There are several people who work on linux who live in California who thus are subject to California laws. There are people who don't live in California who sometimes travel to California and thus could be subject to those laws at times (see a lawyer)
bluGill
Many projects are doing the "not for use in California" thing. I'd set the birthday to yesterday - it is the safest. This is only useful as a do-not-track, and kids get the best protection there. For anything else - kids are well able to change their birthday on the computer, so if you want to protect kids from harmful content (whatever that is - no two people agree if you dig deep enough) you need something that is stronger than a claimed age.
"you'll settle for whoever's around" is a compelling argument - if whoever is around happens to be good enough. Sometimes she is (I'm assuming she for discussion) good enough and so it doesn't matter. Also we have established living in the sticks is important (otherwise move to the city), and so you need to settle for someone who is willing to live in the sticks - that someone is likely already living in the sticks. Beware, I know more than one person who was burned on a relationship where she (in the cases I personally know it was she, but no reason it couldn't be he) was excited to move to the sticks - until she discovered how far it was to everything she liked about the city and the relationship wasn't worth that cost to her.
There are few places where the waitress sets you up. However that is more likely to happen in a rural area: everyone knows everyone, and they "want" to help each other. In cities everyone knows you also know people they don't and so they are somewhat less likely to do this (it still happens)
Remember out in the sticks there is only a few people - but they have less options and so they are more likely to discover you. Have lunch at the local cafe and the waitress will try to set you up with the one single person in town. In a city that won't happen. Of course if that one single person is worth your time isn't something I can answer, but your odds of getting a first date are higher anyway.
You are starting from the wrong side - what do you want to do? Where are the problems in your life? Is there someplace/thing where a small screen or camera would help if only you had it? Lights/devices you want to control from a location where this is no switch?
I put a weather station on my home assistant dashboard - but it turns it is never the forecast I need so I google the weather anyway. So from my experience the mini weather isn't worth it. (I do use my dashboard for other things worth it, but it is a 20 inch monitor visible). Reports are other people in the world have and love their weather station display, ymmv.
Don't forget to ask your family/roomates. They may have an issue that you don't see.
I try for yesterdays date. Kids get some legal protection I want.
What matters is the whole community. Statistically it happens to someone in your community. Society wasted a lot of fuel (read global warming) just on low tire pressure.
Surveillance is a problem. So is global warming.
Most countries will assist investigations of their own citizens who break laws like this and send them to whatever country the law was broke in. Sometimes a country will decide some law is invalid in their country and so they do this, and sometimes the crime isn't seen as worth trying to bother with, but crimes are enforced in other countries all the time. This isn't just the US, the US also sends its own people to other country. Most countries figure if you would "hack" someone in a different country you will do that at home too so they don't want you. There are lots of treaties that outline this in great detail.
There is a reason most computer crime gets traced to Russia, North Korean, or Iran - those countries will protect their own from this type of crime.
It doesn't matter though. Countries can easially say who is trusted to provide age verification. Just like I can make my personal web server answer to google.com - but if somehow your computer connects to that it will warn you that it isn't a trusted site.
They can, but both of those are often encrypted such that it is at least hard. TPMS isn't encrypted so it is easy to figure out what cars are going by.
You can get close enough just clipping some weights of the same weight as the sensor to the valve stem. A static balance isn't hard to do - not nearly as good as the proper dynamic balance the tire shop will do, but often good enough.
If you didn't check your tire pressure in the last 20 minutes how do you know you didn't just drive over a nail and get a slow leak? TPMS checks every few seconds so you know when there is a small problem. Anyone will notice a fully flat tire, but a lot of people used to drive on low tire pressure for months without knowing. Once someone knew their tire had a problem they would check daily (until they got it fixed), but many people never knew in the first place, and even though who did know often took a week before they found out - they of course have no way to know since nobody checked their tire pressure daily much less every 20 minutes.
If you get too picky you will never find anyone. Loneliness can be worse than setteling for good enough. There is of course too bad, and this is all personal, but there are too many different things to look at to demand perfection in more than a couple places. Which things you demand is up to you of cousre.