Depends on your price point, but the 8a might be a good middle ground. It’s got the 8 year update support and is second to newest so it’s a tad cheaper.

I don’t know if you can or not, although I can confirm you can use Google Maps in a web browser if you grant the google maps website location access, and it’s pretty one to one with the app I believe. It does require you burn through mobile data if you don’t have unlimited since you can’t download offline maps, but the web version has gotten me out of a jam when open source map apps fail and if you don’t worry about data it might be worth trying.

If you are looking for a generic phone with good privacy and usability I would highly recommend a Pixel with Graphene OS. If you’ve never flashed a phone before, you can install Graphene within a web browser and never need to do any of the more complicated flashing stuff like most other setups require. It also allows you to optionally install Sandboxed Google Play Services (on the main profile or isolated on a second one), letting you access normal apps while still having some of the privacy and performance benefits of an otherwise de-Googled phone.

Also possibly Fennec for mobile. It’s Firefox based but cleaned up like Librewolf.

That and Brave & Vivaldi have built in adblock that allows them to keep MV2 era adblocking despite being Chromium based.

Been seeing that a fair bit too lately. Freetube, Grayjay, and Newpipe seem so sometimes get around it, even if the error is in the browser the video will sometimes load in those apps from the same IP. If you get lucky and find a working invidious/piped instance that might work too.

Otherwise, turning on a VPN and switching between servers will usually eventually lead to a working one. That, and if you’re up for it, check to see if your favorite creators are on places like Peertube, Odysee, or Rumble that don’t block IPs like YouTube does.

Mozilla gets millions in donations, but they give millions to their CEO and millions to political activists. Had Mozilla demonstrated they couldn’t survive on donations alone I (and presumably others) would be a little more forgiving. But right, from my perspective, it looks like the board is using the Mozilla coffers as their personal piggy bank instead of making a good faith effort to do anything that would allow them to survive without enshittifying.

I think the ublock origin lite thing was a legitimate mistake, though I understand Mozilla’s depleting benefit of the doubt.

Systems used by courts and governments across the US riddled with vulnerabilities

crazy how as soon as mozilla does good stuff nobody is there

We’re all glad to see Mozilla have a win, at least I assume so. But there’s been a lot of other much bigger decisions that have gone on recently that make us (at least me) hesitant to celebrate at the first good thing.

https://kbin.earth/m/privacy@lemmy.ml

Might be somewhat close to what you’re looking for

I believe that Google services collect a lot more data. You can also turn off telemetry in windows by disabling the service and such, so I’d probably say the big G is less private then Microsoft. Microsoft also has a slightly less tracking business model.

I know absolutely nothing about any martial arts, but my two cents is that if it beings you benefit and it’s not hurting anybody then it go for it.