So I bought this baby to use at work (keycaps are mine, not included):
Its regular use is just a numpad, but you’ll notice the four hotkeys at the top.
They’re currently set (by default) to Esc, Tab, Backspace and Fn, but that’s not quite what would be most useful to me. I’m thinking mainly of Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.
Anyway, I was just wondering if you guys have any suggestions. 
Explode, burn, CAPS EVERYTHING, turn the signals on/off
Seriously I’d map one of the first three to ctrl-alt-del and the last one to open this forum. And perhaps another one as boss key.
11/10
I’d use one for paste without formatting, too (shift-cmd-v). But maybe I just use that a lot.
I use it a fair bit too. When I said Ctrl+V I probably meant Ctrl+Shift+V.
There’s also other combos I use a fair bit like Win+left/right/up but I’m not sure if something like toggle fn layer 2, some key is any better than that (left alone hold down fn layer, some key which is the same thing).
For Ditto (a clipboard manager I’m using a the time) I’ve got ctrl+` or something.
Mainly I’m trying to figure out if there’s a second layer that would make sense to me.
I might just keep my less fantastic Logitech work keyboard on the table as a dedicated hotkey keyboard, e.g. with AutoHotkey. In its simplest form it’d just be Ctrl locked or something.
I have some other keycaps available as well (including something more boring like Fn) but not all of them fit the right contours.
Hell, yes! 
Can we start a petition to replace the *beeping* caps lock key with a key for “paste without formatting”? I need that more often than Ctrl+v.
Can you give us an overview? Maybe we have more ideas for these? 
Good idea! I use shift for capitals anyway, and I’m often hitting the caps lock key by accident, so I’d definitely sign that petition.
OH HEY GUYS
WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT?
WHATS A CAPS LOCK KEY?
You probably already have one key mapped to it, but why not map another one to ™.
On Linux, just set it to compose. On Windows, download http://wincompose.info/ and do the same.
(Of course you can also use AHK to set it to Ctrl+Shift+V if you prefer.)
Edit: interesting AHK script repo I just found GitHub - TaranVH/2nd-keyboard: ALL of Taran's scripts - not just for the 2nd keyboard.
The rest of the set (not all would necessarily go well on the top row):
My wife using one of the keycaps for scroll lock:
Or turn it off. Unfortunately I need sometimes caps lock.
Which functions do you need during your regular work? For example if you are a programmer you could put the “stop running/kill process” hotkey on the key with the skull.
TREMENDOUS GUY SAYS LOTS OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS ABOUT ME WINNING BIGLY MAGA COLLUSION IS NOT A CRIME CROOKED HILARY COVEFE
Maybe you should take a break from Twitter - or play less often Zak McKracken…? 
What has Zak to do with it? He campaigned for Dukakis! I think…
He likes similar headlines in capital letters:
LOSER MCKRACKEN IS FAKE NEWS MEDIA!!!1 11! ! 
(Oh hai Discourse! So you considered the above an incomplete sentence until I added that explosion emoji, huh? What the fuck is wrong with you???)
But that’s a horrible idea. It’s prime real estate. Make it an even easier to reach Tab, make it `, make it Control, make it anything, but don’t disable it! 
Like I said, copy and paste. Mainly I’m just wondering if anyone has experience sticking a macro pad or a Taobao or something on the side.
I can also map some keys to less common keys (not normally found on Western keyboards) for easier use in the likes of AHK. Because all the keypad can do is sequences of up to about 40 keypresses, but only AHK can do things like checking the color under the cursor and weird stuff like that.
But that’s also Ctrl+C, just like copy? 
I don’t really care that much which keys are on there. My current work keyboard is AZERTY, which is bothersome only because it’s ISO and rubber dome instead of ANSI.
My home keyboard is blank.
I wonder if I’ll bother having a traditional numlock layer.
So you just have 101 Any keys?
If you’re still looking for hot-key suggestions, I use CTRL-SHIFT-End and CTRL-SHIFT-Home at work quite a bit.
I don’t think I have much use for that, but those are exactly the kind of suggestions I’m hoping for, thanks! Shift+Home/End without Ctrl might be worthwhile for me.
Note that I don’t necessarily mean single hotkeys either. Assigning a macro to a key could also mean Ctrl+C, Alt+Tab. Iirc it said a macro can contain a maximum of 42 keypresses, where something like Ctrl+C is three (Ctrl down, C, Ctrl up).
Doing that in AHK with some weird Asian key is easier to change out on the fly than uploading it onto the keypad itself, but on the flipside then it only works on one computer/account. And of course AHK knows no meaningful limitations, though other than things a keyboard can’t do in the first place I doubt I’d normally reach more than a dozen keypresses per macro.
If you want to see it that way.
I use QWERTY US-ANSI, preferably the Linux US International layout.
The Windows US International layout is unfortunately significantly inferior and you need admin permissions for keyboard layouts.
It occurs to me that I could perhaps write or find an AHK script to make it behave like on Linux.
Unfortunately Windows can’t be completely fixed up to be as usable as Linux. All of the completely unnecessary extra clicking is driving me nuts.
For example, I just want windows to activate when scrolling on them instead of having to activate them, then scroll. X-Mouse Button Control has a setting for that, but it doesn’t really work because Windows keeps programs from stealing focus…
But scrolling in background is less useful to me. Focus follows cursor is much worse still.
There’s also programs like Alt drag (or whatever it’s called) except they don’t really work terribly well on Windows. I’ve really gotten used to just pressing Alt and dragging/resizing the window.
Windows/Mac does have a couple of minor advantages on modern touchpads though:
