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 for all: Let’s Encrypt reaches one billion certificates issued | Ars Technica
• Let’s Encrypt Has Issued a Billion Certificates - Let’s Encrypt - Free SSL/TLS Certificates
• Let’s Encrypt: A History - The Morning Paper
• Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months • The Register
• Ballot SC22: Reduce Certificate Lifetimes
• Google Chrome’s fear of Microsoft Edge is revealing its bad side
• Microsoft shares a roadmap for the new Microsoft Edge
• Microsoft Edge: Top Feedback Summary for March 4
• Download Microsoft Edge Insider Channels
• Flaw in billions of Wi-Fi devices left communications open to eavesdropping | Ars Technica
• kr00k: A serious vulnerability deep inside Wi-Fi encryption
• Kr00k Paper
• Technical Details of Why Cloudflare Chose AMD EPYC for Gen X Servers
• An EPYC trip to Rome: AMD is Cloudflare’s 10th-generation Edge server CPU
• Cloudflare’s Gen X: Servers for an Accelerated Future
• Impact of Cache Locality
• Gen X Performance Tuning
• Securing Memory at EPYC Scale
• Intel promises Full Memory Encryption in upcoming CPUs | Ars Technica

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 Wiki
• MobaXterm — Enhanced terminal for Windows with X11 server, tabbed SSH client, network tools and much more.
• Linux distro review: Intel’s own Clear Linux OS — There's not much question that Clear Linux is your best bet if you want to turn in the best possible benchmark numbers. The question not addressed here is, what's it like to run Clear Linux as a daily driver? We were curious, so we took it for a spin.
• Clear Linux* Project — Clear Linux OS is an open source, rolling release Linux distribution optimized for performance and security, from the Cloud to the Edge, designed for customization, and manageability.
• swupd — Documentation for Clear Linux* project
• clr-boot-manager: Kernel & Boot Loader Management
• Cannot compile zfs for 5.5-rc2 · Issue #9745 · zfsonlinux/zfs
• Persistent L2ARC might be coming to ZFS on Linux — The primary ARC is kept in system RAM, but an L2ARC device can be created from one or more fast disks. In a ZFS pool with one or more L2ARC devices, when blocks are evicted from the primary ARC in RAM, they are moved down to L2ARC rather than being thrown away entirely. In the past, this feature has been of limited value, both because indexing a large L2ARC occupies system RAM which could have been better used for primary ARC and because L2ARC was not persistent across reboots.
• Persistent L2ARC by gamanakis · Pull Request #9582 · zfsonlinux/zfs — This feature implements a light-weight persistent L2ARC metadata structure that allows L2ARC contents to be recovered after a reboot. This significantly eases the impact a reboot has on read performance on systems with large caches.
• LINUX Unplugged 303: Stateless and Dateless — We visit Intel to figure out what Clear Linux is all about and explain a few tricks that make it unique.
• LINUX Unplugged Blog: Clear Linux OS 2019
• HAMR don’t hurt ’em: laser-assisted hard drives are coming in 2020 — Although the 2012 "just around the corner" HAMR drives seem to have been mostly vapor, the technology is a reality now. Seagate has been trialing 16TB HAMR drives with select customers for more than a year and claims that the trials have proved that its HAMR drives are "plug and play replacements" for traditional CMR drives, requiring no special care and having no particular poor use cases compared to the drives we're all used to.
• HAMR Milestone: Seagate Achieves 16TB Capacity on Internal HAMR Test Units
• Western Digital debuts 18TB and 20TB near-MAMR disk drives
• Previously on TechSNAP 341: HAMR Time — We've got bad news for Wifi-lovers as the KRACK hack takes the world by storm; We have the details & some places to watch to make sure you stay patched. Plus, some distressing revelations about third party access to your personal information through some US mobile carriers. Then we cover the ongoing debate over HAMR, MAMR, and the future of hard drive technology & take a mini deep dive into the world of elliptic curve cryptography.

Plus the surprising performance of eero's mesh Wi-Fi, some great news for WireGuard, and an update on the Librem 5.

Links:

• T-Mobile launches 600MHz 5G across the US, but no one can use it yet
• Study confirms AT&T’s fake 5G E network is no faster than Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint 4G
• 5G on the horizon: Here’s what it is and what’s coming
• Can 5G replace everybody’s home broadband?
• The Snapdragon 865 will make phones worse in 2020, thanks to mandatory 5G
• Librem 5 backers have begun receiving their Linux phones
• Amazon’s inexpensive Eero mesh Wi-Fi kit is shockingly good
• WireGuard VPN is a step closer to mainstream adoption

Plus so-so SSD security, and a new wireless protocol that works best where the Wi-Fi sucks.

