I've applied parts of the tce-load and apps patches (the unused depi variable, quoting search.sh arguments), thanks. I agree that an empty search should do the same as reloading the list with the "remote" menu item, but it should be done directly, passing nothing to search.sh and parsing tags.db for nothing is pointless extra work.
The tce-audit patch requires more testing than I can do right now, will take a look later. For wget, was there some issue with GNU wget?