> at one extreme you have people who can audit software they use and verify that it actually does what it says

Unless the software sends data off to the cloud or a sever somewhere. You can't audit what happens there.

> I have long wondered about the market size for privacy-focused apps.

The real problem is how to trust that a "privacy-focused" app is actually privacy-focused. You certainly can't take the publisher's word for it.

The only safe stance is to withhold as much personal information from as much software and services as possible.

Even if they were initially trustworthy, it's surely only a matter of time before they start wanting/needing to make (more) money and start abandoning their principles in pursuit of profit.

Or the company is sold to a big corp that doesn’t give a dammn about or privacy or one whose goal is to actually get the data.

If a company wanted to, they absolutely could include something along the lines of "If we violate the terms of this privacy policy, we owe all affected users $1000" in their Terms of Service. Pointing a gun at their own head to prove that they're serious. Companies don't do this, because they are cowards.

That is gimmicky and would be an extremely low trust signal.

How is that a low trust signal? It's grounds to sue. Crank the number up to the limit of small claims in whatever jurisdiction you're based in.

If it was legal to say "If I break this oath, you can fucking shoot me" in a contract, I'd suggest that. The entire point of the exercise is "we promise do the right thing, and to keep us honest we have set up a system by which you can destroy us if we violate that promise".

Corporations can't swear on their life, as they have no life to offer. They can swear on their cash, and by such their ongoing existence.

> The real problem is how to trust that a "privacy-focused" app is actually privacy-focused

I think the real problem is actually that legislative bodies will make privacy focused apps illegal. California AB 1043 is an example of what can happen.

I seriously doubt that it will accomplish that.

This makes me incredibly nervous about 401(k)s. I think it may be time to find a different vehicle.

Palantir is an ideological group.

I tried various ones out over the course of a few years, but in the end found they weren't for me and I went back to using paper notebooks.

I won't say they're bad solutions at all, but just that they brought no actual benefits for my use cases so there wasn't a reason to put up with their downsides. The downsides are relatively minor, though. For me, they are cost, the need to charge yet another device, and the inconvenience of the form factor (you can't tear pages out to hand to someone else, they rigid tablets instead of flexible paper, writing on them isn't the most pleasant thing, etc.)

It wasn't that obscure in the US before Linus used it, although perhaps its use was regional? I certainly heard it frequently. "git" still means "asshole" in my mind first, and I have to recontextualize that default every time to think of in terms of the version control system.

I have the same problem with "POS". Every time I see of hear that, "point of sale" isn't the thing that pops into my mind first.

> It wasn't that obscure in the US before Linus used it, although perhaps its use was regional?

That may well be the case. i'd never heard it in any of my years in Nevada, Arkansas, or Texas, and left the States ten years before git (SCM) was a thing. It's certainly possible that it is/was regional and/or became a household word after 1997.

Even so... IMO you're doing yourself and your product a disservice by continuing that naming pattern.

> I have the same problem with "POS".

Agreed entirely :).

I would if there were any on the market that were acceptable to me, but there aren't.

If you're tech-savvy and building your own router, you can add those advanced aspects in if you want them.

I'd be willing to bet, though, that the overwhelming majority of people who use consumer routers aren't doing anything remotely advanced. A how-to that covers the majority of use cases is valuable even when it excludes advanced use cases.

There are a whole lot of normal people using mesh networking Wi-Fi routers. Honestly, most of the least technical people that I know are all using mesh networks because their houses require it.

Certainly. But it's still a minority use case.

Perhaps someone else will (or did) write up a how-to for support mesh networking in your homebrew router.

Home mesh is mostly about having wireless backhaul, and you can certainly do that if you have (preferably) two radios, you just set up one radio as a client to your main AP.

Even if you aren't doing wireless backhaul you just rely on regular client behaviour to transition between APs, can enable 802.11r to improve this.

Enterprise "mesh" typically uses wired backhaul for performance and can help clients roam quicker with a controller (auth, not deciding to roam). Controller can also adjusts radio power so APs aren't talking over each other if they're too close.

Mesh isn't any magic, just regular wifi.

There are some difference in client wifi interfaces (STA) and access point wifi interfaces (APs, like you'd find on a good router). For example, some wifi interfaces don't have promiscuous mode, or can't scan while maintaining an active connection, etc.

It's like the difference between softmodems (aka winmodems) and full hardware modems. I know there are some projects that use Raspberry Pis as an AP, and it could do like 10 devices stock and 20 devices with firmware changes. Even a low-end router could handle more clients than that.

Where do you live to consider mesh networking a minority use case? I live in a small city apartment so I don't need one, but everyone I know outside of the city needs at least two nodes to cover their houses.

I was looking at various stats and surveys, not going by my personal experience. But if you're asking about my personal experience, I haven't seen any consumer use of it at all, only enterprise and institutional use. That's part of why I wasn't going by by my own experience, because I know that the use isn't zero.

I don't live in a densely populated city.

(I don't tend to flag these unless there's been a deluge of them or the outage is over)

There are numerous, much more reliable, services that address this. "<x> is down" posts here tend to be inaccurate, spammy, and generally not of interest.