13:59:12 <ggus> #startmeeting Community Team Meeting - March 28 2022
13:59:12 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Mar 28 13:59:12 2022 UTC.  The chair is ggus. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
13:59:12 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
13:59:16 <ggus> hello everyone!
13:59:16 <championquizzer> hello community team o/
13:59:21 <ggus> here we are again :)
13:59:27 <rhatto> hello :)
13:59:36 <nah> o/
13:59:48 <ggus> please update our meeting pad here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-community-team-2022-keep
13:59:51 <nina13[m]> hi!
14:05:08 <ggus> looks like everyone finished to update the pad
14:05:29 <ggus> * Team 1:1s and Q2 roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/team/-/wikis/home
14:05:48 <ggus> this week i have a meeting with gaba to discuss the Community Team Q2 roadmap
14:05:55 <emmapeel> oops sorry i am late
14:06:02 <ggus> welcome, emmapeel!
14:06:11 <championquizzer> o/
14:06:25 <ggus> Q1 roadmap is here: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/team/-/wikis/home#roadmap
14:06:51 <ggus> but i don't think we had Sponsor123 started when i wrote that roadmap
14:07:26 <rhatto> ggus, sponsor123 is there...
14:07:48 <ggus> oh true
14:08:16 <rhatto> its just missing the milestone link
14:08:44 <rhatto> the milestone was created recently
14:08:46 <ggus> do you all have permission to edit the wiki?
14:08:57 <rhatto> i believe i do
14:09:03 <raya[m]> yup
14:10:43 <ggus> ok! i will share the roadmap pad with you, so we can update there, then i will check with gaba this week, and finally we will move to the wiki.
14:11:45 <ggus> i will send the pad by email
14:11:55 <raya[m]> cool
14:12:58 <rhatto> ok
14:13:34 <ggus> Q1 is almost done people.
14:13:42 <raya[m]> :)
14:13:48 <emmapeel> whohooo
14:13:53 <ggus> *panic*
14:14:12 <raya[m]> what can we help with
14:16:23 <ggus> i think it's all good, most tasks for Q1 are completed or in progress.
14:17:39 <ggus> this week we start our biweekly 1:1s!
14:17:55 <championquizzer> yes!
14:18:47 <ggus> this week i will meet with 3 of you, and next week only with 2, as i will be v busy with s30 trainings
14:19:01 <ggus> i will follow up by email, thank you all for answering! :)
14:19:56 <ggus> let's move to the next topic
14:20:03 <ggus> * Tor Browser 11.5 documentation and front desk update
14:20:29 <ggus> The next TB release (11.5) will come with a bunch of features, i heard.
14:21:18 <ggus> for example, it looks like we will have https-only mode ON by default. which means for some HTTP website TB will show an error/message
14:22:11 <championquizzer> yes! this time i am expecting we will have to update/re-write more parts of the documentation with shiny new screenshots
14:22:33 <ggus> championquizzer: let's meet to map all the docs that we will have to update
14:22:59 <championquizzer> i think the release is scheduled for mid-year (june) and the plan is to qa the alpha releases from next month
14:23:00 <raya[m]> i'm curious to learn what led to the decision to have https mode on by default on newer versions
14:23:07 <championquizzer> ggus: ack
14:23:22 <ggus> TB 11.5 release is for ~June, but let's start meeting with TB devs and UX team to collect all the pieces
14:23:26 <emmapeel> raya[m]: it is safer for the tor network
14:23:56 <emmapeel> otherwise your exit node can spy the websites you visit
14:24:19 <ggus> raya[m]: there is an ongoing problem of exit nodes doing MITM
14:25:09 <ggus> https://blog.torproject.org/bad-exit-relays-may-june-2020/
14:25:39 <raya[m]> interesting
14:25:55 <ggus> (one sec)
14:26:49 <raya[m]> i just have usability concerns about https as it's not widely adopted by sites in the global south
14:26:57 <raya[m]> that's why i asked :)
14:28:10 <ggus> yes, i think we can work with UX team to improve the HTTPS-only message. You can test right now with TB-Alpha
14:28:31 <raya[m]> will test it out, thank you!
