YES, Thank you!

>>The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design

>>designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue

And this explains why they are willing to do all the extra work to do it.

It is not even close to accidental or lazy — there is nothing accidental about the intention or going to the extra cost to build those dark patterns to screw the customers.

Having a separate setting for unconditionally disabling all wireless communication would be helpful. The other stuff you mention can be separate settings if it is useful to have them. (A setting to unconditionally all disable wired connections is less important since you can just avoid connecting it.)

>>what does local only even mean?

Let's start with this: Design the architecture so the core system works fine locally. Features requiring Internet connection are in separate modules, so they can be easily turned on/off, and designed so they are still primarily local.

E.g., store all current status locally and if requested another module sends it to the cloud, instead of cloud-first.

E.g.2, install updates by making a pull of all resources and then doing the update instead of requiring continuous communication.

Allow user control with options to completely shut off, whitelist, blacklist, etc.

Simple design decisions up front to make a software package meeting the user's local needs first, THEN allowing controlled access to the internet, under the USERS' control, instead of designing every feature to contact your servers first and compromising both usability and control at every step.