One of the things it asks permission for when hooking up Bluetooth etc is “call history”, “contacts” or “text messages”

I’d assume the system needs those to read it messages or call/redial. It wouldn’t need OCR to do other things with that data

I can’t recall if I limited to Google’s IP’s or not actually. Just that I wanted to prevent their devices from ignoring the DHCP provided hosts

I setup a NAT rule that redirects anything going to the Google DNS IP’s send sends it to my own DNS server.

I’ve had windows do this to me randomly before, especially if it’s an interface that comes up a bit late. Be careful that it doesn’t change back on you

Have you ever used PFSense? How do you find it compares to Opnsense, and - for anyone with experience - how hard would it be to migrate from one to the other these days?

GL-Inet AX1800

OpenWRT, accessible via the advanced (LUCI) interface. You can define a bunch of SSID’s including guest networks and/or bind them to VLAN’s

Also, use/borrow a multimeter and test the voltage output in the adaptor. Plenty of “dead” laptops I’ve seen were actually dead adaptors that failed to provide power and then the battery just ran out

I’ve tried to deal with several vendors regarding abusive domains and it’s pretty terrible in general. Everything is a webform with a generic responder - if any at all - and then weeks or months or nothing. Even domains impersonating proper commercial entities.

• GoDaddy: here’s the real domain, now here’s the domain registered via you, cloned from the real domain (including text, corporate logos, etc with some additional chinese crap) and being used for phishing/scams. Their response: “fill out this bullshit form that goes nowhere”
• CloudFlare: “uh, we don’t actually host the site (just the DNS and “protection” service that hides who does) sorry” Google: “we’ll continue showing the scam/phishing domain in top search results after your reports because apparently accurate search results aren’t actually our thing”

I’ve tried to deal with several vendors regarding abusive domains and it’s pretty terrible in general. Everything is a webform with a generic responder - if any at all - and then weeks or months or nothing. Even domains impersonating proper commercial entities.

• GoDaddy: here’s the real domain, now here’s the domain registered via you, cloned from the real domain (including text, corporate logos, etc with some additional chinese crap) and being used for phishing/scams. Their response: “fill out this bullshit form that goes nowhere”
• CloudFlare: “uh, we don’t actually host the site (just the DNS and “protection” service that hides who does) sorry” Google: “we’ll continue showing the scam/phishing domain in top search results after your reports because apparently accurate search results aren’t actually our thing”

I’ve tried to deal with several vendors regarding abusive domains and it’s pretty terrible in general. Everything is a webform with a generic responder - if any at all - and then weeks or months or nothing. Even domains impersonating proper commercial entities.

• GoDaddy: here’s the real domain, now here’s the domain registered via you, cloned from the real domain (including text, corporate logos, etc with some additional chinese crap) and being used for phishing/scams. Their response: “fill out this bullshit form that goes nowhere”
• CloudFlare: “uh, we don’t actually host the site (just the DNS and “protection” service that hides who does) sorry” Google: “we’ll continue showing the scam/phishing domain in top search results after your reports because apparently accurate search results aren’t actually our thing”

Even if it requires some screws to swap that’s still good for breathing extra life into old phones.

I feel like the implementation was a bit gimmicky. I first used an IR transceiver as a remote on a late-model palm and the interface was much better than most apps I found on Android.

I wonder if it would be possible to pack that functionality into a smart-watch

The big issue with laptops tends to be cooling, but something with a decent CPU and enough RAM can still do a good job since in many cases you’re not tapping the graphics chip/core, which is often the biggest source of heat.

That said, for small personal services even an 8GB Pi4 can do a pretty decent job.

You’re in luck for the battery thing. It’s basically going to be mandatory in the EU which should hopefully help push change everywhere