concur, fundamentally the always online functionality is a "nice to have" but it's also shouldn't be something people are made to depend on. thinking on it some more, the only way I can see microsoft ever encroaching upon individual user's privacy is if they were ever made universally liable by a government for how the user/s was/were using the/their computer/s. which basically is a legal impossibility.

true enough that non-internet connected windows machines are an incredibly niche part of the windows user base. however, they still wouldn't be able to exert that influence as you claim as there will come a point where privacy concerns will be brought up, and that will likely kill any possibility of this in Europe for instance and thus set a precedent that will probably be followed around the rest of the world. so I wouldn't be so certain personally.

I get a dialogue from Microsoft defender smart screen that looks mighty similar to this whenever I've done a clean install of Oobabooga's Text Generation WebUI (for running local Large Language Models) with it basically going "are you really sure about running that" for an incredibly niche piece of software. OP seems to have lost the plot if you ask me, because quite frankly Microsoft will only be able to exert the level of influence over our machine if it were in the cloud running on their servers. and even then, they aren't going to kill off the local windows install because funnily enough, the internet ain't that available.

In medium to high theft risk cities, I'd say go for an escooter of some description as you can keep it closer to you in almost all circumstances but... they're really only any good for moving you not you and cargo which defeats the biggest benefit of forgoing a car for a PEV of some description. Can't win basically.

I've been wanting to get a new ebike for a while now and I ended up going down a rabbit hole with regards to how the electric system works on ebikes as well as the legal status and definition of them in Australia (where I live). that was interesting if concerning reading all round which is why I still haven't bought the ebike/kit sadly.