Seeing as you seem knowledgeable what's up with the 'ring the bells' bit?
MalReynolds
Don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake...
Is a VPN needed to keep your ip from being exposed ?
No more so than using any search engine directly, it's a nice to have. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
Is just using an existing searxng instance just less secure then?
By the time you've investigated it, you could have stood up your own instance...
Sounds like a them problem then.
Big if true!
podman exists and doesn't force root...
It's yours, no issues trusting a public instance with your searches. Pages full of settings to tweak as you like. Less problems with an algorithm 'helping' you. It averages searches over multiple search engines that you choose, you can set up your own (or a curated) block list of crappy AI slop sites, don't like fandom.com or something, gone. Manage your own bangs, e.g. !aa for annas-archive. Pipe it through a VPN with gluetun for better isolation. If you have your head around docker already it's more like half an hour to set up, so why not?
Can hook it up to perplexica and a local LLM for a fully local AI search that you define, use it as a MCP server, do deep research with it...
Well, it's legal for medical purposes, and the current aussie protocol, AFAIK, is got THC in your system (cheek swab), you lose (and a blood test I think, happy for someone knowledgeable to jump in). Cancer chemo, no (legal) driving for you... This crap would be a step up.
Gaming...straight to Bazzite, you'll likely be playing in an hour. Why wait, just point the installer at an external drive and see what it's like.
The latter, it originates from the British parliament, as in I hear you and agree.
Surprised no-one pitched Elite:Dangerous. Certainly a labour of love to begin with, incredibly talented sound design, first space sim to VR, truly devoted to the original material... Still going pretty strong (had a few weak years) with updates (only 2 DLC-ish major updates of which were paid) a decade later...
Ziggy Stardust