I've got my email registered there too, but I haven't committed to using it as my main address yet.

It's good to hear a positive experience from your end. Sadly they don't allow IMAP / SMTP access for free. :(

Software: Fluent Search

Need: Navigating Windows with a keyboard / a Windows Search that doesn't suck.

Fluent Search does a lot of things, but at its core it aims to make you reach for your mouse less. 

The most obvious competitor is the Windows Start Menu or other launcher-type apps like Listary, but I haven't used the Windows alternatives too much. I'll say that it's much more powerful than KRunner or ULauncher on Linux though.

Features:

• Search for lots of things on a quickly summoned search window:
  • Apps
  • Open windows / processes (will change focus / virtual Desktop to the Window selected)
  • Chromium Bookmarks (open in Browser)
  • Chromium Tabs (will change focus to browser and click tab)
  • common ui-elements in focused application
  • the web with a search engine of your choice
  • clipboard
• Use the search bar for related tasks like
  • Calculate
  • Execute commands in a terminal like cmd,powershell,bash
• With a shortcut, spawn identifiers for clickable object on screen - enter the identifier to click
  • (In order not to use the mouse)

The developer is highly active, and I'm impressed by his speed and skill. This app has made me like interacting with Windows. That was a first. I don't launch apps / search the web in any other way anymore.

I'll add software for a similar need on Windows, i.e. touch enabled / pen enabled Windows Laptops:

Drawboard PDF is by far the prettiest AND most functional PDF reader to use with a touch pen I've tried.

It's a native Windows app designed to fit in with Fluent / Windows Store apps.

Compared to Xodo, it's much more polished and provides easy radial menus for quick access to tools using touch, however it takes a bit longer to start up initially. (However, once it's loaded, opening more PDFs is quick)

It's less powerful at editing than editing-focused PDF suites like Foxit or whatever, but also provides easy access to multiple PDFs at once and is great at research notes or studying.

Drawboard PDF has served me very well during the research phase of my Bachelor's thesis.

Thanks for pointing me to it, if I make the jump in the future, that might come in handy. Although it does slightly take away from the appeal of pure markdown files.

+1 for doom emacs. I'm an emacs novice and doom makes it palatable to learn - not easy, but it more clearly showcases the power of emacs.

Great rundown of Edge! Used the one's you've listed as well and stuck with Edge for a while, too.

Now I'm with Vivaldi, and I'll nominate it for a slightly different category:
The Emacs of web browsing - it has everything, but it could be better at quickly loading web pages.

Software: Vivaldi

Need: customizable web browser for keyboard-centric power-users 

First cons, why I would generally still recommend Edge:

• Vivaldi is more resource heavy
• Vivaldi is slower than browsers like Edge or Chrome
• Vivaldi requires a more personalized setup

Now, what makes it best for the power-user in my opinion:

• Keyboard centric via "universal search"
  • hit F2 and search for everything in the browser, like 
    • Bookmarks
    • open Tabs
    • All Actions in the Browser
  • Navigate links on webpages with shift+arrow keys
• Very customizable UI
  • Most UI-Elements can be repositioned, the Tab bar can reside on either edge of the screen, the address bar can be effectively turned off
• Might replace some applications, especially if you spend a lot of time in a browser
  • included email client
  • included RSS reader
  • included notes-app
  • includes web panels like Opera
• Powerful Tab management
  • includes tiling in-browser, akin to tmux or similar
  • tab-grouping per host
  • tab-grouping with "accordeon tabs" - group tabs horizontally next to each other
  • tab-grouping with "tab stacks" - stack tab on top of each other and gain access to a second row of tab bar just for the active stack
• Misc
  • Can perform macro-like chains of actions within the browser

I'm currently using Notion and agree on the "slow" part. 

However, what Notion does give you, which other, mostly markdown / flat-file based systems do not, is a form of "data-base", or more truthfully spreadsheet-like applications with light formulas, sorting, filtering etc. Also, the free version also includes sharing / "publication" and sync.

I do not use it heavily, but those are the reasons I'm sticking with it for now.

I feel like you might enjoy Typora? Well, at least if you like markdown.

Edit to elaborate what it does:

A hybrid markdown editor (type markdown, see it rendered inline) with beautiful theming, great support for local workflows with images, zen-like typing mode and good support for the additions often found alongside markdown (syntax-highlighting, extended tables etc.)

Edit #2: see also this comment, I think they did a better job than my comment.

Hello there, just saw this. I'm Hans, a 22-year-old Software Engineer. I've been reading cursory here for a while, but to be perfectly honest, I have no clue how I stumbled upon it. This page is bookmarked since January, a time at which I was working on my Bachelor's Thesis, so I reckon I found it after taking one to many (or perhaps the exact right amount of) tangents while researching. Another hypothesis has just formed in my mind since gwern wrote about the Libera channel lower, and I faintly remember stumbling upon Libera at the same time. (Not as a tangent to research, but as a procrastination)

I haven't read much here yet, but the Sequences are firmly on my to-read list. What convinced me to stay was the fact that I devoured Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - I've read it over the course of a few days, whenever I was bored and was SHOCKED when I saw how long the PDF-version would have been. (I did not perceive it that lengthy)

When looking back, I've always valued "Rationality" (whatever that was in my mind really) a lot.
In fact, there were times in my life where I, weirdly, regarded emotions as weak.
Even now, Intellect is a large part of my identity, but at the same time I feel terribly lacking in actually rationally applying that and having a direction for advanced thought. I sometimes struggle with taking agency and doing something that I would myself call "productive".
I also value conversation and abstract thinking / arguing tremendously, but I often find that it results in confrontation where non was intended. This might both warrant work on my social circle and my rhetoric.

Of course, I'm as interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence as the next person, but I have yet invested the time necessary to learn anything but the basics. Especially at this time, where I'll soon be thinking about my future education again, having found a community interested both in Rationality and AI is delightfully helpful for my situation.

I hope to read from many interesting people here and learn (perhaps from each other) in the process. I'm still unsure about most of the M.O. of this community, so I hope that was of interest to anyone.
If it did, I'm looking forward to getting to know you all!