16:00:14 <cohosh> #startmeeting anti-censorship meeting
16:00:14 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Oct 21 16:00:14 2021 UTC.  The chair is cohosh. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
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16:00:29 <cohosh> welcome and here is our meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-keep
16:00:32 <meskio> hello
16:00:45 * anadahz around
16:00:55 <ggus> o/
16:01:21 <dcf1> First agenda item is just a follow-up from last week on broker domain names
16:01:44 <cohosh> the code has been merged, i haven't deployed it yet
16:01:45 <dcf1> Those got merged in snowflake and snowflake-webext
16:01:58 <dcf1> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/59 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake-webext/-/merge_requests/22
16:02:10 <meskio> nice
16:02:29 <dcf1> oh, haven't noticed https://gitlab.torproject.org/torproject-pusher before
16:03:38 <cohosh> yea i'm not quite sure how it works but it shows up whenever i merge from the command line
16:03:48 <ahf> it syncs from gitolite to gitlab
16:04:02 <ahf> so when you push to git-rw.torproject.org it shows up on gitlab right after
16:04:11 <dcf1> I see, thanks
16:05:34 <cohosh> the next item is about a bridge campaign
16:05:35 <dcf1> Regarding "Run a Bridge", https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/24
16:05:55 <ggus> hey! o/
16:06:01 <dcf1> One positive outcome of such a campaign would be to encourage people to join discussion groups and support one another in bridge operation
16:06:14 <dcf1> e.g. tor-relays or another forum
16:06:46 <ggus> yeah, and in november forum.torproject.net will be official
16:06:54 <dcf1> oh great
16:07:05 <cohosh> :D
16:07:49 <cohosh> also, i know this goal for snowflakes comes from a grant, but we have already met it
16:07:58 <cohosh> we're at > 12,000 unique snowflake ips
16:08:04 <ggus> i'm still looking my calendar to find a date to start the campaign
16:08:06 <cohosh> (/day)
16:08:08 <ggus> woah!!!
16:08:26 <meskio> what is the status of non-nat snowflake bridges? do we have enough for now?
16:08:54 <meskio> is the campain to focus on those?
16:09:07 <anarcat> whoa
16:09:08 <ggus> well, we could.
16:09:11 <anarcat> congratulations
16:09:31 <cohosh> meskio: from the prometheus metrics it looks like we're doing okay
16:09:33 <anadahz> ggus: Is there any specific requirement for bridges?
16:09:51 <anadahz> To put it differently what kind of bridges would you like to have?
16:09:54 <ggus> anadahz: i believe they need to be 'obfs4' bridges
16:10:03 <cohosh> we have many more idle snowflakes for clients with restrictive NATs than denials
16:10:32 <anadahz> Does it make sense to ask people to prioritize and use port 80 and 443?
16:10:48 <anadahz> (on their bridge config)
16:10:52 <meskio> cohosh: nice, looks pretty healthy :)
16:11:56 <cohosh> clients with symmetric NATs do still get denied sometimes but it's probably only takes 1-2 tries to get a proxy
16:12:32 <cohosh> so it would be nice to have more :)
16:13:07 <meskio> yes, will be nice if people that runs bridges is conscious that we also need standalone snowflake proxies, that the browser plugin is not enough
16:13:31 <cohosh> ggus: is there anything else we can do to help you plan for this?
16:13:37 <ggus> meskio: should we reward standalone snowflake proxies?
16:13:57 <meskio> that will be nice
16:14:06 <meskio> but I don't think those report their email address or uptime
16:14:18 <meskio> maybe is something to add into the roadmap to implement
16:14:24 <ggus> cohosh: i'm planning to write a blog post for the campaign. i'll try to find a volunteer to do the social media banner design
16:14:47 <ggus> cohosh: i will need help to track the new bridges and to test them
16:17:21 <dcf1> I missed the Snowflake presentation from PTIM yesterday. Was there anything shared that's necessary to know now?
16:17:23 <cohosh> hrm, i think we shouldn't add features that are only useful for campaigns
16:17:50 <cohosh> especially since we have already been successful in getting lots of snowflakes
16:18:27 <cohosh> dcf1: not really, the main takeaway was that calyx ran their own snowflake proxy campaign and got (i think ~50?) people to install the extension
16:18:42 <meskio> cohosh: yes, I understand, keep it simple
16:18:48 <dcf1> ok, thanks
16:19:40 <cohosh> someone asked in that session whether their campaign would have been successful had they not incentivized it with tshirts
16:20:23 <dcf1> What's the secret of our success in recruiting proxies so far? Conference talks and goodwill?
16:20:23 <cohosh> and i thought it was kind of funny to ask since we have > 12,000 people running proxies with very few getting tshirts afaik
16:20:35 <dcf1> Social media promotion?
16:20:44 <ggus> i also thought about asking vouchers for some ISPs. but i don't know if that's a good idea or people tried before.
16:20:49 <dcf1> I know comms team has been helping.
16:20:52 <cohosh> ggus has done a lot of social media promotion
16:21:20 <ggus> and also jacobo in mexico
16:21:27 <dcf1> that's right
16:21:37 <cohosh> i don't think we have a good idea of how many proxies come from which outreach
16:22:43 <dcf1> Referring to the interesting links, in discussion with Brandon Wiley at PTIM, I learned of these proposals that are candidates for future standardization:
16:22:50 <dcf1> https://github.com/Pluggable-Transports/Pluggable-Transports-spec/blob/70bc1c5115639411cf05eec300c52645c174312b/proposals/
16:23:20 <dcf1> Among them is a proposal for the EVENT message by dgoulet and ahf: https://github.com/Pluggable-Transports/Pluggable-Transports-spec/blob/70bc1c5115639411cf05eec300c52645c174312b/proposals/0004-ClientEventMessage.pdf
16:23:50 <meskio> (3 years old...)
