gvurrdon

Indeed they did. I had to go to a branch to get a new security device, mine having run out of battery. This involved speaking to their customer support on the phone anyway, and they told me that. Telling them that the organisation (a local sports club using a charity account) had that policy caused them to back down, though they hinted that they wouldn't do so in future. As you might guess, I created the policy once they gave me the "not a valid excuse" line (I run the club). Their agent seemed very confused by my assertion that the app would not run, because it runs on Android and iOS (they claimed) and they presumably thought that those are the only smartphones which exist.

That their app wouldn't run on my phone "wasn't a valid reason" to not use it, they said. Luckily, it is a charitable/community account and an organisational rule prohibiting officers from having bank apps on their personal phones was accepted - for now.

When assisting friends of elderly relatives I was surprised to see that one of them had managed to set up a password of "a1".

This was happening to me on the desktop. I've not tried on a phone (I try to avoid PayPal).

Sadly, their website now appears to require an app in order to sign in. Even before that it would often block me with text along the lines of "We don't know who you are, call our support number."

In general I'd agree.

Curve demand a "video selfie" and I've never been comfortable with sending companies such biometric data.

I agree with you that iOS is just as not acceptable, and don't plan to switch to it myself.

Android does indeed still look better. But, I would not consider having to send a copy of my government ID to Google, or having them be able to block apps when so ordered by government, to be acceptable.

When I bought a Thinkpad a few months ago there was an option to order it with a smaller battery (which I selected).

Would there be any means of preventing apps from seeing one's phone number, IMEI etc.?

Definitely. I have spent the last few days trying to get a replacement "Digipass" device for a bank account I run for a small sports club. The bank was very reluctant to issue a new one as they want to move everyone onto their app to generate codes for logging in to their website. Trying to argue that even if their app worked now on a de-Googled Android device there was no guarantee that they wouldn't require Google's safetynet etc. at some point in the future was a failure. They did not understand this and decreed that the app not working, or possibly not working, on one's phone was "not a valid reason" to be excused from using the app. Luckily because the account is a business account I was able to claim that using banking apps on phones was against company policy (I set the policy myself), which is an excuse they were willing to accept. For now.

There has been very little change for me. The one area where AI has been of use is for providing debugging suggestions in those circumstances when I am so short of ideas that I am contemplating posting a question on Stack Overflow. Only once has Chat GPT actually found a bug directly, but on a handful of occasions it has made suggestions which have yielded results when investigated further in traditional way (e.g. reading documentation). Still, At least the AI actually does something rather than ignore me or scold me for the way I have posed my question.

Indeed; I could probably get away with the minimal uBlock Chrome now offers, but it's no good for me without the containers.