If they do that they'll have to take responsibility for the consequences when shit happens, and it's not as though they can weasel out with "we didn't know" - this warning makes it clear that they are aware of what can go wrong.

Meanwhile the first paragraph of the summary above includes

Along with several warnings from Microsoft to only activate this if you really want to take the risk.

If I wanted to use this "feature" I'd want a standalone machine with no actual real data, but I don't so it's moot anyway.

If you want to know why a lot of Ukranians saw the Nazis as the "lesser evil", take a look at Holodomor, just under 4 million Ukranians died of starvation around 1931 - 1934, another million died the same way in other grain producing areas outside the Ukraine.
btw, a large part of current-day western Ukraine was either Poland or Romania before WW2, and a large proportion of those killed by Bandera's followers were Poles. Poland had expanded its borders eastwards at the end of WW1 while the Russian Empire was tearing itself apart in the Revolution. Ethnic Cleansing writ large.

Could they be the ones under https://www.youtube.com/@proctorexam7814? Although maybe those are not old enough.

I had treatment for Lyme disease in spring 2022, Doxyhexal - described as "a broad-spectrum tetracycline-class antibiotic". It was fairly effective, the symptoms faded and a blood test several weeks later showed that the offending bacteria were in retreat. Since a friend of mine had needed four courses of antibiotics before his Lyme was actually fixed, I asked them to check those values the next time I needed a blood test (maybe a year later). I'm back, baby.
The 2023 treatment was some other antibiotic being pumped directly into my bloodstream at the doctor's surgery for (I think) 6 days in a row - I think there was a weekend in there. Waiting a few weeks, a subsequent test showed the values had dropped again.
Fast forward to early 2025, I had another routine blood test (normal at my age) and I asked them to check those values again. Things are ok now.

I don't know why the Doxyhexal ultimately failed, but it did.

I'm roughly were you were.
No TV, just 350Mb internet via coax-cable. The price is competitive, it includes 3 land lines (I only use 2) and my mobile access.
Fibre would be more expensive, so why should I change?

Anyone who has read George Orwell's 1984 will be at best ambivalent about having such a device in their home, is "Big brother" AI?

That was the full sentence from the summary, either you stopped reading after five words (short attention span?) or the summary was changed after you read it.

The first four years were pretty easy to forecast, but Covid (along with various idiocies BoJo introduced) was not something people could realistically plan for.

Recent Democrat presidents have shown a marked reluctance to roll back weird decisions imposed by their predecessors, while Trump's first term in particular was characterised by a determination to roll back almost everything Obama had done. I may be underestimating the effect of control of the House and Senate there - Biden and Obama had obstacles placed in their way.

I'm wondering how this plays out in the EU. Are they even permitted to collect all this data (obviously SSNs don't apply there) and what happens if they have a breach? I'm pretty sure the VAG group (VW, Audi, Skoda, maybe SEAT as well) had a breach a year or two ago but I don't know what was stolen and what the consequences were.

Are they sure the hackers are state-sponsored (and Chinese)?
msn.com won't work for me - something I have no problems with - so I can't RTFA but this appears to be too blatant for them. Russia, yes, North Korea, yes.

So don't opt in, it's that fucking simple.
As for me, no way am I going to activate this.
Pale Moon probably won't bother either.

I use Firefox as my second (reserve) browser, and the primary is not Chrome based either.
Rewards Points are pretty useless to me anyway, I use Windows 10 (made the mistake of "upgrading" from Windows 7) maybe once a month on average, and not for browsing or email.

And just why should I trust this?