These rumors/stories, whatever you want to call them, is all new to me, but its just a way to dehumanize a certain group and therefore helping to justify labelling them the new boogieman.
ELI5 Its a way to make a group of people appear less human and different from yourself. This makes it easier to not relate to them and use them as a bad/ evil example of something you want to avoid.
Without much context all I can suggest is PowerAmp for music player. It is a paid app.
Eternity for Lemmy.
Heliboard for a more private keyboard.
Newpipe for YouTube.
Straight chilled water.
If I need extra hydration aka eletrolytes, I either put pure electrolytes in it or a flavored powder like Liquid IV.
Mostly their marketing practices. They are designed well but mostly designed to keep you locked in one way or another.
For me, their desktop is not as intuitive as people make it seem and lacks simple shortcuts that most other desktops have.
On mobile, its the restriction of customization and options. They are getting better at customizing but still limit you on options for anything outside of their apps. They claim to be private but follow similar practices as other companies, just in a more quite way with better PR.
Pick up habits, profiling so they can know what you are interested in and the areas you frequent to target you more efficiently. More likely for directed advertising but can also be for influencing.
You are probably correct. Didn't check the repo.
Running tp-link. So far no issues. Asus is good, tp-link gives you more features on the cheaper models than Asus like vlan if you want it.
Yes to google maps if you have the play services activated.
No to pay/wallet.
Yes to Android Auto as of recently. The grapheneos team just released a implementation of it.
Ebooks. Can store more on a reading tablet, easier to transport most of the time, sometimes lighter than physical books, hold my spot easily where I left off, can read in darker places, easier to store. Still have physical but liking digital more. Use an eink display tablet. Buy the books then download epubs or PDFs.
Yes, but its not supported on everything. I use Yubikeys since they support more interaction types. I personally use them to lock my more important things when I can. Like my password vault, financial sites, emails, accounts, etc.
For the accounts that are whatever, less important I use OTP. You can also store a limited amount of OTP tokens on the Yubikey and use their open source software to view the codes.
ALWAYS buy a backup if you do end up locking accounts with it, just in case you lose it. It is more secure than having a code saved digitally as you need the physical key to unlock things.
Given you are using niche forum software. Yes, most likely.