The build quality justifies the price,

Doubt.

I expect they’re aware, but they want to earn a living. All of these dumb AI initiatives come from execs who never question that they know best and don’t give a crap how the devs feel.

I never have that kind of problem on Linux. I have random problems all the time on Windows, plus I have to fight a system that keeps trying to cajole or trick me into things I don’t want. These days, any mainstream Linux distro has far less friction for the user than Windows 11.

They trained it on the work of people like you.

Functionally it’s good and fast. Privacy-wise I would recommend at least encrypting the files before uploading. Cryptomator would help if your friend is willing to use it. VeraCrypt volumes also work, and they sync quickly because Dropbox is smart enough to only update the bits of the volume file that have changed.

If you’re looking for something similar but not US-based, pCloud is good and allows you to save the data in Europe. But encrypt your files there too.

It’s political censorship dressed up as protecting children, as usual. The Trump fascists have been deleting all kinds of information from government websites, and internet archives allow people to see what has been censored, including facts about climate change, Black history and economic trends.

Web archives preserve information the US Government has deleted, like reports on the economy, climate change, and Black history. In general they work against censorship of the internet. This is just another case of using “protecting the children” as a cudgel to kill politically inconvenient sources of information.

They will ban VPNs for everyone except corporations who can pay a bribe fee for an encryption license. It will only be the little people who will not be allowed to encrypt their communications. And you won’t be able to ignore the law and do it anyway on your phone, because your only options are Google and Apple, and both reserve the right to decide which developers get to distribute their software. (Google will be introducing this restriction next year.) The availability of open operating systems for computers is a situation lawmakers will no doubt want to rectify at some point.

Yet. Some exec at Microsoft is thinking “the problem is that PCs aren’t locked down like phones and there’s nothing stopping you from running an alt OS on the desktop yet.” If they can’t force everyone to use their AI crap they’ll lobby the US Government and give Donald Trump some fake award, and before you know it desktop Linux will be a crime just like fixing your own tractor is a crime.

Since they give no indication of how they’re doing it or what information they’re gathering, no one can really explain. It may be some kind of traffic analysis where an AI provides heuristic recognition of probable VPN traffic.

I see they’re promoting something called the Helium network. What’s the relationship between that and Meshtastic? Are they completely different things?

Bill Gates walked into the meeting “riding high” because he acquired patents for malaria treatments. Reality beats satire every time.

Bill Gates will never be a good guy.

Your posts are a bit confusing to read because you don’t capitalize Windows To Go. Capitalizing it would make it easier to understand.

I’d use a Kill-a-Watt or similar to check how much power it uses, before deciding whether it’s worth installing anything on it. Also check how much noise it makes, unless you have a separate room for servers. Enterprise servers aren’t always a good fit for home use.

Yes, as I understand it, by “stock” Android OP meant any of these OEM-supplied Android installations as opposed to a custom version you’d install yourself. Although the “stock” Androids are different from one another, they all share the same relatively poor baseline privacy because they all send data to Google, on top of which they may also send data to the phone manufacturer and the cell network provider and possibly other organizations. This contrasts with custom versions of Android like GrapheneOS which are designed to be better for privacy and send less data to Google.

Can Google still see contacts if not using their contacts app?

Probably. Android has a contacts database with which your contacts app interacts. And Google Play Services, which you can’t disable in stock Android, has access to everything, including this database.

Plus they can use location to see who you meet up with, and get their info and their contacts’ info from their phones. One way or another, Google can build up a pretty thorough profile of your social circle.

Your location, contacts, nearby devices, nearby WiFi, search history, voice query recordings, which apps you install and use and when, a log of activity on your phone, your advertising profile, which accounts you set up on the phone, possibly facial recognition for photos you take, who you call and message (if using default apps) including which phone numbers you connect to, events in your calendar, browsing history (if using default browser) and YouTube activity (if using the YouTube app).

Those are the main ones that are usually mentioned in articles about this. Some of it won’t apply if you use only open source apps and no Google apps. But some of it is baked into the OS and the Play Services, and difficult or impossible to avoid.

OP explicitly says stock Android, not a Custom ROM.

What are your “other precautions”?

The thing about this one is no one seems sure of the source (it appears to be from multiple sources, including infostealer malware and phishing attacks), so you don’t know which passwords to change. To be safe you’d have to do all of them.

Some password managers (e.g. Bitwarden) offer an automatic check for whether your actual passwords have been seen in these hack databases, which is a bit more practical than changing hundreds of passwords just in case.

And of course don’t reuse passwords. If you have access to an email masking service you can not only use a different password for every site, but also a different email address. Then hackers can’t even easily connect that it’s your account on different sites.