Links:

• “Where the Wi-Fi sucks” is where a new wireless protocol does its magic
• Ubiquiti’s new “Amplifi Alien” is a mesh-capable Wi-Fi 6 router
• Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives
• Securely erase a solid-state drive
• Solid state drive/Memory cell clearing - ArchWiki
• The Deep Learning Revolution and Its Implications for Computer Architecture and Chip Design
• Intel Core i9-10980XE—a step forward for AI, a step back for everything else
• How to recognize AI snake oil

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 Collection | Ubiquiti Community
• Possible example data
• Latest firmware with changes
• Microsoft’s Project Silica offers robust thousand-year storage | Ars Technica — Silica aims to replace both tape and optical archival discs as the media of choice for large-scale, (very) long duration cold storage.
• Project Silica
• The Future of Data Storage
• Microsoft Ignite 2019
• Microsoft Edge is coming to Linux. But will anybody use it? | Ars Technica — At Microsoft Ignite a slide announced that Microsoft's project to rebase its perennially unloved Edge browser on Google's open source project Chromium is well underway. Sharper-eyed attendees also noticed a promise for future Linux support.
• Has Microsoft Changed?
• This isn’t your father’s Microsoft

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 elements that comprise the LoRa PHY, the structure of which is the result of the author’s recent blind analysis of the protocol. It also introduces grlora, an open source software defined implementation of the PHY that will empower wireless developers and security researchers to investigate this nascent protocol.
• Nest Wifi announced at Made by Google 2019 | Ars Technica — Google says that a two-piece Nest Wifi kit—one Nest Router and one Nest Point—should cover up to 3,800 square feet and 85% of homes. This claim, like most arbitrary claims of Wi-Fi coverage with no real detail, should be taken with several grains of salt.
• TP-LINK EAP series Business Wi-Fi Solution — The EAP Series Business Wi-Fi Solution incorporates EAP Series hardware, which provides a smooth, reliable wireless internet experience, and a powerful centralized management platform.
• Bloody Stupid Johnson | Discworld Wiki — Although evidently able in certain fields, Johnson is notorious for his complete inability to produce anything according to specification or common sense, or (sometimes) even the laws of physics.
• A Quick Look At EXT4 vs. ZFS Performance On Ubuntu 19.10 With An NVMe SSD — For those thinking of playing with Ubuntu 19.10's new experimental ZFS desktop install option in opting for using ZFS On Linux in place of EXT4 as the root file-system, here are some quick benchmarks looking at the out-of-the-box performance of ZFS/ZoL vs. EXT4 on Ubuntu 19.10 using a common NVMe solid-state drive.
• ubuntu/zsys: zsys daemon and client for zfs systems — It allows running multiple ZFS systems in parallel on the same machine, get automated snapshots, managing complex zfs dataset layouts separating user data from system and persistent data, and more.
• Ubuntu ZFS support in 19.10: ZFS on root · ~DidRocks — We are shipping ZFS On Linux version 0.8.1, with features like native encryption, trimming support, checkpoints, raw encrypted zfs transmissions, project accounting and quota and a lot of performance enhancements.
• Ubuntu ZFS support in 19.10: introduction · ~DidRocks — We want to support ZFS on root as an experimental installer option, initially for desktop, but keeping the layout extensible for server later on.
• A detailed look at Ubuntu’s new experimental ZFS installer | Ars Technica — If you're new to the ZFS hype train, you might wonder why a new filesystem option in an OS installer is a big deal. So here's a quick explanation: ZFS is a copy-on-write filesystem, which can take atomic snapshots of entire filesystems.

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 reading on both devices, whenever a transmit button on either is pressed—but that's enough to get a good indication of whether the tech will work to solve a given problem.
• Wi-Fi 6 Is Officially Here: Certification Program Begins — Finally, along with the launch of the certification program itself, the Wi-Fi Alliance has already certified its first dozen devices.
• Say hello to 802.11ax: Wi-Fi 6 device certification begins today | Ars Technica — Today, the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi Certified 6 program, which means that the standard has been completely finalized, and device manufacturers and OEMs can begin the process of having the organization certify their products to carry the Wi-Fi 6 branding.
• Someone sent us 21 more pictures of the leaked Pixel 4 XL - The Verge
• iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max: Hands-on with Apple’s new phones | Ars Technica
• Some Chromebooks mistakenly declared themselves end-of-life last week | Ars Technica — A lot of Chromebook and Chromebox users don't realize this, but all ChromeOS devices have an expiration date. Google's original policy was for devices to be supported for five years, but the company has recently extended that time to 6.5 years.
• LINUX Unplugged 318: Manjaro Levels Up
• Fear the Man in the Middle? This company wants to sell quantum key distribution | Ars Technica
• Gentle intro to Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) – Lahiru Madushanka
• The Super-Secure Quantum Cable Hiding in the Holland Tunnel - Bloomberg — Banks and governments are testing quantum key distribution technology to guard their closest secrets.
• Quantum Key Distribution - QKD — This paper provides an overview of quantum key distribution targeted towards the computer science community. A brief description of the relevant principles from quantum mechanics is provided before surveying the most prominent quantum key distribution protocols present in the literature.
• TechSNAP 403: Keeping Systems Simple
• Linux Headlines — Linux and open source headlines every weekday, in under 3 minutes.

Plus the latest router botnet, why you should never go full UPnP, and the benefits of building your own home router.

Special Guest: Jim Salter.

Links:

• Google goes down after major BGP mishap routes traffic through China — Google lost control of several million of its IP addresses for more than an hour on Monday in an event that intermittently made its search and other services unavailable to many users.
• Internet Vulnerability Takes Down Google
• China has been 'hijacking the vital internet backbone of western countries'
• RPKI - The required cryptographic upgrade to BGP routing
• HTTP/3 — The protocol that's been called HTTP-over-QUIC for quite some time has now changed name and will officially become HTTP/3.
• HTTP/3: Come for the speed, stay for the security
• The Road to QUIC
• Botnet pwns 100,000 routers using ancient security flaw — Researchers have stumbled on another large botnet that’s been quietly hijacking home routers while nobody was paying attention
• BCMPUPnP_Hunter: A 100k Botnet Turns Home Routers to Email Spammers
• From Zero to ZeroDay Journey: Router Hacking
• The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch