gian

Even Wikipedia, which is a shockingly bloodthirsty pro-NATO outlet, admits there is zero proof that a “Russian state actor” did this, there are just “western security experts” claiming it (as usual), and opinion is divided.

Well, I don't think that a "[insert your preferred state] state actor" would ever coming out saying "yes, we tried to to it".

Not to say that what Wikipedia say is false but on the other hand I am not sure how to check if it is true, in these cases.

Probably. But this way you have no control on who quit, with a good probability that are the better ones.

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.

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.