Is the state of affairs getting any better in Postgres 18?

> The problem is this: sslmode=require encrypts, but it doesn’t authenticate. It does all the hard work to make sure your communication channel is secured, while doing nothing at all to check who’s on the other end of it.

I fail to see the problem with this. For a general setup within a secure network, dinking around with CAs and certificates is more headache than necessary. You already know the server you're communicating with. The connection just needs to be encrypted.