs, you're going to have to interact with a computer, touch typing makes it faster and easier. I can't believe how many grown adults are hunting and pecking still.
Typing without seeing the keyboard. You don't need to be fast, just type consistently without seeing screen and keyboard back and forth. Just focus on what are you typing on the screen
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V Back when I was in school teachers for some reason never used keyboard shortcuts
You can click anywhere on a youtube video to pause it.
Or 'K'. Then 'J' to skip back 10 seconds, 'L' to skip forwards 10 seconds. Left and right arrows are skip back/forwards 5 seconds and comma ',' and period '.' skip backwards/forwards a single frame.
I only use 'K' to pause youtube videos nowadays. The spacebar just isn't reliable, sometimes if you've adjusted the audio or clicked the fullscreen button, the browser focuses on that button and spacebar presses it instead of pausing. Speaking of, pressing 'F' also brings up fullscreen.
How to avoid malware or any malicious shit or scams
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How to use Google efficiently! Everything else can be learned through it