Only real option is to crypt them before putting them on the VPS, but at this point a VPS is pretty useless.

So if Proton is in a position where banks are shutting down payments Proton has bigger problems.

In a perfect world you would be right.
But it would not be the first time banks or credit card shut down payments for legal businness because they were forced into doing that by social or political pressure.

It would be simple for a government to say something like “you do businnes with Proton, you can no more operate in this country” to a bank or a credit card company.

Almost 500 million users market.

I know. I was only pointing out that you can have a waterproof phone and a replaceable battery. Obviously you need to do better than the S5 but it is nothing impossible, even wanting to keep the audio jack and the USB ports.

The two features are not mutually esclusive. I owned an S5 which was waterproof and had replaceable battery more than 10 years ago. It did not seems too hard to do

It is not that simple.
For hardware attacks, older hardware are probably safe since the attacks are specifics to some newer features. I really doubt you can deliver a Spectre attack on anything up until the Pentium or even later.
On the software side, there could be some security bugs to which some older version could be vulnerable since there were not the vulnerable code at the time. Granted, there could be some security bugs that were not yet discovered in older codebase.

I would love to know how you would decide if the scan or copy of my ID, with picture, I send you by mail, or upload with a web form as a jpeg, is real or a fake.

Maybe you are right but the actual facts are that even outside OF there are underage female prostitutes that do it for money or the latest bag from some high end brand and often are prey of some predator. Only difference is that off-line prostitution is harder to find.
OF is only folowing what it is happening in the real life, making it easier obviously, but it don’t create any new dynamic.

Wait a moment, maybe I understand wrong (English is not my first language) but I understand that you said that the Great Filter is the reason why we don’t see them and point out 3 possible points.

I dispute your first point to be not really an explanation or an option since saying “never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced” just seems to be a too harsh limit on what a civ could do, which looking at our past history seems an unreasonable limit.

My friend, that’s exactly my point. That is, they’ve had enough time to show up but they are nowhere to be seen.

Your point seems to be that since there is the Great Filter (btw, to be proven) then there is no one else out there.
You exclude way simpler possibillities like the option that a civ just a couple centuries ahead of use could already be colonizating the nearby stars, they just are 1000 LY away so we cannot yet see them (assuming we even know what to look for).

1. interstellar travel is never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced,

I like the idea behind the concept of the Great Filter, but that point does not seems logic as it would imply that irregardless of how advanced a civ is, they would not be able to build anything that can even make just a one way travel to a star just a few year light far away. Right, it is not simple, but a civ even just a couple centuries head of us should be able to do it.

Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space.

I don’t think it is a valid point. Yeah, if we can build a ship that take us to Alpha Centauri it would lool like a small city, but that does not mean that it can last forever and the traveller would never need to settle on a planet. And looking what the humans did in the past, it seems logic that while a part would want to continue to explore, another part would want to settle on a planet.

Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.

So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?

Because it is habitable and can be used as a transit point, advanced outpost, refuelling base or any other use you can do of an habitable planet where to do things you have not to fight even with the environment (tourism for example).

Maybe the services that don’t need to sell your data to be in the black.

More than the charging infrastructure it is the city infrastructure: when you have condos built without any planning 50 or more years ago, even if you pass a law that every home need to have a charging station in these condos it is physically impossible to do it. Charging infrastructure comes after you solve the problem where to put 70 or more charging station for every condo in the district.

Hybrids: the worst of both worlds.

If you want to keep relying on gasoline then just buy an ICE car

Maybe I can use a hydrid: short trip (to the train station/mall/small affairs in the vicinity) go in electric, longer trip use gasoline.

Not everyone has a charging station at home and in many places you cannot install it, be because forbidden by some old laws or because there is not the physical option.

Wait, they give Europol access if and only if a swiss judge order it. They protect your privacy but neither you or them are above the law.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I agree on this.

If it is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if we aren’t 100% certain or ready on a lot of things.

From the article it seems we are not even 10% certain. In summary, we don’t understand (yet) the problem, we have no clue on how complex is, we have no hard number to tell us how big it is.
I agree, something need to be done. But for now the “something” is just to try to understand better the problem, or at least how big it is.

Doctors don’t wait for the worst before starting treatment.

