Opt Out

Mar 30 2025 46 ep. 69 mins 2.6k

Opt Out Podcast artwork

Welcome to Opt Out, where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they’ve found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data-sovereignty.

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

The next step for VPNs w/ Carl Dong from Obscura

Mar 30 2025 62 mins

The VPN paradigm has grown stale, with simple one-party providers being the best available. But what if we could further minimize trust by shift to a two-party hop system? Obscura is doing just that, and we’re sitting down with their founder Carl Dong to learn all about it. More about Carl Carl’s guest profile – https://optoutpod.com/guests/carl-dong/More about Obscura Websit

Can AI be private? w/ Marks from OpenSecret

Mar 27 2025 54 mins

AI is all the rage, but with it come new privacy questions and concerns. Marks from OpenSecret joins to walk us through how we can have our AI-generated cake and eat it too. More about Marks Marks’ guest profile – https://optoutpod.com/guests/marks/More about OpenSecret and Maple AI OpenSecret’s website – https://opensecret.cloudHow does OpenSecret work? – https://blog.op

Improving SimpleX w/ Evgeny from SimpleX and Daniel Keller from Flux

Jan 24 2025 67 mins

Two years after our first episode on SimpleX, we’re back with an update on all they’ve been working on, including a new approach to chat relays with Dan from Flux. More about our guestsEvgeny’s guest profile – https://optoutpod.com/guests/evgeny-poberezkin/Dan’s guest profile – https://optoutpod.com/guests/dan-keller/More about SimpleXWebsite – https://simplex.chat/Qu

An open-source security platform w/ Zach Herbert from Foundation

Dec 16 2024 70 mins

If you're frustrated by the need for multiple hardware wallets, security keys, two-factor applications, or even phones and looking for an easier way to secure your digital life, Foundation has just what you need. Zach Herbert, co-founder and CEO of Foundation, joins me to talk through their latest product, Passport Prime, and how they're seeking to lower the barrier of entry to pro

How Kagi is fixing search w/ Vlad Prelovac

Nov 23 2024 45 mins

Ever wondered why your Google search results are so bad? Looking for an alternative that puts your interests first instead of an ad company’s? Today we chat with Vlad Prelovac, founder of Kagi, a new type of search engine that rethinks finding information on the internet from the ground up. More about Vlad Vlad’s guest profile – https://optoutpod.com/guests/vlad-prelovac/More

Bitcoin and Ossification w/ Jameson Lopp

Nov 13 2024 80 mins

We get to the bottom of what ossification is, why it's harmful to Bitcoin to push for premature ossification, and why we need to improve the building blocks available to developers to enable trustless and useful layers to be built on Bitcoin. More about Jameson: Jameson's guest profile -- https://optoutpod.com/guests/jameson-lopp/More about ossification: Lopp's recent blog post: ht

Proton Wallet w/ Andy Yen

Jul 31 2024 54 mins

I sit down with Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, to discuss the release of Proton Wallet, the decision to focus on Bitcoin despite its lack of privacy, why they don't accept Monero, and much more. More about Andy: Andy's guest profile -- https://optoutpod.com/guests/andy-yen/More about Proton Wallet: Website: https://wallet.proton.me/Launch blog post: https://proton.me/blog/pro

SimpleX chat and how privacy aligns with the future of computing w/ Evgeny from SimpleX

Feb 26 2023 95 mins

Heard of SimpleX chat and curious what it's all about? This episode, we're sitting down with Evgeny, the founder of SimpleX Chat to talk about SimpleX, privacy, data sovereignty, and the future of computing. More about Evgeny: Evgeny's guest profile -- https://optoutpod.com/guests/evgeny-poberezkin/More about SimpleX: Website: https://simplex.chat/Chat protocol: https://github.com/

How FediMints could ease onboarding and privacy in Bitcoin w/ Eric Sirion and Matt Odell

Jul 10 2022 92 mins

This episode, we're sitting down with Eric Sirion and Matt Odell to chat about FediMints, a fascinating and unusual new proposal that seeks to ease onboarding and privacy on Bitcoin with important trade-offs. More about Eric Sirion and Matt Odell: Eric Sirion's guest profile -- https://optoutpod.com/guests/eric-sirion/Matt Odell's guest profile -- https://optoutpod.com/guests/odell

Special: Live YouTube Q&A!

Jul 02 2022 102 mins

Welcome to the first ever live Q&A on Opt Out! We covered a ton of topics ranging from personal privacy, self-hosting, Bitcoin, Monero, privacy-preserving donations, future plans for the podcast, and much more. Thank you to all those who joined live, and please let me know if you have any questions or want to dive more deeply into any of the topics we touched on here! Mentioned