These days if you say you're English you'll be arrested and thrown in jail

You can't say anything these days Phil

are you the Daniel Gackle mentioned at the bottom of the article or a different one?

You can get the browser to confirm you want to close the tab. That's what I did with my little single-file scrapbook thing: http://kaimac.org/posts/scrapbook/index.html

Have you tried using Ladybird? The performance is unfortunately not very good. On the other hand Dillo loads pages instantly, even if most pages don't look right.

you could detect the supporting electronics with a nonlinear junction detector but they are not cheap

Not a single mention of the obvious privacy concerns in the article

"just"

could be great news for linux adoption

VL53L0X

If you are lucky, you can get these starting at 1,20€ apiece on AliExpress.

Edit: yes, currently available for 1,29€ in the bundle sale ("Free shipping for three or more items"). Whenever possible, try to get the ones without pre-soldered header pins and solder them yourself. Soldered pins bend very easily during shipping.