Definitely amazon. Never even once seen an add on my Google home display. Never

Here's a good tip. Pressing Ctrl-S will show the new dialogue box for saving, which includes OneDrive and Google drive locations. But if you press F12 it will save directly to your local file system with the classic shell common save dialogue box. Also, even saving to OneDrive still keeps a local copy on your drive so that you have it offline/disconnected/etc.

Google won't let you save a document in their word editor without saving it to Google drive.

Same. Or some sites like ars require a visit to read the full thing

It's so much better than the algorithmic feeds Google tries to steer us to like with the Google Discover feed baked into their launcher home screen on Android, or the Widgets board with the MSN "Start Feed" Microsoft pushes on Windows 11. Obviously both with sponsored clicks all over them. Plus neither ever surfaces much I hadn't already seen from the RSS feed of the sources I follow already. Like you said, RSS is the way.

Didn't know about that. Also I wish more sites would post their feed link. Many have an xml feed but don't post the link so you have to guess to find it

Only barley started to dable so no recommendations so far. Saw a few projects on GitHub but so far still going along with Feedly. I'm probably weird with my habits because I use Feedly constantly to browse headlines of what's new, but I always push things to Pocket or now Instapaper to actually go read later (rarely I'll read something direct on Feedly). That's a lot of pushing links around and gathering them up in another place but it's what I've got so far.

I currently use Feedly but have been considering a self-hosted solution. I already run my own url shortener for example. It's the only way I see slashdot posts and also all my other news and feeds and blogs. Big and small. RSS forever.

It'd go a long way

Gemini also uses like a gallon of water and spews a ton of carbon into the air every time you use it.

Agree on all counts.

Typos because I used speech to text.

They're called preview updates and they're basically beta tests, so you can't install an optional update and then somehow be surprised that it has problems.

Mod parent up (I think that's the phrase, I'm still living in 2004 slashdot headspace.) But seriously.

I am privileged to have a bank so I don't have to literally cary my life savings on a flash drive that can be lost, stolen, damaged, broken, or just randomly quit working without notice. My money can't be permanently and irrevocably lost forever just because I sit down wrong and bend a flash drive in my pocket.