Easy. Buy a new laptop, let them upgrade from w•ndows to arch, then dump arch for something like MX or whatever else I use in the future. Then I wouldn't have to touch the default w•ndows installation forced into me.
Look, windows is bad, but we should reserve asterisks for actually bad things that require censoring in all circumstances, such as Br*t*sh or *ng*l*sh.
Not sure what lists you're talking about, but it's nerding time anyway.
The backslash (the \ symbol) is used to "escape" characters in the software world, i.e. tell the software to treat the following character as a simple symbol, not some instruction. It's very well-known among developers, so if they happen to be the ones writing guides on Markdown (the syntax where you use asterisks and some other symbols to dictate the final layout while having the luxury of being able to edit the document in a plain-text editor), it can actually elude them because it's mundane.
In fact, some software won't allow you to use the backslash in short text fields such as names or passwords because doing so could potentially open up security risks where the malicious actors "inject" some instructions into software to cause all sorts of trouble. On the other hand, this is probably a redundant old measure, as there are usually other means to prevent this kind of attack today, but that's the power of habit, I guess; and, well, if it's a simple measure that works, there's not much reason to get rid of it, is there?
They're a disgusting affront to human nature. Of all the islands in the world, you pick a non-tropical one? Shameful actions, hominids are meant to be tropical creatures.