In theory, Home Assistant could also give users the option to ignore certificate checks.

I also haven’t seen specific details on whether Home Assistant’s implementation allows sensors to contact the internet by default or what setting changes this.

It’s just foggier and less user focused by design in my opinion. But as one would expect when Google and other large corporations were the ones to develop it,

I love to hear about a Canadian alternative.

Well Thread allows devices to require internet connectivity to pair. It also allows devices to fetch firmware updates from the manufacturer. And it allows features to be locked to their specific app. Thread and Matter are more complex to setup self-hosted style; it makes no difference when you use official hubs though. Thread doesn’t have many device types and manufacturers available.

Zigbee does not require or work over the internet, no trust required. It is very easy to setup self-hosted. There is a Zigbee everything made by everyone from large companies to random brandless places.

Zigbee is my preference as a result of the internet connectivity requirement. I do not trust random manufacturers to not brick my devices when they go out of business or choose to release a competing product.

Personally, I use headscale (self-hosted tailscale) that is open to the internet. Then my phone and all other devices use tailscale clients to connect to that. All my other services are accessed through the tailscale magic DNS service.

Nothing except headscale is open to the internet, and I can access anything I need on the server and other devices. It also doesn’t just route All traffic through my server, only the stuff to other tailscale nodes.

Then just recently I’ve been using Nginx proxy manager and my DNS to make nicer names instead of memorizing a dozen ports for random services I host :p