Here’s my take: the bear thing is causing such a visceral reaction that it is very hard to take a step back, not take it personally and have a rational discussion about it.

Imo the bear thing was phrased in a way to cause that visceral reaction. It was intended to be antagonistic. If the same point was phrased the way you phrased it above, I want to believe we would have much more civil discussion about it. But instead, the posts put many male readers on the defensive and those that tried to explain were seen as defending this antagonistic stance.

That is no excuse for DM harassment or harassment on other posts, just my take on the reason the discussion turned so uncivil.

That being said, it apparently does not affect Mullvad apps on any platform other than iOS (Apple does not allow fixing it on iOS). I suspect other serious VPNs are also not vulnerable outside iOS, since it is prevented by simple leak prevention mechanism.

No, it works at any point and the local network needs to be compromised (untrusted), the host can be secure.

So it is likely not an issue at your home unless you have weak Wi-Fi password. But on any public/untrusted Wi-Fi, it is an issue.

It does not seem available on mobile. On desktop, it is an extension called “Temporary Containers”. You may also want the official “Firefox Multi-Account Containers” for managing sites where you want to stay logged in.

I use Firefox temporary containers. So not only are they deleted 5 mins after I close a tab, but different tabs don’t share cookies unless I explicitly allow it or the tabs are opened from one source (e.g. open link in new tab)

Well, this is a bit tricky to answer:

1. The e-sim in a phone is a separate chip with proprietary firmware. The chances of a FOSS version of this HW are nearly nonexistent. It would require developing your own silicon and putting it into your own phones. Chances of FOSS FW for this proprietary HW are also very small, because it is difficult and there is not much reason to do so.
2. Currently, registering an e-sim requires a proprietary app (usually google). There is no FOSS alternative. Work on one is slow and there are some IP issues.
3. Using an e-sim does not require a proprietary app. So you can remove google services or remove their access to the e-sim HW once you have it registered. GrapheneOS uses this.