What's your position on Brave? Chromium-based but - allegedly - with the spy stuff removed.

They are proving that Outlook will fail anywhere, this is valuable knowledge. Oh, and New Outlook will fail everywhere - they are testing them so that we don't have to.

That was the only Samsung app I routinely used, not least because I did not want to give Google my meta-data, but then I decided they had it anyway and it was getting to be time to get a new phone - and I wanted the freedom to move away from Samsung if I found anything better. I did not find anything better, and my replacement is good for OS updates for several years.
Rather amusingly, a few years ago they announced that their browser was one of the most popular ones worldwide based on the number of times it had been downloaded. That for a browser on a dominant player in the Android market's devices, a browser which could not be deleted and which received frequent updates. Don't trust any statistics you did not fake yourself!

Used the Samsung App up until around two years ago, then switched to the Google one (my old Samsung was going out of OS support and I was not sure its replacement was going to be the same make). Switching was trivially easy, and my messaging history was then available under both apps.
I don't use messaging much anyway and as far as I could discern, Google Messages was marginally better than the Samsung version.
My newer phone is another Samsung (a year old now) but does not appear to have that messaging app of theirs.

"On the other side are those who routinely outsource their critical thinking to what they see as an all-knowing machine"

I've run into these people, they're the worst. It was bad enough dealing with people whose mindset was 'If I cant find it on google then it doesn't exist,' and it seems these people have moved into AI and gotten dumber but think they're even smarter.

You're repeating false propaganda. Iran was in compliance with the Nuclear nonproliferation treaty as well as the JCPOA. Iran never talked about "exterminating the Jews" and instead talked about regime change for the oppressive Israeli regime, unless you think Israel talking about the same kind of "regime change" for Iran means mass extermination.

Damn! My mod points expired through disuse some time over the last 5-6 hours.

My Kilimanjaro suggestion was aimed at people who had always planned to turn back long before getting anywhere near the top, and I felt the need to point out that 3000m is not a big deal for most people.
I'm not a mountain climber, although I'll walk or ski at those altitudes without a second thought, although ski touring (walking uphill through deep snow with "skins" on my skis) is not something I'm planning to do again at my age.

"Only yesterday, I saw a guy with lung cancer smoke. If everyone stopped smoking, there would be no more cancer, right?"

A friend has it, he's never smoked (so he says, and I've known him for 40 years). His wife did some research and came up with the figure 40 - 40% of people who have lung cancer have never smoked. Assuming they were telling the truth.
Let's not get into passive smoking though.

How does age-verification for bots work? I think bots should be walled out because they are too young and don't have the maturity to understand what they're seeing. Especially Open AI bots.

At altitudes above 3,000 meters, mild symptoms of altitude sickness are common.

I've spent a week at that altitude - with excursions on foot up to around 3800m - with no ill-effects at all. On the other hand, my room mate was barely functional at 3000m.
Another time in the mountains (this time in the Alps) I was hiking while carrying a (lesser) load at around 3880m. There were six of us in that group and two did have serious problems up there, the stupid thing was that they were aware beforehand that they were susceptible - apparently around one third of the population is.

Some people need time to acclimatise to altitude, but I don't understand why people who should know better think that even marching up the foothills is a good idea. In my case I have never been higher than just under 4000m and have never had altitude sickness so I don't know what my limits are. Maybe I should head up Kilimanjaro (just under 5900m) but I think I'll pass, and maybe Everest tourists should be required to walk up Kilimanjaro - or an equivalent - before tackling the big one.

When I read "Brain fry" I started wondering if zombies preferred their brains raw or cooked.

Is your phone AI capable? I bought a new one a year ago (the old one was out of OS support) and made sure that mine was not.
My second line in the sand is to use DuckDuckDo as the search engine, although I'm preparing to experiment with Brave's. Replacing the messaging app could be more difficult, especially if I want to keep my history.

I don't have a TV at all, but I have Cable and use it for Internet access at around 350 Mbps. It is far cheaper than any of the prices I've seen mentioned here (as in around $60 a month), no reason to change.