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Suddenly the damn thing won’t show its contents (thousands and thousands of pictures) when I’m offline, even though I have everything set to “Make available offline”. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:14 PM - 0 answers

I'm doing a lot of work with others via zoom and google meets and I feel like I don't know how to "look my best" in terms of positioning my laptop and using lighting effectively. Assume I know nothing and want to look as nice (rested, symmetrical, with minimal wrinkles) as possible! [more inside]
posted by CancerSucks at 4:02 PM - 2 answers

I'm an aging person with a physical disability who is struggling to keep using a headmouse for computer access. Are there any hacks that would make it easier to move the cursor? [more inside]
posted by wintermute2_0 at 3:15 PM - 5 answers

Downloading 50gb from cloud to external drive. WHY IS IT SO SLOW [more inside]
posted by greta simone at 3:06 PM - 9 answers

A relative just "confronted" me about staying friends with someone they'd had a falling out with, and liking that person's posts. I have no intention of justifying my Facebook activity to anyone, but is there a way I can stop sharing this kind of information with mutual connections? [more inside]
posted by rpfields at 8:03 AM - 5 answers

I've always had iPhones - but now am looking at Android for a specific purpose & could use some help. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:40 AM - 5 answers

I’m currently outside the US, my normal location. I have Mullvad VPN and it functions as expected for certain streamers (e.g., Peacock). Others (Prime, ESPN) detect the VPN and refuse to perform unless I disable it, but then of course it also refuses to perform. Why do people suggest VPNs if they frequently don’t function?
posted by billsaysthis at 10:03 PM - 6 answers

Hello, I hope someone can help me with some advice for backing up Notes on my old (2013) Macbook? The issue: I have Notes app notes on "My Mac," and Notes app notes on iCloud, and they are different. I'd like to have the notes on My Mac back up to iCloud. I don't care about preserving the existing iCloud notes at all. How do I make this change? (Normally, I would just try a few things, and usually I can get the results I want, but I'm very worried about losing my existing My Mac notes! They have some irreplaceable info, so I want to be very careful!) Thank you!
posted by luckydog at 3:49 AM - 5 answers

I am building my first PC tower in more than 20 years. The AIO cooler I bought is a huge PITA to install and I think I'd prefer to get something more basic. Basic cooler won't come till Monday. Can I continue my build and complete it without the cooler just for now? My case has built-in fans. [more inside]
posted by The Adventure Begins at 8:44 AM - 7 answers

Hi everyone; I have many Old Time Radio shows on a micro SD card in my cell. I want to change the name of the file to a number. Because I have many,I want a way to do this all at once,instead of me having to rename every file name to a number. Is there a simple program that will do this? I am using a Chromebook. Thank you :)
posted by LOOKING at 4:09 AM - 12 answers

I have a folder of photos directly off a digital camera. I want to match them to another folder of edited photos with different file names. [more inside]
posted by distorte at 4:35 AM - 2 answers

I am building a new PC this weekend for the first time in a decade. It'll probably take me a few days to get it done, so I need a way to protect the exposed components and case when I'm not working on it because I have a curious cat and a LOT of cat hair floating about. Would a large clean towel (or towels) draped loosely over everything enough?
posted by The Adventure Begins at 9:58 AM - 8 answers

Pinterest has become a swamp of genAI pins and horrific AI based automoderation, and I want out. But I have 400 recipes on a pinterest board and I want to get a list of those links exported from my board. [more inside]
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 9:20 AM - 5 answers

Looking for recommendations for external small/portable mac-compatible drive for photo archive. [more inside]
posted by greta simone at 8:03 AM - 14 answers

I have a MacBook Pro (c. 2020) with a 500-GB SSD that is running out of hard drive space. In the "Storage" pane of System Settings, the bar chart at the top shows 432 GB used, including 226.5 GB of "System Data". But when I go to the "Macintosh HD" window in the Finder, tell it to show hidden folders, and tell it to calculate the sizes of all the folders (visible and hidden), it adds up to a little shy of 200 GB. Why is there such a discrepancy? [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:46 AM - 10 answers

I have a spreadsheet filled with data collected over the course of the year. I’ve also created a secondary sheet (pivot table?) showing week-by-week summaries aggregated from the main sheet. In the pivot table I want to prevent negative values from being included in one of the AVERAGEIFS formulas that I’m currently using. How do I do this? I’m working in Apple Numbers, but formulas seem to work the same as in Excel for the most part. [more inside]
posted by theory at 6:27 PM - 4 answers

I generally only play smaller/less demanding games on my PC, and don't worry too much about specs. And I've not had a problem yet. But sometimes I'm not sure if my system can handle something. And now that tons of Steam games work on Linux and I play some PC games with my kid, I'd like to get a better sense of how to know if a given game will work ok. [more inside]
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:47 AM - 5 answers

I want to create a timelapse video from a few thousand stills that are jpg files. What Windows 10 or 11 compatible software with a GUI should I use? If there is a cost, I'd like to be able to test it out before buying. [more inside]
posted by soelo at 9:17 AM - 9 answers

It's starting to look like it's time to nuke my OS from orbit and install a new one. Please help me decide which distro. [more inside]
posted by number9dream at 10:25 AM - 16 answers

I email with a lot of people named Dave. In Gmail, once a thread gets going, my inbox just lists all respondents all by their first names, like this: Dave, me, Dave (4). This makes it very hard to prioritize my inbox at a glance, since some Daves (coworkers) send me more urgent messages than other Daves. Is there a setting that will make Gmail's thread lines use people's surnames, or customized names, instead of their first names?
posted by vanilla.extract at 11:07 AM - 6 answers