I think about this often-- followed by Homer Simpson’s voice saying, “Better say something or they’ll think you’re stupid.”

I’m with you. Another perk is a sense of where you are on the planet. If I get up with the sunrise at 22:00 somewhere, then travel somewhere the sun rises around 18:00, it’s obvious the sun is hitting this part of the planet sooner.

If UTC were widely adopted, it’d be interesting to see what employers near time zones would do. EG start work at 19:00 or 20:00? 19:30? Flex-time with mandatory core hours from 22:00 to 02:00? Maybe I’m over optimistic, but it seems like it would encourage more flexible work hours.

It’s available to whoever is willing to pay. Consent is given when users agree to privacy policies and ToS. Unfortunately, unless you’re in the EU, it’s legal, and when companies violate permissive laws or suffer a data breach, the penalties are often inconsequential. The original comment was vague and didn’t specify the case. In the context of linux users vs MS and Apple, I’m leaning towards a distrust of big tech and “readily available for anyone” being inclusive of a multibillion dollar ad industry and the ecosystems developed around it. Though, technically not anyone can access every piece, so I guess we could dismiss it as a thing of the past.

Data brokers getting a kick out of this one.

requires terminal skills to deal with most things

Have you actually used linux? Terminal is optional. Most linux users use it because it’s rad, not because it’s necessary.

Digging through the registry or searching ad laden websites to find where a new setting or old menu is buried is more time consuming than typing man <command> or tldr <command>. The latter is to improve my system and the former to prevent a private company from making it worse.