15:59:45 <cohosh> #startmeeting tor anti-censorship meeting
15:59:45 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Jul 30 15:59:45 2020 UTC.  The chair is cohosh. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
15:59:45 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
16:00:00 <BinBones> The only thing tor is better at is accessing the regular web in an anonymous way
16:00:00 <cohosh> our meeting pad is here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-keep
16:00:44 <cohosh> we don't have a lot on the agenda for today
16:01:45 <cohosh> the only announcement is to add things to the pad for our july monthly report
16:02:15 <BinBones> I saw Phillip winters video and disagree with some of the thing torproject was thinking about working on
16:02:38 <hanneloresx> is there a new pad for the monthly report?
16:02:44 <cohosh> here it is: https://pad.riseup.net/p/0JgLG-qpdbqTMZW4Kjma
16:02:56 <hanneloresx> ah ok
16:03:25 <phw> BinBones: great. that's not what we're going to discuss as part of this meeting though, so cut it out.
16:03:59 <cohosh> BinBones: we have some extra time if you feel you're able to discuss it in a productive way, but in general we work through our agenda first
16:04:08 <phw> hanneloresx: how did the solidot experience from last month go? any interesting reactions?
16:04:44 <hanneloresx> soo, the post got taken down from solidot after a few hours
16:04:51 <cohosh> :/
16:04:54 <dcf1> oh wow
16:04:56 <phw> oh, how come?
16:05:04 <hanneloresx> it was mirrored in at least one other site before being taken down
16:06:26 <dcf1> This is the Chinese version of the June 2020 report, same as https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/40 ?
16:07:13 <hanneloresx> well, solidot posts are like twitter format, short summary with links to longer posts
16:07:28 <hanneloresx> i posted a summary with links to the Tor blog and snowflake and bridgedb etc
16:08:08 <hanneloresx> i've seen other posts on solidot on snowflake and Tor being kept up, so it could be that my post was too nakedly "anticensorship"
16:08:30 <hanneloresx> i could try again and focus on specific technical aspects of the monthly report more
16:09:26 <phw> hanneloresx: that's a bummer but thanks for doing this
16:09:37 <BinBones> What's the report on Snowflake?
16:10:24 <cohosh> BinBones: this is our monthly report where we share what we've done over the last mon
16:10:30 <dcf1> BinBones: https://blog.torproject.org/anti-censorship-june-2020
16:10:31 <hanneloresx> phw: happy to help
16:11:33 <dcf1> Regarding FOCI, it's much cheaper than usual, only $60, because it's online only. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/registration-information
16:12:37 <dcf1> The papers and videos will be available freely shortly after the event, so attending live is really only necessary if you want to participate in Q&A or chat with the other people there (I actually don't know how they're going to handle live video and chat)
16:13:28 <cohosh> also congrats dcf1 on your paper there :)
16:13:29 <phw> dcf1: congrats on the turbotunnel paper!
16:14:04 <dcf1> I was trying to see if it's possible to do gift registrations and sponsor 1 or 2 people to attend who haven't been to this kind of thing before, but it doesn't look like there's a gift registration option
16:14:11 <dcf1> thanks
16:14:34 <dcf1> I put my paper online already at https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/turbotunnel/
16:14:38 <BinBones> Is there any evidence/rumours that Tor alpha snowflake works in China?
16:14:58 <BinBones> *android
16:16:13 <cohosh> BinBones: we're happy to answer these questions, but you're derailing a meeting. please wait until we work through the agenda. we'll have time at the end to discuss this
16:17:26 <cohosh> any other announcements before we move on to our needs help with?
16:18:14 <cohosh> alright, i don't see a lot of new things here
16:18:35 <cohosh> i'm waiting on a review from the tor browser team to add default STUN servers to the snowflake clients
16:18:40 <cohosh> anyone else?
