Hi Lorenzo, you made some very good points.
I'll try to answer some of your questions.
There really isn't a good word for remote harversting. Some people think secure harvesting is a better term. Really what it is to me is "proxy private key secure remote harvesting" but that is a lot of words that get jumbled. hahahaha.
What that means is you can create a proxy private key that inherits your PoI score. You can then securely and safely broadcast that private key to any node, even malicious nodes as there isn't any actual XEM in that account. All the fees earned from harvesting with that private key are not given to that account, but instead redirected to the original account that had the original PoI.
Because of this, I can totally feel free to leave my computer running at home on a raspi 24/7 or other computer. If somebody breaks into my house and hacks into that computer to try to retrieve the private key, they only get the proxy key. Likewise, I can feel totally safe harvesting on a hosted VPN knowing even if it is hacked or controlled by a malicious service, my account is still safe.
Really the better term for it is "secure harvesting".
Now, what you were talking about wasn't really about remote harvesting but about another feature. Basically in NEM any NCC (computer side wallet) can connect to any NIS (network node) and do transactions safely. Yes, that is kind of like Electrum, but actually a big improvement on it. The only threat is when somebody needs to harvest, they have to provide a private key to the NIS, thus the devs built in the feature of remote harvesting.
NEM devs really have created something special here. I am not sure if people really see and understand just how nice this is. Also, the NCC is completely open source so any body can re-skin it and mix it up in a way that makes for a completely 3rd party app specialized to meet the needs of a specific company. Think of how James is building Supernet on NXT, kind of like that, but you don't need to be a James and work closely with the main devs asking them for this or that, any company or any dev can do it.
As far as NXT AE goes. To me it has been by far the most successful feature of NXT and like you said James was able to do A LOT on that. NEM will have to pull a special metaphorical rabbit out of its hat if it wants to have a better exchange, but I have confidence in them.
Also, sadly I know about no fee blocks on NXT. I have only been so lucky to have forged 3 blocks, but all of them were empty. After that I gave up. In reality there is a big problem with all crypto. Bitcoin is subsidizing miners to almost a million dollars a day. NXT got that down to hundreds. hahahaha. But still there is a problem. Many people like the original newbie asking questions on here wants lower fees and thought that they would change. You and I both think that isn't going to change. The problem is how do you support a network without fees, especially when it is being boot-strapped. Again, NEM devs have been thinking about this I think as it is such an obvious issue that needs to be addressed.
As for your thoughts on NEM's POI needing a real world run and needing to be tested. I completely agree with you. As others have mentioned, NEM hasn't launched and hasn't had a lot of surprise attacks and people trying to manipulate and destroy it. That testing needs to be done and until then, NEM can't actually claim that it is the real deal.
Ah, thanks. That's an excellent explanation of how remote harvesting works. It sounds like the equivalent of NXT's leased forging feature although I understand with NXT, the forging rewards aren't redirected automatically but instead have to be distributed manually by whoever you lease your account to (typically a pool).
As for the AE, I suppose if the platform is good enough, then the talent will follow.
Also I agree with your other points.
