There’s 2 parts to this:

• Android Auto app (on your phone)
• Android Auto Head Unit software (in your car)

Both of which are currently proprietary,
and would need to be written as FOSS from the ground up by reverse engineering the above 2, which would be a huge undertaking.

Also flashing custom Head Unit software to your car will be very hard, is not well documented, and likely will void your warranty, giving low incentive for developers to even attempt it :/

The best you can do right now is aa4mg (Android Auto 4 MicroG),
which at least allows to replace the proprietary Google Play services with a privacy respecting FOSS alternative and Android Auto’s dependencies with empty stub packages:
https://github.com/sn-00-x/aa4mg

Full disclosure,
I helped with writing aa4mg :)

Been using VSCodium for a few years now, for loose file editing,
no complaints about it, imo it’s what VSCode should be.

uBlock Origin Filters to get rid of Copilot bloat on Github
uBlock Origin => Open the Dashboard => My Filters => Add:

github.com##.copilotPreview__container
github.com##.AppHeader-CopilotChat
github.com##li.ActionListItem:has-text(Copilot)
github.com##a[href*="/settings/copilot"]
github.com##a[href*="/features/copilot"]
github.com##a[href*="/resources/articles/ai"]
github.com###copilot_free_global
github.com###blob-view-header-copilot-icon

Also disable + block everything under: https://github.com/settings/copilot

Oh wow did not know that.

Well, if them spying on you and selling your data was not enough to make you switch to an alternative, then maybe/hopefully lack of search operators will be!

You can use the - (minus) sign,
which excludes pages that contain the word which has the - in front of them.

For example, currently I’m replaying GTA V single player, but when I search for content related to it, I’m often given articles about the online version.

To solve that I search:

GTA V <insert-topic-of-interest> -online

Which excludes all articles containing the word online.

I use SearXNG though,
but afaik this is implemented by most search engines.

Bootkitty?

However,
you can already patch your BIOS to become secure again! :)

All in all, Windows security is a joke compared to Linux’s.

My coping mechanism:
Block/filter out the news!
(Except for positive/uplifting news)

It does wonders for your mental health!

Most news sources are for-profit,
and they did some research,
apparently depressing news draws more attention / clicks, which results into more profit for them, but it isn’t good for your mental health.

Other news sources just drive an hidden agenda, and aim to manipulate you to believe whatever the rich guy that owns the news site wants.

Also, try to have fun while humanity is sliding down in the background!

Whether you’re depressed or acknowledge and then ignore the facts, will have zero impact on the final outcome which will apply to the whole world.

So might as well aim to be happy in the meantime :)

This is actually quite good news!
Hear me out though.

Encryption has been under attack by government instances for a while now.

They always aim to weaken / backdoor it,
so that they can spy on all their citizens.

China abused the backdoor implemented by the US government,
which sends a message across the world,
being: “Do not backdoor encryption to spy on your citizens, or other countries might abuse it”

Hopefully this will put a stop to governments attacking encryption, at least for a while,
since now they’re reminded of the risks which it brings! :)

Afaik Qubes runs all software in containers,
which isolates them from each other,
which is great for privacy.

However, OP only asked for Chrome,
and I assume the jump to Qubes might be too big.

To only isolate Chrome,
I’d recommend a Flatpak instead.

Or even better Ungoogled-Chromium.

Windows is not getting better,
CoPilot, Recall, all more unwanted spyware…

UniGetUI is a good way to maintain software on Windows in a Linux fashion through package managers,
however that does not change that the underlying OS is pure spyware.

Regarding AI, I filled it in as following:

• What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?
  • Other (please specify): Fuck AI
• In your opinion, what is the most important work for Mozilla to do right now?
  • Other (please specify): Do not implement AI
• What is most important to you in AI?
  • Select nothing

Yes, the script uses git svn under the hood,
however it simplifies the process of a fair amount of steps,
to just x1 easy CLI command with an in/output parameter.

Nope, only SVN => Git

SearXNG: https://github.com/searxng/searxng

It enhances and respects privacy,
is open source and self hostable,
and queries multiple configurable search engines (google, bing, brave, duckduckgo, …)

You can find a list of public hosted instances here:
https://searx.space/

However I prefer to slap an instance randomizer on top, so each of my queries goes through another public SearXNG instance, for more privacy, and mostly, to bypass rate-limiting after frequent queries.

For this I use:

• On Desktop - GimmeASearX:
  https://github.com/demostanis/gimmeasearx
• On the go - SearX NeoCities:
  https://searx.neocities.org/

That behavior fucking sucks actually

I posted a guide last year on how to do it on Eternity for Lemmy:

https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/6091026

Look it up on PCGamingWiki,
they usually list all configuration + compatibility changes that need to be tweaked:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home

Pro or anti consumer features? x’)

That’s true,
but hey, filtering and blocking out 90% of the unwanted/negative content is already way better then getting blasted by the full 100%! :D

Bliss for mental health indeed,
been doing this for a while now,
zero regrets.