That "small sample of telemetry and spying domains" also contains login pages and update downloads, among others. You're just saying everything Microsoft is telemetry and spying, here are all their domains.

Same with all those Apple domains. This is the world we live in now. Operating systems and most applications are now backed by cloud services.

How does one verify all those domains are not essential to the OS?

Microsoft explains what all (most?) of the domains are for

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-11...

Thanks. I think some apps do need to connect to Microsoft to deliver services like update and antivirus.

Some are used by the products itself to maintain reliability like maps and store.

Others are diagnostics, which can still be manually turned off.

Not sure why one would maintain a dedicated hosts file to block endpoints if they can simply configure this on app level itself.