DNS request will go to the DNS server but from what I can tell the packet wont go anywhere else. At least on my own network, traceroute gives only one entry and its the final destination. I assume this is because the router knows its own public IP and as such knows the packet doesnt need to be sent anywhere else.

That, plus I think its to get you more invested. Like if you have the app on your phone you might want to use it again, or youll forget about it and then see it later and think about their product/service/whatever.

In the modern age so many things that should just be websites are apps and many things that should be apps/programs are websites

Obviously this is subjective, but I use android auto all the time and something similar for a linux phone would be really nice for me. Don’t dismiss them just cause you wouldn’t use them

Ok, the openAI thing is not great. However…

they advertise themselves as degoogled, but instead let you connect to Google/Microsoft/etc services

What the fuck are you talking about? Degoogled doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to connect to Google services. It just mean that it doesn’t require Google services to function and that the default configuration shouldn’t include any Google services. If the end user actively wants to use google/microsoft/etc services then they should be able to. It seems as though you are advocating for an open source operating system to lock itself down from allowing the end user to use certain features, which is against the FOSS ethos. Remember, “free” as in “freedom.”

I’m not familiar, but it does look useful. Seems to combine the best of both png and jpg, with the power of jpg’s compression with the option of lossless compression + support for transparency or whatever else you might want to have a channel for

Webp is honestly a really good format for what its made to do. That being said, windows support for it is lacking for some reason. I don’t know why as it’s been common for a long time now.

Also, you can always use ffmpeg to convert to png or jpg or whatever you want. Simple file conversions like that are super easy.