iOS has most of it built in: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 Also PiHole can be configured to (halfway) block any website of your choosing: https://pi-hole.net/

I say “halfway” because DNS based blocks are fairly trivial to bypass by anyone with the inclination to do so.

Remote playback or remote control?

Off-hand it sounds like you want media to playback on the remote device, so either Jellyfin or Plex. Personally, I use Jellyfin, though Plex does have better apps.

Digital ocean and Linode are both reliable. I think their lowest cost option is around $5 USD per month

It’s probably overkill for what you are asking for but I use the Calander/Tasks functions in NextCloud. And yes, you can hook it into Home Assistant. NextCloud just uses calDAV in the background.

Makes it more difficult, certainly. But not impossible. Most browsers and OSs’ will let you choose what DNS servers to use. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a DoH server.

iOS might be more secure on that front, though. Haven’t really played with their parental controls.

Growing up, (in the days of dialup) my folks tried to keep me off the computer till they got home by requiring a password to boot from the hard drive. I bypassed it by using a boot disk floppy I built at school. Couldn’t figure out how to get into Windows but I could still play Doom and Duke Nukem. Didn’t really even know what I was doing at the time. Thinking back, they may not have know about BIOS boot passwords. If they had, then what I did to bypass their lock out wouldn’t have worked.

If kids truly want to be able to do something, and it is at all possible, they will find a way. Nothing is secure if you have physical access.

It’s called PeerTube. It’s getting more content, but anything that isn’t completely wacked out is poorly produced and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of decent search to find the rare interesting content.

I caught the sarcasm, and don’t disagree. Just saying that a FOSS version does exist.

Try looking into new builds. Part of the reason for the sky high housing market is that we haven’t been building enough new housing for the last 30 years or so. Not saying that a new build house would be any cheaper, but most people just look at the cost of buying something that has already been built.

Not great. I’ve found this site to be useful though: https://fedi-search.com/

I actually just ran across a video the other night that may help:

https://www.youtube.com/live/AHDrejEv0SM?si=7boS9kKG6aL8EQXN

It’s part of a playlist about Kubernetes but this particular video is more about containers in general.

Once upon a time, Hewlet Packard (HP) made great kit. Unfortunately that hasn’t been true for at least the last 15 years. Nowadays everything they make, that I’ve looked at, seems to be utter trash. Brother is currently a good brand for printers if your in the market for one though.