Edit: somehow forgot that HA sell their own devices, HomeAssistant Green for 100$ and HomeAssistant Yellow which also supports the project.
Original comment:
Highly recommend a used “enterprise mini PC” from Dell , HP or Lenovo. Get it from your local IT refurbisher, eBay or your local ebay-equivelent.
These are sometimes called 1L PCs for their 1 Litre size. Model names are Dell Optiplex, HP Elite desk or Prodesk, Lenovo Think centre. Prices are €100 to €1500 depending on age and specs. €150 should be more than enough for HomeAssistant.
Alternatively https://slimbook.com/en/ sells Linux PCs out of Spain, and https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ out of Germany.
Another option is the british RaspberryPi, but that might be more hassle. You need to separately get a good power supply and cable, good SD-Card, case, maybe with fan. And its ARM not x86, but that doesn’t matter for HomeAssistant unless you’re doing something very exotic.
No and kinda yes. Duckduckgo has its own webcrawler, but also adds in results from other sources including Bing, Yahoo and others.