PS: full disclosure, I still believe self-hosting AI is interesting, cf my notes on it https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence but that doesn't mean AGI can be reached, even less that it'd be "soon". IMHO AI itself as a research field is interesting enough that it doesn't need grandiose claims, especially not ones leading to learned helplessness.

Buying other hardware that you (well... not me ;) can inspect and verify, e.g RISC?

For now the performances are pretty terrible BUT one can imagine, assuming they have the right discipline and mental model doing what's actually personal on a verifiable processor, e.g browsing and reading emails, and what's not, e.g watching a TV show on another machine with CPU/GPU with an unverifiable architecture.

PS: I have a Precursor and a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8 core RISC-V chip and that's the main idea behind them both, i.e knowing, as a community, how it works all the way down.

Because without privacy you can't be a proper human being. You need privacy in order to have the safe space to develop, to dare try, to explore without the constant judgement of others. If you can't be a proper human being, can you genuinely have democracy?

It's both a per-requisite for humanity and what the political system that is often considered as the most just.

That's why I care.

attacker takes over the server and replaces the JS with a backdoored version, which the users receive next time they reload the page

Isn't it exactly what hashing of JS libraries is for? e.g https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Subresource_Integrity that one can see on e.g https://cdnjs.com/libraries/three.js giving you the script to execute, yes, but also a hash to verify that what you receive is indeed what you expect?

So, assuming there is once a trusted loaded version (which HAS to be the case anyway otherwise you can't start, the same as one would do with a native executable) then there can't be an arbitrary version loaded next without it being validated first.

PS: I'm not saying this what OP does, I'm saying executing code (Javascript or not) that must be downloaded first is not in itself a security problem.

Tinkered with a https://www.banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/175.html recently and... it's really cool to have that at home, like, it works! In itself that's quite a feat. Yet... to become actually usable due to "just" raw power but also to be economically comparable to mass produced other architectures from other manufacturers is indeed quite some road ahead.

I use the reMarkable 2 nearly daily. It's so much thinner and can be tinkered with (you can ssh to it then do whatever you want BUT the interface itself, the read/writing software xochtil is NOT open-source, hence hacks) so I prefer it.

That said the PineNote is quite powerful comparatively, both specs (which don't "feel" like much when you are on eInk anyway, even memory) and connectivity (e.g Bluetooth simply opening up a world of accessories) so it's cool to tinker.

What usage do you have in mind? Could help to differentiate both. Also FWIW I don't think the PineNote is in stock.

PS: something fun I did a while ago, and still repeat whenever I can, is offline holiday. I still take a bunch of devices, e.g phone, RPi, SteamDeck, etc but I do NOT go online. Instead the RPi becomes a hotspot and I can code or enjoy content on any of my devices, but still within the privacy of my own network, without any notification. It's a very fun and empowering experience

How can I even buy one in Europe?

PS: I do build some things from scratch, including "big" ones like Firefox. I do it because I can prototype with them by modifying just the bits I need. I do like learning how things are made. That being said I don't think it's valuable as an entire system, only on a need to do basis. The true benefit IMHO is the learning, not the running system, so no, not at as a daily driver.

"100MB of note storage" is not the limit, it's what you get for free. If you write more than 100MB of text, can afford it and want to support this kind of work, as opposed to surveillance capitalism supported and fueling alternatives I would suggest considering paying for this kind of services.

I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not arguing that you are wrong, I'm saying it's "just" talk, meanwhile I'm ready, today, to buy better if you can provide.

vote with your wallet or usage in this case

In the case of companies as large as Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc sadly this is not enough. I suggest reading Chokepoint Capitalism (Giblin and Cory 2022) in which they highlight the numerous mechanisms, legal or not, they use to prevent actual competition. So... yes vote with your "wallet or usage" but also with your actual political vote in the hope that people elected will enforce existing policies, e.g antitrust, so that competition can genuinely exist.