Natanael

There's literally tools to arbitrarily set and change Steam achievements

1: SteamOS don't run unnecessary services in the background. (especially stuff like print services and other random shit)

1b: Even regular Linux, which does run a bunch of extra services, still generally has less overhead because it's still being optimized for lighter weight systems, and it idles more efficiently too. Meanwhile Windows doesn't have a good way to tell your printer driver and its corresponding services to shut up when you're gaming.

2: Antivirus programs

3: Drivers, graphics system. This is both a plus and minus, but for performance mostly plus. More efficient driver model, less overhead again. Sometimes the performance comes from lacking features which doesn't get executed fully, though. Sometimes it comes from translating to Vulkan, because DirectX has some more overhead (and in these specific cases you can get the same performance boost on Windows by switching to Vulkan).

Passable cotton candy stick, if you're careful

I run a cryptography forum

Encryption doesn't hide data sizes unless you take extra steps

It's called traffic analysis

And you can't really close them again.

Timing of messages. They can't tell what you send, but can tell when

That lamp model has many hinges

This isn't solarpunk

Rubber duck debugging

You could tie it to requiring access to a digital ID (with password / PIN protection, etc), but yes kids could still "borrow" it

What you want is cryptographic Zero-knowledge proofs, not regular encryption. See anonymous credentials protocols.

And it does require every verifying entity to trust the issuer (each user could collect attestations from multiple issuers, to prove different things to different verifiers)

Another issue is the risk of deanonymization by verifiers simply asking for more proof of many different properties, until you can be identified anyway