16:20:06 <cohosh> okay that's all of the agenda
16:20:33 <cohosh> BinBones: we've been in contact with a user who has gotten snowflake working in china but haven't heard from them recently
16:20:53 <dcf1> I haven't heard either way about the android version working
16:21:11 <cohosh> yeah we haven't heard anything since it was available on android
16:21:28 <cohosh> we do have a merge request waiting for review that will update the default stun servers used
16:21:42 <hanneloresx> cohosh: let me know if it'd be helpful to find some testers in china
16:22:04 <cohosh> my guess is that it won't work with the current default stun servers, but with this update it will work (i checked the stun servers myself and they were reachable from a VPS in china)
16:22:05 <tomcat> :-)
16:22:08 <cohosh> hanneloresx: that would great!
16:22:52 <hanneloresx> i'll ask around
16:22:52 <dcf1> checking the bridge's dirreq-stats just now,
16:23:11 <BinBones> schools/work block Youtube and Tor doesn't help because the schools have their own proxy and I don't know the details
16:23:11 <dcf1> dirreq-v3-ips ru=16,us=16,??=8,au=8,be=8,br=8,ca=8,cn=8,gb=8,il=8,in=8,ir=8,it=8,jp=8,nl=8,tr=8
16:23:14 <dcf1> dirreq-v3-reqs ??=200,nl=16,ru=16,us=16,au=8,be=8,br=8,ca=8,cn=8,gb=8,il=8,in=8,ir=8,it=8,jp=8,tr=8
16:23:54 <dcf1> cn=8 means between 1-8 users from China in the past 24 hours BUT we still have the bug where more than half of connections are reporting an IP address of 0.0.0.0, so they can't be geolocated
16:24:14 <BinBones> cohosh: Which VPS in China do you use?
16:25:26 <dcf1> BinBones: https://invidio.us/ may be an easy workaround for YouTube access; otherwise you may need to set a proxy in Tor Browser in addition to a bridge / pluggable transport.
16:26:07 <BinBones> I know. But the problem is: how do I find out the proxy details?
16:27:38 <dcf1> hmm, it's a good question, but it's not really a tor question, maybe you can ask on stackoverflow or something
16:28:16 <dcf1> Or maybe try Wireshark to see what proxy server the other programs on the system are connecting to
16:28:57 <cohosh> we use #tor for tech support questions, but as dcf1 said, this isn't tor-specific
16:29:09 <BinBones> dcf1: Thanks
16:29:13 <cohosh> so you might find your answer more easily somewhere else
16:29:26 <cohosh> anything else for the meeting today?
16:29:45 <hanneloresx> just making sure, we'll still want the new monthly report translated right?
16:29:50 <tomcat> hanneloresx: I don't think post the monthly report on solidot would received good response: https://web.archive.org/web/20200709080410/https://www.solidot.org/story?sid=64893. And post the paper research discuss won't be taken down: https://www.solidot.org/story?sid=64158, https://www.solidot.org/story?sid=64253 (and don't mentioned GFW in the post
16:29:50 <tomcat> )
16:29:57 <BinBones> Where can I find a cheap VPS in China?
16:30:38 <tomcat> s/discuss/discussion/g
16:32:31 <hanneloresx> ah ok. that is helpful! and i agree
16:33:16 <hanneloresx> we should find a specific discussion/topic to post if posting on solidot
16:33:40 <BinBones> I heard from Aaron Jones that the US and Australian fed have a JavaScript exploit that can unmask users from behind even onion services. Aaron said he doesn't trust Tor because they are doing nothing about preventing this attack
16:33:42 <hanneloresx> should we still keep posting chinese translation on Tor blog and Github?
16:34:24 <cohosh> BinBones: this is off-topic
16:35:47 <cohosh> hanneloresx: i think the translations are awesome and that it's worth keeping at it for a bit
16:36:19 <BinBones> cohosh: Let GreatFire translate it
16:36:52 <dcf1> yes and it's good to encourage non-English posts on bbs, imo
16:37:26 <hanneloresx> cohosh: sounds good. just let me know when the report is in final form and i can put a translation on the pad
16:37:31 <pastly> (ping me when you want BinBones unmuted)
16:37:49 <cohosh> hanneloresx: will do!
16:38:20 <cohosh> alright anything else for today?
16:39:19 * cohosh waits for another minute before ending the meeting
16:40:28 <cohosh> #endmeeting