Nearly every new electronic device is infested with data collection -- DataTheft -- that users neither want nor need. Corporations want us to give up trying to protect our privacy, but to defeat this unwelcome personal invasion we need a resource hub to help us find, identify, and disable or destroy components and firmware responsible for the theft. Should this Resource Hub be formed and funded as:
(a) Political lobbying group funded by contributions
(b) Repository and wiki for detecting and disabling DataTheft in devices, vehicles, etc., funded by contributions and sale of kits and tools if required
(c) Essentially a near clone of iFixit, funded by contributions, kit and tool sales, and bounties for specific research and methods
(d) Clandestine funding of Cowboy Neal's DataTheft Jammer to create a personal privacy field

Would you buy any device with 'smart' capabilities that cannot be disabled by the end user?

(1) Never
(2) Would pay more for a model with 'smart' disabling capability
(3) Would accept lesser performance and/or features for non-'smart' model
(4) Who cares? Let CorpGov track everything everywhere always

I am using Neeva Search + Protect for Firefox on Fedora Linux 35 with Decentraleyes, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Canvas Defender, Privacy Badger, Privacy Possum, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and Cookie AutoDelete extensions. I like Neeva Search very much, particularly in that when you click on a result you want to explore, it opens in a new tab instead of replacing the one you're on. I use about nine different computers from the same ISP IP and one using a VPN. For some reason Neeva Search seems to be limited to about four (?) systems and I don't know the reason for that but I imagine it relates to monetization. The results are generally very good and I seldom find anything on DDG that isn't shown in Neeva. I do use Google -- reluctantly, as they have removed the 'Don't' from their former motto of 'Don't Do Evil' -- but for image search I still find Google better. I have noticed that Google has become the next thing to irrelevant for things like electronics part number searches, for reasons others have eloquently described here. An education I did not want and certainly did not anticipate has made me seat-of-the-pants agile with NoScript et al, to see just what tricks I need to adapt to this week, e.g. for my favorite mainstream news sites. While I am not a terr'rist or any threat to anyone, I vehemently object to the entire DataTheft Enterprise on principle and, as a person at least peripherally involved in pre-WWW Internet, am profoundly sad that it has turned out to be everything we didn't want.

Using figures reported by QDirStat run as root in KDE 35 Plasma, for 1x 1TB SSD, 6x 10TB HD, 1x 6TB HD, not including external USB drives.

Files: 13,363,321
Subdirs: 302,019
Total Size: 27,167 GB

I don't send anything from my mobile tracking/datatheft device.
I use email from a desktop, secured.
Obviously, I am 'Not Of The Body'.

1) I use the gateway-router provided by my ISP
2) I use a branded gateway-router not provided by my ISP
3) I use a PC with a distro such as ClearOS for my gateway-router
4) I use a small single-board computer with gateway-router software
5) What is the best way to sharpen my router bits?

CorpGov wants to track everyone. Everywhere. Always. Cash is difficult to monitor. With your Personal Tracking Device in your pocket, and your identify-linking electronic purchases absolutely tagged to you and you alone, CorpGov feasts. They get to do whatever they want with everything you do that they can track, and what is more definitive and commercially valuable than what you buy? And where? And when? So of course CorpGov is doing everything it can to sow the seeds of doubt about the safety of carrying cash, which they cannot so easily track. As if they held your interests in mind at all, let alone paramount. 'Cash Is Dangerous' is true to the degree that you are Sheeple.

Kobo rarely even gets mentioned in ereader discussions, but it is better than any other device on the market for myriad reasons, chief among which are that: (1) it reads just about every format ebooks have ever used; (2) It is arguably more easily independent of any vendor lock-in, walled-garden BS than any other ereader; and (3) it *functions* better than most ereaders in the first place.

Combined with Calibre, nothing can touch it. I have the Kobo Aura H2O with well over 1000 hours use and that device has definitely qualified among the 'cold dead fingers' realm of my possessions. Note that I avoid all non-locally-controllable anything like the plague, especially including walled-garden, proprietary-diseased clouds and their ilk, where I am supposed to trust some third party -- who holds my wellbeing in the lowest possible regard -- to act in my best interests. No thank you. The Kobo line is as close to Open Hardware ereaders as we are likely to see in the near future.

WinOS 10 is not so much an operating system as it is a thin client designed to control a product.

The product is you.

I concur, the Logitech K800 has been a delightful surprise throughout the more than three years I have owned it. Though I am not a gamer, I used to be a typesetter and routinely cruised at 120 wpm on multi-thousand-dollar typesetting machines with superb and rugged keyboards (I can't type that fast anymore; it takes more practice). Consequently I am ruthlessly picky about keyboards, and while the K800 does not resemble those typesetter ones, it does offer stroke and action better than any *computer* keyboard I have ever used, including the IBM Model M. The keyboard is silent, the battery lasts for weeks even when left constantly powered on, the backlight is far more useful and responsive than I had imagined, and so far there is no noticeable wear on keys or their markings, apart from the spacebar having a shiny place where my thumb hits it. Cleaning is easy; switch it off, wipe it down, switch it back on. Very highly recommended.

I build home systems sometimes for clients, and the Wife Factor is frequently the most critical aspect. This has been true since I started in 1985, but is more true now as computers have become essential to so many households.

In my experience, the Fractal Design cases (e.g, the Define R4) have two wife-pleasing qualities:
(1) They are simple, elegant, unadorned museum quality sculpture-like mini-monoliths; and
(2) They are literally almost completely silent. I don't mean merely quiet, I mean you cannot tell whether the system is on or off. This is with fans, not water cooling.

Understand that this may not solve your real problem, which may be the mere presence of the machine in the living room. What it will do is force an honest exposure of the real issue, and besides that you'll still have a great case you can migrate components into and out of for years and years. Also it means you don't need a new rig, just new clothes for for the rig you already have.

Note that I do not have any relationship with that company aside from buying their cases for some system builds where they fit best. I will say that they are superbly designed inside, and the designers obviously build systems themselves. You'll know what I mean if you get one.

Kindred soul.

I have an Osbourne, the 801st IBM PC ever built, a Compaq III lunchbox... you get the idea. Clones I built around XT-grade and AT-grade components. Old oscilloscopes used to see if we could detect emissions from nuclear weapons carried on USSR navy ships docked in ports, later adapted for saner uses.

Sitting amongst those piles of what to anyone else would be junk, knowing you built all of it and set it to useful purpose during its time, is ... well. The feeling you describe.

I used to be able to read Just-O-Writer paper tape and make corrections for lines in a news story, bypassing regular procedure and cutting in common words with scissors and tape from other stories. This was yellow paper tape about an inch wide with holes punched in each line for one character.

Paper tape would be very difficult for NSA et al to infiltrate ;-)