It's a storage showdown as Jim and Wes bust some performance myths about RAID and ZFS. Plus our favorite features from Fedora 32, and why Wes loves DNF. Links: What's new in Fedora 32 Workstation Fedora 32 ChangeSet Linux distro review: Fedora Workstation 32 TechSNAP 428: RAID Reality Check ZFS versus RAID: Eight Ironwolf disks, two filesystems, one winner Understanding RAID: How performance scales from one disk to eight Find Jim on 2.5 AdminsFind Wes on LINUX UnpluggedTechSNAP 1: First...

Jim and Wes take the latest release of the Caddy web server for a spin, investigate Intel's Comet Lake desktop CPUs, and explore the fight over 5G between the US Military and the FCC. Links: Caddy offers TLS, HTTPS, and more in one dependency-free Go Web server Caddy 2 Caddy v2 Improvements [slightly out of date]Proposal: Permanently change all proprietary licensing to open source · Issue #2786 · caddyserver/caddy Revert "Implement Caddy-Sponsors HTTP response header" by lol768 · Pull Request...

We dive deep into the world of RAID, and discuss how to choose the right topology to optimize performance and resilience. Plus Cloudflare steps up its campaign to secure BGP, and why you might want to trade in cron for systemd timers. Links: AMD Claims World’s Fastest Per-Core Performance with New EPYC Rome 7Fx2 CPUs AMD EPYC 7F52 Linux Performance - AMD 7FX2 CPUs Further Increasing The Fight Against Intel Xeon Review Understanding RAID: How performance scales from one disk to eight New...

Jim finally gets his hands on an AMD Ryzen 9 laptop, some great news about Wi-Fi 6e, and our take on FreeBSD on the desktop. Plus Intel's surprisingly overclockable laptop CPU, why you shouldn't freak out about 5G, and the incredible creativity of the Demoscene. Links: Asus ROG Zephyrus G14—Ryzen 7nm mobile is here, and it’s awesomeLinux on Laptops: ASUS Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HSIntel’s 10th-generation H-series laptop CPUs break 5GHz | Ars TechnicaWi-Fi 6E becomes official—the FCC...

We take a look at Cloudflare's impressive Linux disk encryption speed-ups, and explore how zoned storage tools like dm-zoned and zonefs might help mitigate the downsides of Shingled Magnetic Recording. Plus we celebrate WireGuard's inclusion in the Linux 5.6 kernel, and fight some exFAT FUD. Links: WireGuard VPN makes it to 1.0.0—and into the next Linux kernel — It's a good day for WireGuard users—DKMS builds will soon be behind us. Linux 5.6 Is The Most Exciting Kernel In Years With So...

We take a look at AMD's upcoming line of Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs, and share our first impressions of Ubuntu 20.04's approach to ZFS on root. Plus Let's Encrypt's certificate validation mix-up, Intel's questionable new power supply design, and more. Links: Let's Encrypt changes course on certificate revocation Revoking certain certificates on March 4 Let's Encrypt: Incomplete revocation for CAA rechecking bugPass authzModel by value, not reference The Complete Guide to CAA RecordsDNS...

Cloudflare recently embarked on an epic quest to choose a CPU for its next-generation server build, so we explore the importance of requests per watt, the benefits of full memory encryption, and why AMD won. Plus Mozilla's rollout of DNS over HTTPS has begun, a big milestone for Let's Encrypt, and more. Links: Firefox continues push to bring DNS over HTTPS by default for US users - The Mozilla Blog The Facts: Mozilla’s DNS over HTTPs (DoH) Security/DOH-resolver-policy - MozillaWiki HTTPS...

We explore the potential of heat-assisted magnetic recording and get excited about a possibly persistent L2ARC. Plus Jim's journeys with Clear Linux, and why Ubuntu 18.04.4 is a maintenance release worth talking about. Links: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS: here's what's new — It's not as shiny and exciting as entirely new versions, of course, but it does pack in some worthwhile security and bugfix upgrades, as well as support for more and newer hardware.18.04.4 - Ubuntu WikiMobaXterm — Enhanced...

We take a look at a few exciting features coming to Linux kernel 5.6, including the first steps to multipath TCP. Plus the latest Intel speculative execution vulnerability, and Microsoft's troubled history with certificate renewal. Links: Oregon company makes top bid for Microsoft check - CNET Microsoft’s failures to renew: Teams, Hotmail, and Hotmail.co.uk | Ars Technica Microsoft Teams goes down after Microsoft forgot to renew a certificate - The Verge Browser review: Microsoft’s new...

We explore the latest round of Windows vulnerabilities and Jim shares his journey adding OPNsense to his firewall family. Plus a look back at Apollo-era audio that's still relevant today with the surprising story of the Quindar tones. Links: Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Win10 Crypto Vulnerability: Cheating in Elliptic Curve Billiards 2 NSA discovers a serious flaw in Windows 10 Exploiting CVE-2020-0601 CVE-2020-0601 POC NSA Cybersecurity Advisory on...

Compiling the Linux kernel with Clang has never been easier, so we explore this alternative compiler and what it brings to the ecosystem. Plus Debian's continued init system debate, and our frustrations over 5G reporting. Links: 5G Underwhelms in Its First Big Test - WSJHow South Korea built 5G, and what it's learning - RCR Wireless NewsAfter seven months, here’s what South Korea can teach us about 5G - CNASouth Korea secures 4 million 5G subscribers | ZDNetDebian Developers Take To Voting...

