The top cat uses ports to sort messages based on application.
Think pigeon holes, applications usually use protocols which are assigned a number by convention. The application gets it’s message out of it’s assigned ports instead of having to sort through all the messages.
Voter registration is public information and sufficient for cold callers.
If you live independently you will inevitably have to make privacy sacrifices for the sake of expediency. Having a bank account is probably going to be one of them. There are many essential services that you use but probably do not think of as an eighteen year old that may share information when you provide for yourself such as your phone carrier, ISP, utilities such as power, water, gas etc, insurance, health services, education or certification providers, employment or recruitment agencies, the list just goes on and you will have to thoroughly evaluate every company you interact with and in many cases there will simply be no realistic privacy respecting option.
Keep fighting to protect your privacy but don’t put an impossible burden on yourself to be perfect. You will make mistakes, you will make compromises, you will probably get spam. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
Linus Torvalds. He’s making a list.
Here is a really interesting video on lightbulbs which goes into how the light bulb cartel standard was more of a min-maxing of lifespan vs energy cost vs brightness than it was planned obsolescence.
I unfortunately can’t speak to this directly as I don’t have direct knowledge of ad blockers.
Yeah me too 
There are two doors, one is labelled “Leopards that will eat your face” the other “Cat cafe” both lead into the same leopard cage.
how did the power user payola compare to xi bucks?
I can excuse attempting to compromise millions of computer systems worldwide for nefarious purposes but I draw the line at violating the contributor guidelines of an opensource project.