Background

Back when I got my GL-AR150 mini router, I was blown away by the powerful capabilities of this $25 OpenWRT router, even being able to (somewhat) run WordPress!

One thing that the router didn’t do so well was acting as an OpenVPN client or server, due to its weak CPU and the relatively high computing overhead of the OpenVPN protocol. The speeds you could expect were often 5 megabit per second or lower.

Recently, the WireGuard protocol with its promise of lower CPU overhead was added as an alternative, so I decided to dust off my AR-150 and try it out.

The performance test

After setting up a WireGuard server on the GL-AR150, I connected to it from a MacBook and ran a short download performance test:

wget https://gensho.ftp.acc.umu.se/cdimage/archive/3.1_r2/arm/iso-cd/debian-31r2-arm-netinst.iso
debian-31r2-arm-netinst.iso 100%[===========>]  85,89M  2,97MB/s    
Average speed: 3,05 MB/s.

This means that this tiny router can push 25 megabits per second, and I’ve seen burst of up to 35 megabits per second for short periods, which is acceptable for many VPN applications.

Conclusion

GL-AR150 is the weakest router CPU-wise in the GL.iNet line-up, so it means that essentially purchasing any of their newer model would provide an even better VPN experience.

For example, their newest Brume router promises a whopping 280 megabits per second in throughput with WireGuard!

Note: This post contains no affiliate links.

The post WireGuard performance on the low-end GL.iNet GL-AR150 mini router appeared first on Useful Snippets.

Rolling out Sailfish 3 this autumn has been our biggest objective this year and we’re happy to report the latest status. It’s time for an update and awaited schedule news.

As we mentioned already in our original Sailfish 3 announcement in Mobile World Congress back in February, Sailfish 3 is a result of rigorous development work done together with Jolla’s licensing partners and the Sailfish community over the course of 2017-2018 – thanks to all of you for the cooperation and contributions! The third generation of our operating system will have clear new benefits for all of its users, be it corporate licensing customers, our developer community members, or daily Sailfish users.

Jolla has always embraced the methodology of continuous development and continuous releases, and Sailfish 3 is no exception. Sailfish 3 is rolled out in phases, and in fact, our latest software update Nurmonjoki already included a few of the new features. Albeit perhaps more relevant for the corporate customers, those still have belonged to our Sailfish 3 list all the time. These items included e.g. VPN improvements and MDM (Mobile Device Management) functionalities.

Schedule for Sailfish 3 and Xperia XA2

Sailfish 3 will be rolled out during October, so that selected community members will receive the software after mid-October, and following the group’s feedback our target is to start with the early access release by the end of October. For those unaware, anyone can sign-in for the Sailfish early access releases to be in the first wave, please see instructions. After that, the full release will be available to everyone in a few weeks depending on the items needing fixes identified by our early access group.

At the same time with the Sailfish 3 early access release we’ll also start to offer Sailfish X for certain Sony Xperia XA2 devices. More details about this will be made available closer to the release date.

We are super excited about Sailfish 3, and can’t wait to bring it for you – I trust you share our feeling. We also have some cool live event plans coming up for you in a few locations, so keep an eye for our coming updates!

Your Jolla captain,
Sami

The post Sailfish 3 is at your doorstep appeared first on Jolla Blog.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a major release. Between versions 3.0 and 4.0, I’ve treated Hybrid Core as a bit of a “living” framework where most of us just used the latest development code to build themes. But, at some point, it started becoming time for an official release.

Many of the features in the official 4.0 release might not feel new to those of you who’ve been working with the bleeding edge. For those of you who’ve been on the 3.0 branch, you should be in for a treat.

The new, somewhat new, and changes to the old

Hybrid Core 4.0 carries a ton minor changes. Primarily, there’s quite a number of utility functions spread throughout the framework, which further helps with theme development. I encourage all developers to dig in and find all the new and neat functions.

I also fixed numerous bugs, most of which were handled in a 3.1 release that never happened. So, they all got pushed into the official 4.0 release.

Most of all, the framework has been brought up to date with all the latest and greatest changes in core WordPress.

Fonts API:

One of my favorite features is the new fonts system. It was an idea that I extended from Jose Castaneda for working with Google Fonts.

The new system allows theme authors to register, enqueue, etc. fonts just like core WP allows with scripts and styles. Out of the box, it works with both the Google Fonts API and fonts bundled with the theme.

Object Template API:

Hybrid Core has long been at the forefront of custom post templates. We had them for 7 years before they were introduced in WordPress. This time around, I’ve taken this a step further and built a new custom template system that works with posts, terms, and users. There’s not yet an admin UI for terms and users, but the underlying functionality is there.

This is a feature that we’ll iterate on and will allow theme authors to build some awesome stuff.

Embed Template Parts:

I’ve been sneaking this into my themes for a while. It’s long past due being an official part of Hybrid Core. The new embed template system will work like our current content template parts. Essentially, theme authors can create custom templates for embeds based on the post type or post format.

This opens up cool things like being able to share audio/video embeds from your own site on others’ sites plus lots of other cool things.

Attributes System Overhaul:

In 3.0.0, I introduced a new attributes system, which allowed theme authors to have customizable and filterable HTML attributes for any element. Sort of like body_class() and post_class() on steroids. I even built in Schema.org support.

However, that forced theme authors into using my preferred system. This version completely overhauls the system, providing just the foundation. Theme authors now have complete freedom over attributes.

Registry API:

Hybrid Core now has its own registry class for storing collections of data for single page loads. Mostly, this is used internally to keep from having globals. But, it’s available to use for theme authors who have the need to store collections of key/value pairs.

Taxonomy Term Layouts:

While the functionality has always been built in, we’ve never had the admin UI. The theme layouts feature now has an admin UI on the add new and edit term screens in the admin. You can utilize this to give your users even more control over their site’s layouts.

Want “Category X” to be one column? No problem. Want “Tag Y” to be two columns with the sidebar on the left? Yeah, you can do that too.

Removed Post Styles:

The Post Styles feature is now officially removed from the framework. Very few people used it, so it was just bloat that we didn’t need.

If you did use the feature and still need it, get in touch with me. I’d be happy to pass along the code.

Upgrade to 4.0.0

Please take a moment to read through the change log and readme before upgrading. There are a number of incompatible changes from 3.x to 4.0.

Outside of that, I hope you enjoy this release. It’s been loads of fun working on it.

You can grab a copy from:

• GitHub Repository
• Framework Home (new page design too!)

The post Hybrid Core Version 4.0.0 appeared first on Theme Hybrid.

After quite a bit of hard work, I've at long last launched WireGuard, a secure network tunnel that uses modern crypto, is extremely fast, and is easy and pleasurable to use. You can read about it at the website, but in short, it's based on the simple idea of an association between public keys and permitted IP addresses. Along the way it uses some nice crypto trick to achieve it's goal. For performance it lives in the kernel, though cross-platform versions in safe languages like Rust, Go, etc are on their way.

The launch was wildly successful. About 10 minutes after I ran /etc/init.d/nginx restart, somebody had already put it on Hacker News and the Twitter sphere, and within 24 hours I had received 150,000 unique IPs. The reception has been very warm, and the mailing list has already started to get some patches. Distro maintainers have stepped up and packages are being prepared. There are currently packages for Gentoo, Arch, Debian, and OpenWRT, which is very exciting.

Although it's still experimental and not yet in final stable/secure form, I'd be interested in general feedback from experimenters and testers.

Thanks Pedro! Be sure to check out Charles’ webinar on enhanced ecommerce as well.

https://www.analyticspros.com/labs/webinars/enhanced-ecommerce-in-google-universal-analytics-webinar/