I haven’t tried running a matrix server, but ejabberd has been very solid, and it’s not too difficult to set up.

Unexpected Keyboard is pretty nice.

My thing is C++ and Z80/45GS02 assembly, and I love a good terminal, so wherever that puts me I guess

Dunno if Emacs Lisp counts as a life hack, but I’ve been slowly learning it, and it’s very nice to be able to setup custom workflows with such a high degree of customization (and a substantial amount of flycheck yelling at me)

Mine’s pretty great at reading a 1400-page manual for an 8-bit system. Whether or not my habit of reading a 1400-page manual for an 8-bit system is actually beneficial is up for debate.