Because they don’t go on the public roads, or don’t consider lives of ordinary Russians to be important enough?

You could set up Tailscale on any device in your network and access it through that. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.

Yeah, that would definitely help

How does running your music service through a VPN improve privacy?

Why do you need to be behind VPN?

Which OEMs are as bad as Apple is, can you show me an example? I had no idea to be honest

I was talking about other OEMs that you’ve mentioned. It’s obvious what Apple does

Do you mean having a lot higher margins on upgrades? I don’t think that’s true either, but maybe they’ve been getting more aggressive on that front over time.

Apple’s RAM/storage prices have been unhinged for a long time. I try to avoid any upgrades when I buy their products, it’s usually better to get the higher model - I.e. with better processor/better product line (which usually has a better starting RAM/storage), than to upgrade a base model

From Zigbee devices I’d highly recommend the ones from Ikea (Somrig, Styrbar, Symfonisk - depending on what you’re going to use it for), and there are a lot more on AliExpress.

Another route might be using ESPHome and program something like Cheap Yellow Display (5-10$ on AliExpress) with LVGL.