iPhones will transmit bluetooth beacons even if turned off. Fortunately the battery goes completely flat after a couple of weeks or so and then they no longer do. Unfortunately this is not very healthy for the battery.

Indeed. Never spend your own money on work related expenses. If your job requires a phone, they need to provide one.

Perhaps an NFC smart card you can carry in your wallet or phone case :)

Yeah, I'd rather read a 2 minute article than have someone stretch the explanation to 10 minutes for ad revenue or the algorithm or whatever the current YouTube enshitrification meta is.

Never connect a smart TV to the internet. That's how they get you.

Found the redditor

I was gifted an iPad for Christmas a few years back and quickly found out there's nothing you can do on it without either looking at ads or paying a subscription. I returned it before the factory battery charge ran out.

Their TVs will connect to open networks without asking you. Perhaps the fridges do the same.

Are there evidence it is really happening? Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? My neighbors aren't tech savy yet they use the wifi configured provided with the router which has a passphrase. I believe even in McDonalds you get the wifi password only upon purchase in the receipt. Most open networks I still encounter are in big stores such as IKEA or airports and you still have to register to connect. I doubt the signal woukd reach even the closest houses anyway.

> Are there evidence it is really happening?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867034

> Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood?

Some neighborhoods are mixed use. Some residences are in dense buildings. Some people configured guest networks with no password. Some ISPs made their home gateways captive portal access points.

Having a guest network doesn't mean it is open. It can just means you have a passphrase that is different than other home devices and that you may be isolating them in a separate VLAN.

I would never run an open network on my home connection, there are way too many legal risks unless you can log who is connect to it and when.

No one said guest network meant no password.

Yes, software on F-droid is free and reviewed for anti-features before publishing. Google Play has the worst, ad ridden, dark pattern filled, data guzzling, subscription packed, commercial slop with no real oversight on what gets published. Malware frequently gets on the Play Store, never heard of it being a problem on F-Droid.

Google is a malware services company. They profit when malware OBS is the first search result when you search for OBS.

I've found AM4/AM5 boards will still boot Linux without a discrete or integrated GPU, running a GPUless CPU, not an APU.