Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I’m content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It’s also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.

I’m suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.

Firstly, I didn’t want to buy a smart TV, but that’s pretty much all that’s sold anymore. I also didn’t intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.

The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV’s menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.

I don’t trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It’s literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.

It’s under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.

I’m on EndeavourOS, which like CachyOS, is a derivative based on Arch. They smooth over a couple of the things that make Arch difficult: the installation, and initial packages.

Part of what makes Arch difficult is that it updates its repositories very quickly. That’s good in many ways, because you get new features and new drivers more quickly, but sometimes things are buggy or break. From what I’ve heard, it’s honesty fairly rare nowadays, but it’s still a best practice to check archlinux.org before proceeding with a major update.

Anyway, I’m in a very similar boat. I’ve bounced off of Linux for various reasons in the past, but between Linux getting better and Windows getting worse, Linux is the “just works” option for me. It’s not perfect, but any snags I’ve had have been smaller, less frequent, and more often fixable.

New national parking platform

…if that means what I think it means, it’s probably the worst of the lot.

Take it from an American: mandatory minimum parking will absolutely ruin your towns and cities.