Yes. For me reasons of VPN on Android (even with Google) are following:

1. Most of greedy apps are trying to collect info about your location. Because in most of the cases you will restrict direct access to the location data, apps will try to do it through IP. VPN resolve this problem at all.
2. A lot of greedy apps or websites are trying to do fingerprinting to identity your logs. While it is possible in theory to do fingerprinting by fuzzy matching all-logs against all-logs, the task is so computationally heavy that the only way is to try to do fuzzy-matching (aka fingerprinting) within the locations. VPN allows you to hide your location.

Of course one may say that VPN does not provide a 100% protections from fingerprinting, I think there should be applied the same approach like in cyber security: the goal is not to protect yourself by 100% but to make attack so expensive that it does not make sense. VPN makes fingerprinting so hard that noone will really do it until you are a journalist, intelligence officer or something like this.

What do you think, how long should we wait until the overflow in the debts database makes the value negative?

Sounds like a potential application for a blockchain techs, that allows to do verifications, voting and consensus.

As I can understand from EFF articles, the problem is not only in MAGA guys and their conspiracy but in KOSA proposal itself.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/09/new-us-house-version-kosa-doesnt-fix-its-biggest-problems

I heard that in USA Telegram is used mostly by conservatives, trans-haters and drug dealers. But in Russia where I was born and where I have been living until the war, Telegram was a single source of alternative news and the main tool for opposition to putin. I had a talk with an Iranian guy recently and he told me the same: in Iran Telegram is the only source of non-state-propaganda news.

I do not care that Durov is just a billionaire who makes money on the trend of privacy. But I remember how Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in Russia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking. An attack on Telegram for me is an attack on the latest opposition to putin, khamenei, lukashenko and others.

For me one of the most flexible and mature way to knowledge base, tasks and notes is an org-mode.

I have two main workflows. The first one is task management. I have a lot of recurring tasks with tags, deadlines, schedules, etc. All of them are living in org-files in my Nextcloud. On Android I'm using orgzly-reviwed for sync via WebDAV, on my work I'm using organice (via WebDAV) as a "web-version" and also I'm editing my notes in emacs on my laptop (but actually any text editor could be used).

The second one is a knowledge base. I'm using org-roam locally (and with a localhost web server, built in into emacs) and orgnote for Android/Web + synchronization. My knowledge base is Zettelkasten-based.

Orgzly-reviewed: https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived

Organice: https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice

Orgnote: https://github.com/Artawower/orgnote

Orgnote provide a way to encrypt all notes by your own key/password. With orgzly I'm relying on Nextcloud encryption.

A nice way to understand how much your data costs

Privacy is a spectrum, not dichotomy. It is enough, imo, to reduce the amount of usage of google/amazon services significantly instead of blocking it.

While that is true, the missing part is the following. As I understand registration process in zone .ru / .рф is done by a russian legal entity (Coordination Center for TLD RU) and under the jurisdiction of russian courts. As a citizen of Russia I can say that russian courts are far away from the Rule of Law and under the strong pressure of russian government. So, even if the actual website may be hosted anywhere, russian court may make a decision to take back a registration and, theoretically, the row in DNS may be replaced (the link will be the same but may tend to a different, potentially unsafe hosting). That is the risk that I see.

Automatic AI-powered screen lock for when your phone is snatched. Theft Detection Lock is a powerful new feature that uses Google AI to sense if someone snatches your phone from your hand and tries to run, bike or drive away.

Does it mean, that "Google AI" will running 24/7 in background, measuring how I use my phone, with an access to accelerometers data and location data?

emacs + elfeed

Reasons:

1. I'm using emacs for almost everything, so it it is a quite obvious choice
2. Links to rss/atom are stored in a plain human readable org-mode file that you can edit manually or use VCS on top
3. It works fine from both terminal and gui
4. It is a fully OSS solution under The Unlicense

Thank you. I hope too. But now it is not safe to be being in Russia and trying to get better government... So, for myself I just decided to leave the country. I'm not ready to risk my safety and safety of my family trying to protest against Putin. One can say that I'm a coward, but for me it change nothing: I prefer to be a healthy free coward instead of tortured hero in prison. To be honest, my only hope is that he die soon, there are a lot of rumors about his health problem, some cancer.