BusyCal as a macOS client and baikal as a server.

Those two are reliable as can be. BusyCal is a great app with a responsive developer and can connect to virtually anything.

As to the topic of this post, despite the above, I’m trying to move away from CalDAV and CardDAV, the latter has poor support on most mobile platforms in the way I want to use it. I also am trying to reduce self hosted platforms I maintain, which is currently a high number.

To start one without ties to your name is more difficult, at least in my state. You’d have to have a registered agent you trust and to file articles of incorporation. Plus get an EIN.

Even with an EIN, so as far as the federal government is concerned single member LLCs are basically sole proprietorships for tax purposes.

Unsure about the effect of recent ownership laws; almost certainly bad for privacy at some level.

Regardless of all that, financial institutions won’t grant credit to entities that don’t have their own income. Normally a history of income, and income not tied to a single member LLC. Been there done that. Yes my LLC has credit cards but at their core they are tied to the financial backing that my personal credit history provided.

It is possible you could jump through all those hoops and still gain a measure of privacy. There are vastly easier ways, imho.

Didn’t really state a position other than ownership, which does have some implications. I am fine with smart TVs but not ok with data collection and ads.

Either would only be ok if I had opted in, especially be paying a lower price with that tradeoff, but I and everyone else are paying full price, so I am adamantly opposed to it.

You took it a step further than me, and I applaud your efforts. I hope they are noted by the manufacturers.

I have recent LG TVs. They did start showing ads, but if you dig around in the menus you can disable them.

Not addressing your main points. Just wanted to point out you can have a smart home with purely local devices. No cloud.

Airvpn, then use their advanced config to create a 443 tcp tunnel out to a single server. Then use that server’s IP in your OpenVPN config file. Route all traffic including dns inside the tunnel.

Traffic will look like all other web traffic - encrypted on standard web ports. You won’t even need to do a DNS lookup to start with and airvpn uses generic rDNS so it’s not super easy to figure out from their perspective.