Good fingerprinting will still defeat the combination of VPN use and private browsing sessions.

You don’t need to keep a cookie for fingerprinting to track you with a reasonable degree of confidence, as it’s a script that runs in your browser, observes the quirks of your setup, and phones them home immediately. All the actual data lives server-side, not on your device. Preventing this requires disabling JavaScript, which breaks most of the modern web.

VPNs are mostly ineffective for preventing sophisticated tracking. They’ll protect you against plaintext DNS observation on a public network, but you can prevent that anyway by enabling DoH instead of paying for a VPN. They’re most useful on an actively hostile network, but that’s not a situation you’re likely to ever experience as a normal person.

Re-read the OP’s post.

The system instantly went dark, and there was a burning smell. That’s exactly how a system behaves when a FET pops.

You’re diving into a deep rabbit hole here, but it’ll be a great learning experience! Best of luck!

Something inside shorted out and blew up. The smoke you’re smelling is the burnt silicon and plastic from the chip that popped.

Do not plug the system back in.

Contact Microsoft to ask about repair options.

It is possible for a skilled electronics tech to fix an Xbox. If you’re asking /r/techsupport for help, you are not skilled enough to fix this.

Please don’t risk a house fire. Leave this to the professionals.

That’s what I mean by “build the controller.”

You need to connect your program to some sort of electrical output, and then wire that electrical output into your controller.

You could make this work with an Arduino. But be warned, you’re looking at at least a full weekend of work and a lot of self-study just to get the Arduino working. You’re also going to need to learn how to solder, to connect your Arduino to your controller.

This is not a project for laypeople. You’re going to learn at least a bit of electrical engineering in the process of building this, and nobody’s going to hold your hand while you do it.

Browser fingerprinting is incredibly complex. Attempting to defeat it usually makes your traffic stand out as abnormal, which draws more attention than a normal user.

Basically, be careful - you’ll Streisand Effect yourself.

Your MAC address doesn’t escape your local network, so there’s no value in trying to spoof that. Nothing in the Internet has any idea what your computer or phone’s MAC address is.

Any wide-area tracking based on a cellphone’s MAC address is getting into the realm of state actors, at which point they can just track you through your service provider anyway.

Yes, it’s possible.

You need to build the controller yourself, though. There’s nothing off-the-shelf that does this.

I’d put this at about the level of an undergraduate engineering third year project in terms of difficulty.

Is the radiator actually getting hot?

If the radiator isn’t hot, you have no fluid circulation within the AIO. Usually means a dead pump motor or a broken impeller.

Not defending monopolies here, AT&T can get fucked. But with that said:

Are you sure it’s AT&T and not your landlord that’s at fault?

A lot of apartment buildings were built using loop wiring for their coax, which doesn’t support cable internet. Fixing that is a complete rewire of the building. Whether it’s coax or fibre, the ISP usually expects the LL to bear half the cost of significant new building wiring in a MDU.

Cheap LL’s blaming the ISP is a tale as old as the Internet.

Try using the TAP to start; it should work with that. If it doesn’t work, contact Nord for support. They could be doing anything with their VPN client, including blocking guests.

You should not need to turn on VLAN tagging if it’s a regular VPN endpoint.

Nord will do nothing to protect you from malware. It isn’t a security appliance. It isn’t any more secure than regular old TLS. All it really does is provide anonymity from your ISP.

If they have access to your email, they can delete the emails before you notice them.

Assume you’re infected. Reset your devices, starting with your phone.

Using a newly reset device, change all of your passwords. Do not log back in to any accounts on an untrustworthy device - they’ll get your new password that way.

Set up 2FA going to your newly reset phone for every account that you can. It most important that you protect your email account with 2FA, since it’s the “keys to the kingdom.” If someone has access to your email, they can just reset the passwords on most of your other accounts.