For me it comes down to “do I want pay for this product so it sticks around?”. If yes then I have to trust the org that makes it to be reasonably sensible. They’re probably going to do a better job of putting the money in the right place to stay in business than I am.

Subscribe to their VPN. I don’t use it, but do it to support Firefox

That is a shame - I’ve had a lot of fun with it over the years. I can’t find anything quite like it- does anyone have any ideas?

That pushed me over the edge to subscribe to the print edition

What are they starting to do that is shady and why do you think don’t respect privacy? (I couldn’t see anything on the document you mentioned)

Right click Onedrive Icon, settings, sync and backup, Manage Backup, turn off what ever you don’t want backed up. At that point all your desktop / document content will disappear (looks like Microsoft linked the normal and Onedrive folders, which is a useful trick occasionally) so move everything out of Onedrive back into your normal folders

It is shit but it’s easy to turn off.

The weather is a good starting point. How was your weekend? Any thing good planned for your holiday/ weekend? If they’re a talker they’ll fill in the space, if not then they’ll give perfunctory replies and you can revert to happy silence