That would be easy to challenge under the same reasoning as what’s in the article, not to mention various anti-trust laws and ones covering anti-competitive business practices.

Doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to stop them, but it’s definitely not going to be as easy as them flipping a few switches and saying “watch ads on our browser with no addons or GTFO”.

Not even Microsoft in its monolith days was able to spend enough money to stop a legion of angry nerds with a severe case of “fuck you, you can’t tell me what to do”.

That too!

Still beats Samsung’s default keyboard on Android devices though. *shudder*

Would you accept “it’s the actual devil but also it’s buggy”?

Talk to your ISP about getting a modem only, without a built-in router, then purchase a separate router of your own. All-in-one modem/router combos are generally kind of crap anyway, and one that your ISP can control directly is obviously a problem on top of that. I get why they’d do that: most users don’t know a damn thing about how to properly set up their network, and being able to change settings without walking the users through it would simplify things. Still crap, but I get why.

Even if you have to buy your own modem, definitely go for a modem-only device and a separate router. Personally I go the extra length of having a modem, a separate wired-only router, and a separate wireless access point for wifi. Combo devices have a habit of not managing memory well and needing to be reset more often.

Pretty sure this is a bug. Gboard can freak out after an update and stop working. Sometimes you need to reinstall Gboard, sometimes switching your language to English makes it work again, sometimes it’s the TV freaking out over some USB device that needs to be unplugged and replugged.