I'm not presenting this as a realistic option (most of us aren't cool enough to walk around with freedesktop computers running), but there is the excellent JACK

I'm not presenting this as a realistic option (most of us aren't cool enough to walk around with freedesktop computers running), but there is the excellent JACK Timemachine[1], a long long long longstanding app which is just a big green button. Hit the button & it saves the last n (ex: 5) seconds of audio to file & continues recording until you hit the button again. This gives you the ability to keep a mic running while dumping most of the audio, & but still be able to save things that have just happened on need. It's an app I've wanted to make use of a bunch. A lot of company's I've worked at will try to quote noteable/funny/intersting things people say, & this would be a neat version. Same sort of idea would work in other places, like a gaming guild; we have one dude build a whole web soundboard with various things people had said anyone could pull up, well over a decade ago now; making that board would have been way easier with JACK-TM. Or, like, sometimes if there's a cute quote in a show or movie I'm watching, it'd be fun to be able to easily pull the sample. Or just, if I missed what someone said, this would be a possible tool to go re-review. Or, alas, if being harassed, being able to grab that recent clip. This is some old as dirt software; always seemed interesting. I am not a lawyer, I have no official legal advice to give. States like Florida with two-party consent laws make trying to record offenses against yourself, make recording legal & safety issues enormously complicated (See ACLU Florida's page on recording the police[2] for some specific treatment of the matter, showing it's complexity). But JACK-Timemachine feels like a sensible middle-ground. There's some buffering in ephemeral memory, but no recording, until one hits the button. That one can record after the fact, if one's suffering illegal/discriminatory/harassing treatment, feels like a necessary defense one certainly ought be allowed. Let me re-iterate that as far as I know there's no basis in law that actually makes it clear JACK-Timemachine is legal for use in two-party consent states (but it feels like it necessarily ought to be to me). [1] http://plugin.org.uk/timemachine/ http://plugin.org.uk/timemachine/ [2] https://www.aclufl.org/en/know-your-rights/right-record-police-florida https://www.aclufl.org/en/know-your-rights/right-record-poli...