It was all a bit of a blur, but I recall there were lots of lapdances, champagne, and getting in a hot tub with a bunch of strippers and doing karaoke.

Not to go to the strip club when drunk. I blew like $5k in one weekend, never going back again (at least, not when I’m drunk).

I’m unware of “woke” culture (or political terms such as right or left), but why would having a Gender Equality title be the target of attacks? A title like that should also, in theory, cover people who are transgendered, non-binary, intersex etc, so pretty much everyone in the country should be included. I’m not sure why “woke” people would take offence to this? Are they a gender that doesn’t fit in any of the currently established genders or something? Wouldn’t “woke” people also benefit from any decisions made by this minister, so why would they be offended?

I’ve been using a Danish made one called Nifisk King for more than a decade now (which I bought second hand btw) and is still going strong. As you said, the bags themselves are a filter, but there’s also a second filter that sits in between the bags and the inside of the vaccum (which btw, you get free every time you purchase a ser of bags), and of course the main HEPA exhause filter, which almost never gets dirty (had to change mine only once in the past decade).

Don’t get a bagless. At least, as someone with allergies - I (my nose) can tell you that bagged vaccum cleaners are much better. The main HEPA filter lasts for ages (I’ve only changed my once in the last decade), thanks to the double filtering - the bag ls themselves are a filter, plus there’s a second filter that sits in between the bags and the inside of the vaccum (which btw, you get free every time you purchase a ser of bags).

The main advantage of bagged is of course the maintenance/cleaning/disposal - when it’s time to empty out your vacuum, just open the hatch and chuck out the bag and you’re done - no risk of dust or tiny insects like dust mites etc spreading around. Especially in this era of microplastics - you don’t want to inhale all the microplastics you’ve just vacuumed up now do you?

The most effecient way is to NOT peel potatoes. Why would you ever want to peel them? Potato skin is yum and rich in nutrients, whereas the flesh is mostly carbs. By throwing away the skin, you’re not only wasting nutrients, you’re getting rid of the texture and fiber it adds.

Texfaces

They’re called Kaomoji btw.

https://www.unicodepedia.com/kaomoji/

but once it’s written, any common criminal can use it.

It’s not that simple on ARM world, every device uses a different bootloader and has a different partition layout, different boot image resolutions and different type of warnings. So you’d have to a custom bootloader written for each model you sell, or just pick one model and reduce your audience.

They could use the compromised phone they sell you to phish or ransom you.

It’s far more safer to just compromise a website or phish via emails/websites/fake apps, instead of selling malware on eBay and risk getting caught. And way way more easier to just make fake phone calls and pretend to be Microsoft support and then grab their credit cards or install malware on their PCs. So many easier and safer (anonymous) ways to scam people.

All of those only work if the software already on the phone allows them to work. Factory resets, updates, and USB flashing are all implemented by software.

Now you’re entering the realm of really hypothetical scenarios here. Sure, what you’re describing is theoretically possible, but faking the fastboot firmware is even more advanced than just simply patching the bootloader warning screen. If something like this was happening widely, we’d have heard about it by now. After all, Android phones have been around for 15 years. Now there have been a couple of instances of dodgy no-brand manufacturers/sellers shipping malware, but even these were just simple userland malware, nothing at the firmware level.

If you are that paranoid, then I guess you don’t buy any piece of electronics from any retailer, and buy everything directly from the manufacturer always? I suppose you also walk directly to the factory, personally inspect the entire manufacturing and software development of the phone you intend to buy - because you don’t trust the supply chain right? Sure, you may trust the manufacturer, but do you really trust the parcel package, the driver, the delivery person? Where do you draw the line exactly? Because in your hypothetical world, anyone can be a hacker right?

but it is probably also possible to unlock the boot loader and then replace the boot loader itself with one that merely pretends to be locked. How would you know the difference?

Sure, in theory, but doing that would require advanced knowledge, it’s not something a random shady seller on eBay would do. With skills like that, they could easily get a high paying job, or if they really want to be a criminal, a better option would be getting into something like phishing or cryptolocking, which, skills wise, is easier than writing a custom bootloader.

Obviously criminals aren’t going to install security patches for vulnerabilities that they are exploiting.

Which is why the first thing you should do is do a factory reset, update the phone, and do another factory reset. Or an even better option would be to just flash the factory firmware downloaded directly from the vendor.

Yes it will. There’s no way to bypass it, if there is, that would be a serious security flaw - the kind that would get patched very quickly. There have been some phones which had a vulnerable bootloader that allowed this in the past (eg: OnePlus devices), but there’s no such exploit available for current generation devices

I’d like to see some sources backing up your claim, which is applicable to current generation phones.

And rooting the phone requires an unlocked bootloader, which would present a warning when the phone is booted up.

No

Gacha/pay-to-win games.

I don’t. In fact, I don’t send birthday wishes to anyone unless they’re really close family/friends. Otherwise it just seems fake, there’s no point wishing someone if it doesn’t come from your heart.

Pretty much most manhua/manhwa. There’s sadly no manhua/manhwa community here.

eBay is fine. Just check the seller’s reputation first before buying.

If overall positive feedback is greater than 99%, and they’ve sold hundreds of items, then there’s no problem buying from them.

I’ve bought dozens of phones from eBay over the last two decades, never had any issues.

And?

By checking whether the bootloader is unlocked or not. If the bootloader is unlocked, then all bets are off, but if the bootloader is locked, you can only run the original, unmodified firmware. Any alternation to the firmware will result in the dm-verity check failing, causing the system to not boot at all. The only data which can be altered is user data, which is wiped in a factory reset. So a factory ressr definitely gets rid of it.

If you’re paranoid though, you could always flash the stock firmware downloaded directly from the manufacturer’s website, which will override all system partitions, so you can be absolutely sure there’s no spyware - besides the spyware included by Google etc of course, or the spyware embedded into the hardware by the chip manufacturers…

Swappa is US-only, it seems that you’re in the UK so forget about Swappa.

This sort of scam would only work for sellers with zero/bad reputation. Only an idiot would buy from a seller like that.

If the overall positive feedback is greater than 99% and they’ve sold hundreds of items then there’s no problem.

I’ve bought dozens of phones from eBay over the last two decades, never had any issues.