Minimalist

Yes.

Unfortunately not. Password protect will only protect settings from changes. Even when set, you can still open GUI and see your email address.

I checked binaries on my installation and they have two certificates. One is OK but the other gives this error:

 
It seems that it's self signed and root certificate is not installed:
 

I can speak only for myself. I buy it because ESET performs better than MD on my system. I don't think that here is much difference in protection level but system impact is much smaller with ESET on my system. Since I encounter malware approx. once every ten years, 95% vs. 99% detection ration doesn't matter to me.
I also like that I can configure my AV how I like without having to use 3rd party tool or Gpedit /registry.

I reinstall Eset frequently and initial definition update can be slow. Sometimes it takes few seconds (that's rarely) to download update, other times it can take even few minutes.
I believe it's a problem of their CDN provider. Their network speeds are not stable. At least not here where I live.

I could find out that it was the DriverEasy software, that I used after clean installation of Windows to update all the drivers, caused the problem.
Maybe it did download excess drivers and unnecessary ones. 
I did clean install of Windows two times and tested few times, and thus finally could determine it was DriverEasy making the problem.

This is to the fact that not all modules are released on release update servers yet (they are available only on pre-release).
When you change from pre-release to release, program does not downgrade, but modules do.
In your case it is translator module 1943 on release, 1946 pre-release (it will be aligned before the official release)
 

One additional info about reverting to regular updates after v.16 install. Although program itself did not revert to v.15 some options disappeared ( like choosing colour mode). After enabling pre-release updates and updating those options are back again (probably module update). So it's probably not wise to change update type after updating to v.16.

I tried it. It re-downloaded 175 MB of data but it remained on v.16. In log files it logged that modules were successfully updated.

Here is a screenshot of new setting:

 
I guess that there should be no problem if I reverse to regular update type after updating to v.16?

I'm not sure. I hope that home products get those protection also. Another quote from article (my bolding) but I'm not sure that none business Core processors supports ITDT :
 

I don't have screensaver enabled. If I put my system in locked state (Windowskey + L) and gamer mode is enabled, updates are paused.

Does disabling this setting make a difference?

For me it's not a problem. Eset probably loads something when it needs and doesn't release it after it's not needed any more. Since it doesn't consume much memory and it stays at 240 MB for me it's really not a big deal.
To be frank I would even like them to use more memory if that would speed up system performance. I prefer for AV to use memory instead of a disk.

It's not ok but we can't do anything about it since it's a Windows crypto API function that keeps data in memory. In the future we'll rework the routine so that the said crypto API function is not used.
The memory use depends on what SSL certificates we encounter and on the size of the cert. revocation list.

I updated Firefox to v.97 and behaviour on my system is the same as before (increased memory usage that doesn't decrease when I close Firefox).

For me memory consumption increases during Firefox usage. Usually when I open browser and I browse to few sites, for a moment ekrn.exe uses 100% CPU and over 1 GB of memory. It happens only for a second or two and then CPU falls to normal level and memory usage to about 240 MB. It stays that way even when I close Firefox and it returns back to about 50 MB sometimes later (didn't figure out when or why decrease happens).

You can use Wetransfer for large files. It offers free service for up to 2 GB files in size.
https://wetransfer.com/

Yes, I tested it and get same results here. If DOH is enabled I get no alert, when disabled alert returns (using Cloudflare or Quad9).

As far as I am concerned, there's an issue with Firefox's SecureDNS; i.e. DNS-over-HTTPS.
Remember I previously reset Firefox. Then Eset was detecting this web site OK. Today, I noticed that DNS-over-HTTPS was not enabled in Firefox, so I enabled it. When I subsequently accessed this phishing web site, Eset didn't alert. Then I disabled DNS-over-HTTPS and Eset alerted.
Also as far as Firefox's SecureDNS, weird things are going on. When I enable it and test on Cloudflare's test web site, https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/ , strange things happen. First, it doesn't detect SecureDNS. Then on retest, it does detect it.

Thank you for suggestion. I've tried both in past but prefer using uTorrent. My comment was just meant to show that even non-malicious processes can sometimes be shown in red.