Recommendations to purchase a smart TV but never connect it to a network are futile, as well.

Not necessarily. Never connecting it to the internet is much better advice than trying to block it’s connections. After that it’s not (usually) difficult to open the back of the TV and simply disconnect the wifi adapter itself. In my experience it’s either a separate board connected by a ribbon cable or the same type of wifi adapter that is commonly found in laptops. If the antennas can be accessed then so can the adapter.

Yes, there is one called F3 (Fight Flash Fraud).

The real user benefit will be very small

Time and time again alt stores have been used to distribute fake apps and malware on Android, and the victims are often those users who haven’t asked for sideloading and are unlikely to use it intentionally.

Can you offer any evidence to back up either of these claims?

Working remotely is a much better term. WFH implies that the employer gets to decide where the work gets done, which is completely unnecessary if the given work can be done remotely.

Precisely.

It does not.

I can confirm that it works even if you only provide it with internet access periodically (e.g. on a wifi-only device).

All public searx instances:

https://searx.space/