From classifying cats to colorizing old photos we share our top tips and tools for starting your machine learning journey. Plus, learn why Nebula is our favorite new VPN technology, and how it can help simplify and secure your network. Links: Introducing Nebula, the open source global overlay network from Slack nebula: A scalable overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simplicity and security Nebula VPN routes between hosts privately, flexibly, and efficiently How to set up your...

As the rollout of 5G finally arrives, we take some time to explain the fundamentals of the next generation of wireless technology. Plus the surprising performance of eero's mesh Wi-Fi, some great news for WireGuard, and an update on the Librem 5. Links: Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.T-Mobile launches 600MHz 5G across the US, but no one can use it yetStudy...

We explore the rapid adoption of machine learning, its impact on computer architecture, and how to avoid AI snake oil. Plus so-so SSD security, and a new wireless protocol that works best where the Wi-Fi sucks. Sponsored By: Linux Academy: Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.Links: Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud...

Ubiquiti's troublesome new telemetry, Jim's take on the modern Microsoft, and why Project Silica just might be the future of long term storage. Links: Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it? — Ubiquiti Networks is fending off customer complaints after emitting a firmware update that caused its UniFi wireless routers to quietly phone HQ with telemetry.UI official: urgent, please answer | Ubiquiti Community Update: UniFi Phone Home/Performance Data...

We share our simple approach to disk benchmarking and explain why you should always test your pain points. Plus the basics of solid state disks and how to evaluate which model is right for you. Links: History of hard disk drives — WikipediaHow to Buy the Right SSD: A Guide for 2019 — Tom's HardwareThe Development and History of Solid State Drives (SSDs)Understanding IOPS, latency and storage performanceFIO cheat sheet — Jim's Blog

We dive into Ubuntu 19.10's experimental ZFS installer and share our tips for making the most of ZFS on root.  Plus why you may want to skip Nest Wifi, and our latest explorations of long range wireless protocols. Links: Decoding LoRa: Realizing a Modern LPWAN with SDR — LoRa is an emerging Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), a type of wireless communication technology suitable for connecting low power embedded devices over long ranges. This paper details the modulation and encoding...

We peer into the future with a quick look at quantum supremacy, debate the latest DNS over HTTPS drama, and jump through the hoops of HTTP/3. Plus when to use WARP, the secrets of Startpage, and the latest Ryzen release. Links: Why big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS Chromium Blog: Experimenting with same-provider DNS-over-HTTPS upgradeHow to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in Google ChromeWhat’s next in making Encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS the Default - Future ReleasesWARP...

It's TechSNAP story time as we head out into the field with Jim and put Sure-Fi technology to the test. Plus an update on Wifi 6, an enlightening Chromebook bug, and some not-quite-quantum key distribution. Links: RF Chirp tech: Long distance, incredible penetration, low bandwidth | Ars Technica — Recently, I took the company's technology for a spin with a pair of hand-held demo communicators about the size of a kid's walkie-talkie. They don't do much—just light up with a signal strength...

We take a look at a few recent zero-day vulnerabilities for iOS and Android and find targeted attacks, bad assumptions, and changing markets. Plus what to expect from USB4 and an upcoming Linux scheduler speed-up for AMD's Epyc CPUs. Links: Google says hackers have put ‘monitoring implants’ in iPhones for years | Technology | The Guardian — Their location was uploaded every minute; their device’s keychain, containing all their passwords, was uploaded, as were their chat histories on popular...

It's CPU release season and we get excited about AMD's new line of server chips. Plus our take on AMD's approach to memory encryption, and our struggle to make sense of Intel's Comet Lake line. Also, a few Windows worms you should know about, the end of the road for EV certs, and an embarrassing new Bluetooth attack. Links: A detailed look at AMD’s new Epyc “Rome” 7nm server CPUs | Ars Technica — The short version of the story is, Epyc "Rome" is to the server what Ryzen 3000 was to the...

We examine why it's so difficult to protect your privacy online and discuss browser fingerprinting, when to use a VPN, and the limits of private browsing. Plus Apple's blaring bluetooth beacons and Facebook's worrying plans for WhatsApp. Links: Apple bleee. Everyone knows What Happens on Your iPhone – hexway — If Bluetooth is ON on your Apple device everyone nearby can understand current status of your device, get info about battery, device name, Wi-Fi status, buffer availability, OS...

We take a look at the amazing abilities of the Apollo Guidance Computer and Jim breaks down everything you need to know about the ZFS ARC. Plus an update on ZoL SIMD acceleration, your feedback, and an interesting new neuromorphic system from Intel. Links: ZFS On Linux Has Figured Out A Way To Restore SIMD Support On Linux 5.0+ — Those running ZFS On Linux (ZoL) on post-5.0 (and pre-5.0 supported LTS releases) have seen big performance hits to the ZFS encryption performance in particular....

Wes takes a quick look at a container escape proof-of-concept and reviews Docker security best practices. Links: Understanding Docker container escapes | Trail of Bits Blog — Linux cgroups are one of the mechanisms by which Docker isolates containers. The PoC abuses the functionality of the notify_on_release.Felix Wilhelm on Twitter — Quick and dirty way to get out of a privileged k8s pod or docker container by using cgroups release_agent feature.

Jim shares his Nagios tips and Wes chimes in with some modern tools as we chat monitoring in the wake of some high-profile outages. Plus we turn our eye to hardware and get excited about the latest Ryzen line from AMD. Links: Third parties confirm AMD’s outstanding Ryzen 3000 numbers | Ars Technica — AMD debuted its new Ryzen 3000 desktop CPU line a few weeks ago at E3, and it looked fantastic. For the first time in 20 years, it looked like AMD could go head to head with Intel's desktop CPU...