Interesting, had no idea until now that there’s such a thing as first-party malware loaded with the BIOS. Admittedly I’m caught in an ivory tower with my Corebooted ThinkPad. Although I haven’t purchased one yet, I’d say you made the right choice going with Framework.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad line has a sterling reputation. Among the best in terms of quality, service, repairability, and Linux support.

As for the largely consumer-grade options of ASUS and Lenovo’s consumer-grade IdeaPads, they’re rather similar in reputation and quality. Not exceptional, but they’re both perfectly fine options as long as you avoid the budget laptop segment (plastic chassis, broken hinges, etc.)

Any difference in privacy would come down to the pre-installed software, which is irrelevant if you plan on using Linux. If you will be using Windows, it’s always better to install your own fresh copy to purge any potential spyware and bloatware installed by the manufacturer. The activation key for whichever edition of Windows it comes with is embedded in the BIOS, so it’ll activate automatically after a fresh reinstall.

reductio ad Hitlerum is analogous.

the only way i escaped this until now as being able to afford the hefty price tags on linux-only hardware with something like system76 and i can’t afford it anymore since i no longer earn a software engineer’s salary.

Why not a second-hand ThinkPad/Latitude/ProBook? They’re cheap and cheerful and well-supported by most distros.

Age-old case of everyone else on the internet wanting you to be specific, but I’m open to the idea that you don’t exactly know what it is either and just need a starting point. I don’t know a thing about remedies for the psyche, but have you been taking good care of your bodily health?

Get some good sleep every night. That doesn’t mean the 05:00 grindset, but just something you can stick to every day, even if that’s getting up 90 minutes before your job or obligation if that’s what it takes to be consistent. Go outside for a stroll, however aimless, get your blood flowing and maybe bundle that with getting the mail or whatever. And perhaps eat well by cooking something you like, even something home-made that seems slightly indulgent won’t be as bad as the processed junk out there. Just things that will be good for you and will help you feel in charge of yourself.

Rollback is only possible after an upgrade from 10 to 11 but before the Windows.old directory (a snapshot of system files and configurations immediately before the upgrade) is purged. After that, a fresh install is the only option. No tool can claim to reliably downgrade Windows since 10 would not know how to handle newly-introduced configurations and data from 11, especially in the registry.

the only viable alternative would be to build septic tank

Me realizing I’m ahead of the game because I live in a home with a septic tank. But when you have to pump that tank every 5 years, if you can’t do that yourself, it’s going to be a lot less anonymous than a centralized sewer.

It’s there to protect you from crimes of opportunity. Like if your car is locked, a thief could decide to pick the lock, smash the windows in, or find another victim, but they would have no second thoughts if your car were already unlocked. The password deters a casual hacker and buys you some time to notice and deal with anyone seriously trying to break in.

In an ideal case of disk encryption and a well-designed lock screen, the password forces a would-be intruder to either spend lots of time guessing it or shut down the computer, thereby discarding the encryption key from memory and thwarting the attack.

Two problems:

1. Locked bootloaders: if you’re not given the option to unlock it, you can’t boot anything other than the stock ROM
2. Proprietary drivers: even if you can boot a custom OS, many Android phones have very unique and obscure hardware and the drivers for them are only distributed through their stock ROM.

The closest thing is LineageOS. If your phone doesn’t support it, there’s Generic System Images (GSI), but there’s no guarantee of getting cellular service after installing a GSI due to proprietary drivers.

If you want something that just works, GrapheneOS is great, but you’ll need an unlocked Google Pixel.

Good starting point would be looking up forum or blog posts from people who have disconnected the modem/TCU on a particular EV model. No self-interested auto manufacturer (all of them) would intentionally provide an option in the user interface to take the telemetry system offline. Take note of any side-effects they report, if it needs to be reconnected for inspections, and if there’s any gotchas between software and hardware revisions.

Especially wrt. modern gas-fuelled cars for the typical driver as EV prices are artificially jacked up in many Western countries.

Keeping an eye on it since no other company is offering a similar lack of connectivity, but also not going to be surprised if it doesn’t deliver on its promises.

Gasoline. Would kill to have a scent like it without the cancer risk.

Apple skins, dry chicken fibers, and broccoli pieces too. IIRC there was a study that looked at why the tongue and your finger end up disagreeing on where the debris is lodged. I usually whip out the water flosser if I’m home and my fingers aren’t up to the job.

As a perfectionist myself, perfect is the enemy of the good. It’s good that you’re still learning and finding possible improvements. If you haven’t already, may I suggest organizing a copy of your customizations and dotfiles in one neat location? Saves a lot of mental anguish when you need to track down that edit to a config file you made some months ago.

What privacy though? The situation with LinkedIn just like Instagram. Even though they aren’t open for scraping, there’s still no expectation of privacy among the users who post anything.

Sauteed, spinach soup, or as part of a noodle soup.

I daily drive Debian now, but several years ago when a couple of my computers were still very new, I used Arch since it has bleeding-edge support for new hardware while being still thoroughly documented in the Arch Wiki.

The sheer volume of packages on the official repo and the AUR made it great for discovering which desktop environment I wanted to use and for software-hopping in general too. You can have as much or as little on your system as you want and nothing is forced on you.

I think ROCm is fine with more recent cards, but getting it to work on my RX 480, for which ROCm dropped official support a while ago, was a real pain.

Everything in Owner and a secondary phone for all proprietary work and communication apps. The secondary phone is powered off or at least disconnected once I leave work. Google stuff and banking through a computer browser whenever possible.

If I were forced to use only one phone, the secondary phone’s contents would be on a secondary profile. This used to be my setup but switching between profiles throughout the day wasn’t my thing.