Not sure what you mean by “controlled” given it’s open-source?

Which OS?

On Android, Moon+ Reader is pretty good.

My wife uses the Amazon Kindle app on her Android tablet. You can use it for non-Kindle books by sending an email to a special email address for your Kindle account: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle/email.

Calibre is useful for this. It shows an easy to use “send to Kindle” button, and can convert books in ePub, mobi, etc formats to the format that works best in the Kindle app (AZW3).

If you want a web interface for Calibre (eg to run on a home server and download books when you’re away from your computer), Calibre-web works well.

But why deal with separate software like dnscrypt-proxy when AdGuard Home has it built-in?

A recursive DNS server and a local DNS cache/forwarder/are two different things with two different purposes. You will always need both.

Why do you need two separate ones though? Recursive DNS servers also cache responses. Usually the only reason you’d run a local forwarder/cache is if you’re not running a local recursive server.

Throw Unbound on there too as your upstream recursive resolver

If you want to run your own recursive DNS server, why would you run two separate DNS servers?

You don’t even need to worry about an encrypted session to your upstream anymore because your upstream is now your loopback.

Your outbound queries will still be unencrypted, so your ISP can still log them and create an advertising profile based on them. One of the main points of DoH and DoT is to avoid that, so you’ll want them to be encrypted at least until they leave your ISP’s network.

AdGuard Home is a better choice than PiHole since it uses DNS-over-HTTPS by default. There’s also an app called AdGuardHome-Sync to sync settings between multiple instances.

I’d recommend running two DNS servers, and at least one of those separately from the rest of your infrastructure like on a Pi. That way, if you need to pull one of them offline, the internet still works.

Usually the ad needs to be in your viewport for at least a few seconds to count as an impression. If you were just going back quickly, or quickly refreshing the page, it won’t count. If you go back or refresh, see a different ad, wait a bit, then refresh again, I think it’d count.

For skippable ads on YouTube, the advertiser only pays if you watch past the point where you can skip it. If I remember correctly, you have to watch at least 30 seconds of the video (or the full video if it’s less than 30 seconds) for it to count as a view.

lol yeah I should have been clearer

According to the docs, SearxNG supports 209 search engines, and 85 are enabled by default (https://docs.searxng.org/user/configured_engines.html). I guess you mean you’re using those defaults?

Does it work well out-of-the-box? I’ve been meaning to test it myself!

Google still have an API and SDK for if you want to use Google Search on your own site.

WinGet is slowly replacing Chocolatey :)

If you know you want Logitech software, why not go directly to the Logitech site and search there?

Which search engines do you use with it? Google? Bing? Something else?

and (claims to) have their own independent search index

AFAIK their index is very small, so they use Bing to supplement it. Most search engines and voice assistants that aren’t Google use Bing in some way, since it’s the largest search index that has an official public API that anyone can use.

Impressions are usually deduped, meaning multiple impressions from the same user during the same session are just counted as one. The big ad networks are extremely careful to avoid miscounting of any sort and will generally err on the side of undercounting rather than overcounting (since telling advertisers they got more impressions or clicks than reported is way better than telling them the numbers were accidentally inflated). Of course, there’s the occasional bug, but it mostly works as expected.

Not sure how that’s relevant, but some states do have an equivalent to GDPR. California has CCPA for example.

Google is not trying to block any sideloading (at the moment, at least).

Google isn’t, and likely won’t since it’d very likely result in fines in the EU.

Amazon are working on a new Linux-based OS for their devices called Vega that won’t be able to sideload apps. Even if apps could be sideloaded, it wouldn’t be able to run Android apps since it’s not Android based.

You don’t need to root it to install other, more useful apps.

For example you can run your own Plex server on a spare PC, download movies and TV shows (I hear you can use torrents for this), and install the Plex app on your TV stick to watch them on the TV. Or, ask a friend for access to their Plex server :)

If you like cable TV, you can sign up to a much cheaper IPTV service and use the TiviMate app.

On the Onn one, I think you can just use Google Play to install other apps. On the Amazon Fire one, if it’s not in Amazon’s app store, you’ll have to download the APK file.

then complain about them later.

I don’t see where they’re complaining? They don’t seem to be asking anything of the C devs other than help with API definitions.

Sounds like the equivalent of Alt+SysRq+B.