16:24:01 <dcf1> I informed that EVENT has been superseded in Tor's spec by STATUS, and it sounded like Brandon and other people with the PT spec were going to check on getting in touch and updating their proposal
16:24:01 <ahf> good we didn't block the deliverables back then on that getting approved lol
16:24:19 <ahf> cool!
16:24:22 <dcf1> yeah
16:24:23 <cohosh> is this similar to the STATUS message?
16:24:40 <dcf1> EVENT was the original design sketch for what later become STATUS
16:25:05 <dcf1> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/28181
16:26:05 <ggus> cohosh: i will update the ticket with a date for the campaign. i'm planning to close the campaign one week after the cybermonday.
16:26:17 <dcf1> There is also a proposal related to logging, though from my reading it serves a different purpose: it is more about standardizing an API and info/warning/debug/etc. log levels.
16:26:40 <ahf> maybe mentioning to Dr. Wiley that we now have a use-case for STATUS as well to add the version feedback mechanism back to the host process
16:26:42 <cohosh> ggus: meskio: awesome! maybe we can chat in irc about how to validate the running of standalone proxies
16:27:00 <cohosh> it would be cool if there's a way to do it that fits with snowflake's current setup
16:27:00 <dcf1> The version= use case for STATUS came up in the discussion at the meeting
16:27:19 <dcf1> That's all I had on that topic
16:27:48 <ggus> for the webextension, we were asking people to share a screenshot
16:27:50 <cohosh> but i'm also okay if it's not 100% catching people who just want tshirts, that is hopefully the minority of people participating?
16:27:52 <ggus> heh :)
16:28:17 <dcf1> it should be snow-related merch
16:28:17 <meskio> we could ask the same for the proxy, something showing that the process is being running for some time
16:28:20 <dcf1> ski jackets
16:28:26 <cohosh> XD
16:28:42 <cohosh> touques
16:28:58 <ggus> +1
16:29:22 <cohosh> dcf1: ahf: i am curious what you thought about the criticisms of having a single library API/spec that came up during the meeting
16:29:48 <cohosh> that not all PTs have to have the same interface (especially when it comes to Go libraries)
16:30:07 <cohosh> sorry more for dcf1 than ahf i guess since tor definitely needs to have a defined spec
16:30:11 <cohosh> at least at the moment
16:30:17 <dcf1> I don't know, my impression is that the spec is working against a lot of inertia
16:30:28 <ahf> i don't know what the criticism is. was not in the meeting
16:30:53 <dcf1> People seem to have mostly settled on code sharing/forking and seem pretty happy with it. whether or not it follows the spec to the letter.
16:32:44 <cohosh> dcf1: yeah, so it's more like the library spec has been a suggestion or guidance on how to make your PT easily called as a library
16:33:45 <ahf> at some point when we do PT's for Arti, i think we should take a bit of a brutal look of how the interaction between the host and its PT can be made better, but in a way such that we can still execute PT processes, but also load them as libraries. i think static libraries are the most interesting though since most of the integration work is hard for mobile integrators
16:34:28 <cohosh> ahf: yea it would be good to look at how this PTv2 library spec has played out in the space when those discussions come up
16:34:34 <ahf> ye
16:34:58 <cohosh> to summarize, someone made a comment on how it might not be necessary or desired for all PTs to have the same library API
16:35:05 <cohosh> it wasn't a long discussion as i remember it
16:37:02 <ahf> yeah
16:37:35 <cohosh> okay i'm getting distracted by PTIM again XD
16:37:40 <cohosh> anything else for today?
16:38:17 <meskio> is all for me, I'm also intersted on the cuban talk in PTIM
16:38:20 <ahf> are people unhappy with Tor not supporting the new PT spec stuff or does it not matter much?
16:38:48 <cohosh> oh idk, i haven't heard anything specific
16:39:03 <meskio> I think they care more about being able to use PTs in their tools than producing PTs for Tor
16:39:05 <cohosh> the PT spec stuff is more relevant for the transport side of things rather than the tor side of things
16:39:05 <ahf> ok good good
16:39:10 <meskio> they => people at PTIM
16:39:19 <anadahz> ahf: ppl do care about Tor supporting the new PT spec
16:39:30 <cohosh> anadahz: how so?
16:39:42 <ahf> anadahz: as in they are unhappy with us being in sort of a strange intermediate step between v1 and v2?
16:39:47 <cohosh> afaik the v2 inter-process spec is pretty similar to tor's spec
16:40:04 <ahf> but it uses JSON and we have moved to our own K/V thing iirc
16:41:07 <cohosh> ah
16:41:58 <anadahz> cohosh, ahf in general there is a "voluntarily" discussion for PTs to support/review/update the PT spec. If there are things that you don't like or should be changed we should try to fix that.
16:42:52 <ahf> anadahz: but dude, in this meeting we have just talked about how a spec that was proposed in late 2018 is now being discussed. i have no time for that kind of timeline :-S
16:44:14 <anadahz> ahf: No worries, sorry I wasn't there in 2018.. catching up.
16:44:29 <ahf> no worries, is good people are looking into this
16:46:04 <dcf1> That's all for today, sounds like?
16:46:09 <cohosh> yeah i'll end it here
16:46:15 <cohosh> thanks everyone
16:46:17 <cohosh> #endmeeting