14:28:56 <emmapeel> raya[m]: it is easier and cheaper now to provide ssl with let's encrypt ssl certificates. i also keep asking people to add ssl to their NGO websites
14:29:11 <emmapeel> but yeah, not many do
14:31:04 <ggus> and beside that, we will have all the connect assist that piero showed last week on the demo day
14:31:16 <raya[m]> that was very cool!
14:31:49 <ggus> yes, a lot of exciting new features in TB!
14:31:57 <emmapeel> they are going to be released? oh, i thought they were further
14:32:06 <emmapeel> lots of documentation changes!
14:32:49 <ggus> emmapeel: exactly, and user support article on RT and cdr.link, and tor training materials...
14:33:36 <ggus> the good news is that we have some months to work on that
14:34:15 <emmapeel> yes!
14:34:39 <ggus> anything else about tb-11.5 release?
14:34:53 <emmapeel> maybe we can go through the docs and see which ones are likely to need changes
14:35:40 <ggus> we can do either during a community team meeting or in a docs meeting. what do you prefer?
14:35:53 <emmapeel> and then start preparing a branch or branches with the changes to deploy
14:36:13 <championquizzer> ggus: a qa party!
14:36:39 <emmapeel> yay! bughunting
14:37:00 <raya[m]> :)
14:38:19 <ggus> sounds good!
14:41:15 <ggus> alright, so let me say out loud the plan: we meet with ux team and join TB release meeting to follow up their plans (April-June), then we put together a list of changes that need to be done in the docs (tracked on gitlab tickets), finally we review it during the QA party and then work on the merge requests.
14:41:38 <championquizzer> perfect. sounds good!
14:42:09 <emmapeel> sounds good!
14:42:30 <ggus> great!
14:43:15 <ggus> cool, i will jump to our last item.
14:43:23 <ggus> * Russia bridges usage spike: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2021-12-28&end=2022-03-28&country=ru
14:44:17 <ggus> the metrics data is from March 25, but it seems that @getbridgesbot is working well
14:44:26 <raya[m]> ~20k more users!
14:44:30 <nina13[m]> That's interesting as the number of Russian tickets evel lower than usual
14:45:59 <ggus> snowflake usage also increased: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-combined.html?start=2021-12-28&end=2022-03-28&country=ru
14:46:33 <ggus> maybe that is related with david's migration to a newer and faster snowflake server
14:47:14 <ggus> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40110#note_2791036
14:47:47 <ggus> "The current level of usage fits comfortably in the server's hardware limits. This server has 32 CPU cores, and none of the cores is above 33%. RAM usage is 28 GB / 128 GB. I can watch YouTube over Snowflake again, which had not been the case for a while on the old bridge."
14:48:08 <ggus> nina13[m]: do you know if YouTube is blocked in Russia?
14:48:43 <nina13[m]> Not yet
14:49:27 <emmapeel> hehe
14:49:52 <nina13[m]> But the monetisation is switched off for Russian so many youtubers ask to use foreign ips
14:50:36 <ggus> another interesting thing: it looks like Outline vpn is being blocked - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/111
14:51:02 <ggus> plus google play: https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/107#issuecomment-1080165872
14:52:54 <nina13[m]> Google Play works as I know. But there were problems with access
14:54:22 <ggus> ok!
14:54:32 <ggus> any other thought about this spike?
14:54:44 <ggus> i will check with irl about telegram bridges usage in russia
14:54:59 <ggus> (and in china!)
14:55:05 <nina13[m]> I saw at least 2 videos about TB in Russian
14:55:16 <ggus> good ones or meh?
14:55:33 <emmapeel> maybe the new laws about 'fake news' made Russian users more cautious_
14:55:35 <emmapeel> ?
14:56:34 <nina13[m]> ggus: These videos always seem a bit amateur but OK. No fails
14:56:59 <championquizzer> nina13[m]: re. there were problems with access. like logging into play services? intermittent blocking of g play?
14:57:17 <ggus> share with me!
14:57:53 <championquizzer> because if g play is blocked i would expect more users to turn to f-droid ...we will have to write some cdr.link/frontdesk docs about that
14:58:09 <nina13[m]> championquizzer: With some mobile ISPs. But many users haven't seen any problems
14:58:15 <championquizzer> i see
14:58:23 <nina13[m]> ggus: Sure
14:59:10 <ggus> community team! i will stop the meeting bot as there is another meeting
14:59:12 <ggus> #endmeeting