True, but they start treatment when they know what they need to cure or at least they have solid evidence that indicate something, not before.

Specially if corrections carry none or way less risks than what is currently being done.

Hard to decide that corrections carry lower risks of something we don’t understand.

Ah yes, the usual method of waiting until the issue becomes confirmed and also way too severe to fix instead of acting on precaution and harming profits of private companies.

No, but as even them don’t understand what the complications are and how much the damages could be, maybe to wait to have at least some hard number looks like a good idea.

What could go wrong?

And what could go wrong if we start to fight a problem that we don’t understand how big it is, maybe using the wrong solution on a wrong scale ?

They didn’t just vote for the right wing though, they voted for Nazis. So yes, they are literally bigoted, racist, homophobes. If you support people who admired Hitler, guess what? You’re a fucking asshole of a very high degree.

Listen here, as long as people like you don’t understand that AfD (and all the other extreme right wings) are the consequence and not the cause, you will never solve any problem.
People voted AfD because they are the only one, as bad as it is, that at least aknowledge the problems people have (or think to have).
Do you really think that when someone tells you that they see [something] as a problem the better course of action is to insult them, consider them as part of the problem and then call them nazis when they voted for someone else ? Because that is what everyone else except the extreme right is doing.

Yeah, it is bad, but do you really think that people will always continue to vote for the side that they see as the cause of what they see as a problem ?

Being poor or troubled doesn’t make you an asshole.

True

My parents grew up in extreme poverty in El Salvador, and they didn’t become extreme racists. I was in extreme poverty in university in the USA, I didn’t suddenly start voting right wing either, let alone extremely far right. I hated the democrats over there, but knew the right wing wouldn’t solve it because bad people don’t go good things.

The point is how much you should endure before you become an idiot. Yeah, to vote for the bad guys do not solve the problems, but also to continue to vote for the cause of the problem do not solve it.

You don’t end up voting for genuinely bad people who admire one of the most atrocious regimes in human history because of frustration.

True, you end up voting for genuinely bad people because the supposed good people are the one that in your view are the cause of the problem and you do not see any other option (if not do not vote).

You only do so because you either already have a broken moral compass, or are extremely ignorant and stupid. In Germany though, it’s more likely to be the former rather than the latter considering their history. And it’s that recent history that makes it that much more shameful for Germany, and that shows that Nazism was still not extinguished.

Nazism will never be extinguished, you cannot. But you can relegate it to the point that it is irrelevant. But what are you still missing is the cause.

You don’t deal with an intolerant group like Nazi or AfD by excusing them or reaching out to them. You don’t tolerate the intolerant (paradox of tolerance), because otherwise it’ll only be a matter of time before you or someone else is no longer tolerated. And that’s something history has proven repeatedly.

True. You deal with intolerant groups like Nazi and AfD removing the causes that make them rise before they can rise.

Thank you for your reply. I think there is little point in continuing this thread as we are unlikely to agree.

Too bad, but it was a nice discussion.

Yes, it is somewhat true that the AfD addresses people’s problems - at least they make it seem that way. But their rhetoric also ensures that people blame the wrong groups for these problems.

More than that, they target the consequences instead of the cause.

The conservatives in the USA do the same, as do the right-wing populists in other countries. The Nazis in the Third Reich also did exactly that - it’s nothing new.

All these are consequences of something else, not the cause.

AfD rises because people see problems that the other parties did not even aknowledge to exist and not because they create the problems.

Believe me, I have tried to understand why so many people don’t see through these simple tricks and even allow themselves to be misled into voting against their own interests.

That’s easy. People are more worried of the day by day problems than some hypothetical future problem so they voted for the side that at least say they will resolve it.

However, I am not prepared to abandon a fact-based political discourse just because some particularly loud and snivelling people make life too easy for themselves. So I don’t think that the left should also spread lies, rely on sub-complex explanations and blame some make-believe enemies. Nor do I think that is even possible.

Fine, but the fact-based political discourse should be on both sides. Currently the only one looking at the facts are AfD. Granted that they then bend them to their agenda, but the Left simply ignore the facts as for now.

So I must honestly say that I have lost faith in the functioning of democracy.

That is something that it is always said by the people that think to be better than the other when they lose, I am sure you are better than that.