I'd argue... Alpine?

Why? Well, because it's small. So Alpine isn't the programming distribution itself but rather the distribution for the container your run whatever you build inside of just because it's very VERY small (like... 5MB?!).

Obviously that makes sense only in some cases. For example for a frontend Web developer or a game developer (or a WebXR dev like me) it might not help much but otherwise,... maybe?

Anyway if you are into this kind of things check also Gitpod, it's about wrapping your dev environment inside a container then having it anytime, anywhere, including for other developers and facilitate their onboarding.

I haven't seriously read the article for now unfortunately (deadline tomorrow) but if there is one thing that I believe is reliable, it's computational complexity. It's one thing to be creative, ingenious, find new algorithms and build very efficient processors and datacenters to make things extremely efficient, letting us computer things increasingly complex. It's another though to "break" free of complexity. It's just, as far as we currently know, is impossible. What is counter intuitive is that seemingly "simple" behaviors scale terribly, in the sense that one can compute few iterations alone, or with a computer, or with a very powerful set of computers... or with every single existing computers... only to realize that the next iteration of that well understood problem would still NOT be solvable with every computer (even quantum ones) ever made or that could be made based on resources available in say our solar system.

So... yes, it is a "stretch", maybe even counter intuitive, to go as far as saying it is not and NEVER will be possible to realize AGI, but that's what their paper claims. It's a least interesting precisely because it goes against the trend we hear CONSTANTLY pretty much everywhere else.

I keep track of parts of such a solution at https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence namely TTS, STT, LLM, etc. There is also a recent HomeAssistant article https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/07/ai-agents-for-the-smart-home/ which is quite interesting... but also concludes that they don't believe it's ready for prime time for most.

If you have specific use cases in mind, happy to give more pointers for solutions I believe might fit. That being said I'm not personally convinced as I don't use any assistant on a daily basis. Still I believe FLOSS alternatives are interesting to consider for any topic.

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.

IMHO the question isn't as much you as a user of such platforms is "f*cked" because you sound both mindful and technically savvy. So, on that front, you will be OK.

The harder question I would say is how morally bankrupt you will feel by contributing to worsening the privacy of others for profit. Namely that yes by using Facebook/Insta/TikTok/etc you will gain more customers but those customers are gradually losing their privacy while you make those companies bigger by paying them. That means you depend on those companies more while they get more power.

Because of that I would argue that sure, do everything you can to protect yourself but it can't stop there. I would argue then than the question is rather, where else can you find more clients, and maybe even "better" clients who are more aligned with your own views on privacy, and maybe even more. It's definitely a challenge, especially seeing the trend of surveillance capitalism, but as you acknowledge yourself by using Lemmy, there are actual alternatives.

Gaming? Fair point.

Unless it's for games that use shitty anticheat solutions probably not a good reason anymore due to the SteamDeck, a LOT of games do work and it's possible to check before hand via ProtonDB.

So it was a fair point 5 years ago, now most AAA games, including VR games, do work without tinkering.

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.

I never thought I'd say this but... in your case, for work at least I would actually stick to Windows! It looks like most of your tools are from Microsoft and that the environment they will normally run on is Windows. It seems most pragmatic to stay there.

For gaming though (as I've argue few times and can be seen from my history), Proton works well, even for AAA games, unsupported (officially) games and VR. ProtonDB helps you to quickly assess if that's the case for your specific games.

Anyway, what I would suggest though is step back, i.e WHY do you want to step away from Windows. If it's technical then "just" dual boot and properly separating fun from work might be sufficient. If it's more moral and ethical, then earning money from tools that are NOT from Microsoft to gradually decouple, remove the dependency on it, seems like the "right" thing to do.

InfiniTime on PineTime, been using it for years

"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.

Pretty trivial technically speaking, you record everything once you get people consent, then you transcribe with e.g whisper.cpp or whatever else you have, search within the transcriptions and generate a link back to the original files, if need be, with seeking timing to double check.

Well I have one of those and... if the phone would be 10x thinner and flexible it'd be amazing. As-is unless you have either huge flat arms or a tiny phone it's not ideal.

Edit: thinking about it I'd happily trade it for flexible touch eInk instead, don't think that exists yet