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This is accurate. Additionally, the WebKit rendering engine that they have to use is open source, so not too bad imo

Random applications that use the play integrity API won’t work on any third party OSes or ROMs. For example I tried to install some Intuit app on my GOS Pixel a while back (credit karma I think?) and it didn’t work at all

Mostly LibreWolf, but I’ve been enjoying Zen Browser recently. It’s based on Firefox but with lots of cool extra functionality baked in. It is still in alpha though and I’ve experienced some bugs, including it crashing my whole system a couple of times, but it’s very promising

I’ve been into NixOS recently, not sure if I’m gonna stick with it long term but I’m trying to make it work. I love that it’s immutable while still allowing system packages, and declaratively configuring all of your common programs with home manager is super cool. Just have issues with scripts from the internet and trying to get nix-ld to cooperate

They’re agreeing with you…

On the topic of struggling to connect to self hosted services without a VPS or domain: check out mesh VPNs like ZeroTier or Tailscale. I access all my internal services over Tailscale these days and it’s super simple

By default Apple holds your iCloud encryption keys. So if you message somebody who uses iCloud without advanced data protection turned on then that encryption isn’t worth a whole lot, they can unlock it and have given up that data many times

As somebody who has used graphene for a long time, it certainly comes with sacrifices compared to stock android or iOS just by the nature of being a non-stock OS due to Google’s integrity stuff. The biggest thing I miss from my iPhone is putting my cards into my phone’s wallet and using tap to pay. Graphene can do concert tickets, boarding passes etc but not full GPay functionality. However that’s my biggest gripe. I still use iMessage for group chats that I’ve had for years where people won’t migrate; I host a BlueBubbles server at home and it forwards it all to my pixel. Never had a yubikey so I can’t speak to that issue unfortunately. I wish you the best of luck in finding workarounds or converting back, whatever is best for you. Remember that privacy is about balance; clarify your threat model and your social needs and work to find an appropriate compromise

It literally doesn’t do that

I mean yeah it does include data scraped from the web but that is all three years old at this point. Hardly a search engine by any metric

It’s not doing live queries at all, it just makes a statistically likely answer up from its training data

You should look into Gadgetbridge for your smart watch needs. I don’t think it’s compatible with that watch but if you get one that does work with it, it allows you to use it pretty much like normal but without any proprietary companion apps