Actually I do expect a certain degree of privacy while in public. No everyone is comfortable with Google spying and data mining everything they can get their hands on.
The quality of their books is decent, but O'Reilly books are typically clearer to read and more focused. I might buy this book today, simply because there is currently no O'Reilly book on Go (not even early access).
I wish someone would provide an early access book on Rust (even if it is a bit of a moving target).
I would strongly discourage the use of compiler plug-ins, especially those which modify the bytecode. Not only does it make for code which is hard to follow and difficult debug, but most of them break with each new JDK release, often in unpredictable ways, forcing you to wait for updates.
Given the choice I always pick Scala over Java. Maintaining legacy Java code with AspectJ, Lombok and other behind-your-back bytecode manipulations are literally the bane of my existence.