I’m the author of that post.
I’d like to encourage you to try it, though. Eventually I didn’t think it took me much time, in particular not in comparison with the time and effort it had taken me to ‘diagnose’ the problem. Just some additional pointers to the (excellent) instructions as in that post I referred to (“https://support.google.com/nexus/forum/AAAANseOu18DRVyGHFAdjA/?hl=en&gpf=%23!topic%2Fnexus%2FDRVyGHFAdjA”) below.
On the cited page “https://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/index.html?pkg=tools” I pressed the “DOWNLOAD ANDROID STUDIO” button, then left settings as default.
I used Android Studio – I didn’t try the solution using “Minimal ADB” as suggested on “Mobile hotspot issue : no more internet connection” as an alternative.
The Android Studio Setup Wizard “Downloading Components” prompt also showed the location of the “sdk\platform-tools folder inside the Android development kit folder”: “C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\platform-tools” in my case (Windows 10 Home).
When using the shell, first time around I wasn’t aware that I had to confirm something on the phone – the error message I got said “Otherwise check for a confirmation dialog on your device” and indeed this confirmation dialog turned out to be there (i.e., on the FP3).
Also, I assumed that “Hook up your phone to the computer” as in the cited post meant ‘try and connect to PC from phone using hotspot functionality’, and that “$ exit” meant “quit[ting] the android development kit” and indeed this seemed to work.
As another note, at some point I thought that the problem I encountered might have been due to Vodafone UK not allowing tethering/hotspot, but I haven’t found any indication that this is the case so I still think that the described ‘hack’ is a fine solution.