owenfromcanada

Google--not really a fan of the company, but the Pixels have been solid for me. The cameras have always been great, and weirdly, the bootloader has always been easy to unlock (I'm running LineageOS on my Pixel 7), so you can still get some modicum of privacy if you like.

Capitalism. Specifically, the stock market. IPOs make good companies into bad companies.

Being owned by stockholders effectively removes any amount of "human" in the company's choices and direction. There becomes a single goal, to which everything else is sacrificed: make stock prices go up in the short term. The C-suite execs will say all sorts of other shit, but any appearance of accountability or altruism is solely geared to making more money at any cost. Any leadership with a soul will be forced to either give up trying to be "good", or they leave.

Not sure what counts as "currently popular," but World of Warcraft is a bit intimidating for new players, just in terms of the scope and changing seasons.

Path of Exile is a bit rough, too. One look at the skill tree is enough to turn some people away.

Donkey Riding by Great Big Sea. Currently my 2-year-old's favorite.

And won't survive things like... getting sprayed with water.

I have a similar struggle reaching out. One trick I learned was to ask myself: if the positions were reversed, would I be annoyed or put off if this other person were reaching out to me?

I learned plenty of things watching my older siblings and seeing how they did things. I still make tons of mistakes, just different ones.

You might also enjoy a selection from Hark, a Vagrant.

I've been using LineageOS on my Pixel 7, and it's been great. As much or as little Google stuff as you want, plus more direct control. Updates are easy, overall would recommend.

Oh, there's a storm alright

It's not a matter of freedom, it's a question of desired functionality. If anything, keeping your data in a sandboxed area by default respects your freedom more (that is, freedom from other apps scraping your data).

If it's on Github, you could file a feature request to have that default behavior changed.

Assuming you're on Android, this is coming from the OS. It's still possible to save data in an externally-accessible place, but the default is storing things privately for each app. It's annoying for use cases like yours, but it's arguably better for overall security.