SwizzleStick

First block on my list ¯\(ツ)/¯

Cx File Explorer does the job for me. Does local, cloud and network - SMB included.

Just set up the location and go.

Arstechnica is a Condé Nast fluff piece machine.

Hackernews not so bad, but still owned by YC. They are investors in Reddit and seeded a lot of other tech startups.

You are not overreacting for wanting the services offered without the egregious data harvesting requirement. However, that’s the level of service your employer pays for. Price of admission.

Attempting to fiddle with the device when it is clearly externally managed is a bad idea, especially now you have put the gears in motion for a return.

You are overreacting by thinking that they will obtain anything valuable or anything that can be leveraged from it, if returned now in the state you leave it.

Your employer has already shared plenty of information about you with the provider simply by enrolling you in whatever health plan this is. That horse has long since bolted and the barn door is swinging in the wind.

The device data will add nothing useful to what they have already, unless you actually use it.

I assume the app is internet dependent & any self-sourced device using the app would just give up data regardless, or that the app would not function if you successfully castrated it.

In your position, the only way forward while keeping your scruples is to either convince the provider to give you the item without the bullshit, or seek alternative options.

We’ve opened a piefed instance too - early days yet though: piefed.zip

If anything like how they were before - dead easy. I had one for my old HTC Hero that was just a chunky ass battery with a bigger back to suit. Wouldn’t put it past a manufacturer now to make it difficult on purpose though.

You can get ‘charging cases’ that are loaded with an extra battery, cover the phone, and plug into its charging port as a workaround for sealed devices. There’s usually a button that switches the case on and starts charging the internal battery from the external one.

Whatever way you go for setting up the systems themselves, I’ve found dwservice.net to be perfect for accessing systems with only a browser.

The host component is Mac, Windows and Linux compatible. The clients need only an account at DW. Hosts tied to your own account can be shared with others.

Depending on host OS, you get screen, terminal and fire transfer access. Sessions are logged if you need to review who’s accessed what.

Free. Donation optional.

I condensed down from a power hungry tower server to a couple of thinkstations and a nas. Much nicer on the power.

It’s better to name known safe options rather than leave it up to user search. The entities that work against extensions like uBO are already well aware of their existence, so hiding their names has no benefit.

Case in point - uBlock and uBlock Origin are not the same, with the former being a bastardised version that does ‘acceptable ads’. There are plenty of other poor blocking options out there for the unsuspecting to stumble into besides that.

Personal setup is Librewolf/uBO on the client and pfBlockerNG/Snort for network level blocking/additional security layer.

And welcome to .zip :) Hope you enjoy the new home!

Effective, but I don’t think I could start my day with such existential dread…

Roomies are temporary, but the scree in your ears is forever. I’ve adapted - it has been my unwanted yet constant companion for decades.

Others can mentally struggle with it, especially if onset is sudden and permanent from otherwise normal hearing. Fairly high up the symptom list for brain tumours as well, so that’s just swell for new sufferers that now need their head inspected.

Protect your ears, kids. We only get two and they’re very easy to damage in today’s noisy world.

After replacing most of my mid-high frequency hearing (starting from 1000Hz and nosediving thereafter) with tinnitus - no tone, just vibration. Rattling away in the cradle does the job.

On the bright side, I am rarely woken or kept awake by noise.

Wholegrain mustard is also a great addition to mash. Does very well as a side to beef.

Well we can do you the dragon at least: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

🧠 + a few slapdash notes in a password manager. It’s very organic, very human.

Occasionally leads to situations like this.

Which in turn can be slang for vomit. Wonderful :)

At that point I would expect control of it, or at least for it to respect the configuration it is given. If neither are true, then it just doesn’t go online at all. If that’s part of the main function, then I find an alternative or live without it.

Nothing on the inside should be sending anything to the outside that can’t be inspected before it leaves, with the exception of stuff that is directly driven by a human (guests browsing, etc).

This is the best way, really. Generally, you have much more control over what you plug into it.

A display shouldn’t have anything even approaching what can be called an ‘OS’ on it. Yet here we are.

Sometimes even that’s not enough. I’ve had some questionable kit before that would just ignore the DNS settings fed to it if it thought they were no good, and fall back to something else preconfigured.

pfSense is a wonderful tool for situations like that. Anything intended for local use only here just doesn’t get outside at all. Handy for stuff like a fire stick that only needs to be calling up a local media library.

It can also mangle any DNS requests going out to a different server and redirect them to itself instead. You could do this without it with iptables/nftables on a generic Linux box, but pfSense makes it much friendlier.

There are other packages that can do the same, but physically all you need is one piece of hardware as a bouncer that manages connections between inside/outside.