In the last few years, many people are talking about and using artificial intelligence (AI) a lot. Especially in the IT and software developing sector it is a huge thing and already starts to change how people work and maybe even think.

When being en route or traveling around, I often use Android’s Hotspot feature to connect my notebook to the outside world.

This worked completely fine for the last years.

Since the update to Android 15 (or maybe Android 14 I cannot say for sure), connecting to the Hotspot worked but almost all websites stopped loading. Fetching emails via IMAP worked but basically everything based on HTTPS resulted in timeouts or at best in partial loads after a long time.

This is about the default configuration of the LEDs on router devices with the Freifunk / Gluon firmware (https://www.freifunk.net). For example, on my “TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND v9” the WAN and wifi LEDs are constantly blinking as there is constant traffic on the according devices. As this is by design in the Freifunk network, I’m not interested in the blinking. It is just distracting.

tl;dr: this post is about the free choice of routers to be used on home broadband connections in Germany. Since August 1st, a new law enables customers to receive credentials for the DSL connections as well as for VoIP services in order to use end devices (i.e. routers) of their choice. Since all of the following information are specific to one German local provider, NetCologne, the rest of the post is in German.