But it’s getting so hard nowadays
It’s a sliding scale; it isn’t just ‘full privacy’ or ‘no privacy’. Everyone makes compromises somewhere based on their personal preferences. Most people would agree posting their credit card number on a public forum is too far into the ‘no privacy’ band, for example.
how does privacy improve the world
It’s up to you, but I don’t like trusting my personal info with untrustworthy companies.
If you have a username attached to a publicly posted comment, people will be able to see your history. The internet is forever. Publicly posted comments are, by definition, not private. Treating them as such, in any capacity, is a mistake.
The biggest thing is to not post personal details, or to even post accumulations of details over many comments that can narrow things down. The weather where you are at the time, what type of car you drive (or your lack of a car), what type of job you have, etc, etc, etc. On their own, each of these pieces of information don’t mean much, but you start putting them together and you can narrow things down considerably.
It is also not a bad idea to occasionally throw in some misinformation about yourself. Maybe you don’t drive a Corolla, but instead a Hilux.
A notable way to protect against this is to use a VPN. Then the operator only knows you use a VPN.
Also need to be careful of what you write in comments (this is a public forum!). People sometimes write a surprising amount of detail about their life and it makes it much easier to narrow you down to a single individual the more you do it.
For a laptop, Framework is absolutely peak for repair and upgradability. They even offer newer generation motherboards that continue to work with older generation framework laptops. Enabling you to upgrade the core components while not having to rebuy the chassis, monitor, etc.
For a desktop, either build one yourself or buy from one of the companies that assemble it for you. Companies like Maingear.
If it is full disk encryption or for file containers I plan to update regularly, VeraCrypt. It’s quite capable and has quite a number of encryption options.
For individual file or folder encryption, 7zip. It’s a very straightforward program that is worth having installed given how much good of an all-round zip program it is.
I use Protonmail as they offer quite a bit of privacy, offer lots of features, and are free. I particularly like that they protect from tracking pixels notifying the sender you read their email.
An iPhone SE might be a solid option. A new one is $429 and a used one is much, much cheaper.
Note: They come out with an SE every few years, so if you are buying used or reading reviews, pay attention to which generation it is.
Your best bet is to pickup a new flash drive. Luckily, a quality 256 gb flash drive is like $25 now.
7zip also allows for higher compression levels than the built in Windows tool. Would check that out as well.