No more than any other social network and more likely to be less so. This just seems to be a justification for future government action against the app/company.
I agree. I used Debian for a very long time but found a move to Sid for fresh packages to be a frustrating experience so I just moved to an ubu based system.
When they say base, they're talking about the distro it's built off of(Debian, arch, slack, fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). As an example, Mint is built on the Ubuntu base, Bunsen is built on Debian, etc. These are often called flavors as they're not considered distros but rather something built on top of a distro.
The major visible differences in distros are the package managers and tools provided for it but they also have different goals. Debian aims for rock solid stability, fedora puts FOSS first, Arch is designed to take up your free time by making you build everything from scratch and pointing you to a wiki when you're stuck (I kid).
The flavors then customize the experience, usually muddying the distro goals in the process. For instance, someone might take a fedora base then pack it full of proprietary software and release it.
I wouldn't say what you use is irrelevant but you can truly make every base look and perform the same if you do some work. People that don't like a particular base usually don't want to do that work, they want to use it. I'm one of those people. Where I used to love tinkering in Linux, now I just want to get it up and running so I can do my stuff on it.
Debian stable will always prioritize stability and provide you older versions of applications. Even Debian Sid(their testing/rolling release version) gives you less than bleeding edge versions of apps. You can always install your own versions by downloading from provider or building yourself but if you're wanting more current software, I'd consider another flavor of linux.
You can always install other themes, icons, etc. to get the look you want, Debian is just the underpinnings of the desktop. Using XFCE there is no different than using it in another distro.
The size difference is because of preinstalled applications, as you suspected. Some call it bloat, others just understand that Ubuntu is trying to cater to "set it and forget it" user.
I can't offer any new ones to you but I know Nova has the Google feed. I've had to disable it on the last few installs I performed. I've noticed not a single Pixel feature that Nova lacks.
I think that's a very apt summary of the case. It's our super-lotto.
Everyone knows(like even my elderly mom) that Google, FB, etc follow you everywhere and that they use that data. I would have no doubt those sites knew she was disabled long before she visited the DMV site. It looks like she just found a way to monetize it.
The article seems a little light on any single fact but does anyone know if there's any actual data that shows personal disability information being recorded/collected? Is the tracking code being served both on the public side and in the logged in portion of the portal? Absolutely no meaningful information was provided.
I know we can sue a sandwich, is this one of these lawsuits? "I found Google tracking code on the DMV site so it's time to earn my retirement" sort of thing?
Good for you.