To expand on the container/vm idea, for someone that’s never done such a thing before, installing whatever OS u want (windows or other) in virtual box then setting the network get internet only from the vpn would be a very secure but not all that hard to do.

The easiest way for a beginner would however be to use a VPN that have its own software with built in kill switch, then you select whatever program you want killed if the vpn goes down, and it just exits that program. (If your paranoid research DNS leaks first)

Strange, I have had notifications show up when I’m not in the app

I have also recently moved and it makes me wonder, will users moving to other instances affect the graph?

Old Thinkpads make great Linux laptops with almost all models having all drivers working out of the box. Any model sufficiently new will work much better than any new laptop in the same price category. They also have great ports, replaceble batteries, screen, keyboards, ram, ssd and so on. I have a X250 and my wife have an T440s.

Buy anything newer then this (40 is my recommended minimum) if u want to use them as daily driver:

X440 (the smaller 13 inch laptops start with X)

T440 (14 inch, top of the class performance vs sleekness)

L440 (14 inch, don’t know what’s special here)

W540 (15 inch, workstation)

Some models can end with an S or P, example T440S. S models are thinner, P models are more powerful.

Just search your local marketplaces for “ThinkPad” then look for a picture of the screen and you will see the model number in the bottom left corner. ThinkPads have a red nob on the keyboard, so if the picture don’t have a nob, you can flick past it quicker 😉

You can even get one with the wrong keyboard layout and just replace it, they have so many replacement parts on ebay you can build one from scratch if you wanted. I replaced my keyboard to get backlighting and my screen to get 1920*1080 on a x250 I got for about 125 Dollar.

PS: don’t get a E variant, they are the budget variants with way worse build quality.

Edit: formatting

Nvidia will probably get better in the future (2024+) due to some great work being done on the open source driver. So as you say, I would also recommend AMD unless you rly need Nvidia for something specific like developing for RTX or something. I have recently gotten my Nvidia 2070 eGPU to work after many hours of debugging, while all my AMD cards work out of the box.

This is a bad thing. Google could easily make it so you can’t use any of their services like YouTube and Gmail without using their browser.