On 23 February 2016 at 15:07, micah micah@riseup.net wrote:
Ah, the hardest problem in computer science, naming!
Totally! :-)
Alec Muffett alec.muffett@gmail.com writes:
Single* Hop Onion Services (*singleness not guaranteed)
On 23 Feb 2016 3:14 a.m., "Paul Syverson" paul.syverson@nrl.navy.mil wrote:
If you want to underscore in the name specifically the not-hidden property, then I suggest the best would be 'Rendezvous Located-Onion Service'. And Single Onion Service, would be 'Located-Onion Service'.
The problem with both 'Single Hop' and 'Rendezvous Located' is that it requires that you know enough about tor to understand what those mean, before you can understand that you don't get a certain property that you might be expecting. These describe the technology, instead of telling you what you get.
Oh yes, this is true; I suppose that underscoring my proposal is an assumption that "Hidden Services" are no longer a positive (or complete) description of the features that Tor provides, and that HS would be deprecated as a term in favour of a broader "Onion Services" feature under the greater Tor "brand". Then when people are on stage talking about the features provided by "Tor Onion Services" they can talk about capabilities:
- the first (and oldest) kind of onion services gives you anonymity & privacy and end-to-end trust! (Full / 3-hop)
- a second, backward-compatible kind of onion service lets you trade server-anonymity for better speed, lower latency & improved UI responsiveness (1-hop)
- the third kind is for performance nerds, enabling optimum speed and fastest connection setup for people who need to reach your site over Tor primarily for end-to-end trust (Direct)
...rather than explaining a series of abstract names.
By having this kind of discussion in the public arena, narrative can be moved away from spooky dark-web historical rubbish, towards instead the beneficial - maybe "next step beyond SSL?" - features which Onions provide to people who have need for better communications security.
At the same time, there is this effort to create RSOS and Single Onion
Services. Does it make sense to continue to push for a broadening of the term Hidden->Onion Services, while also trying to individually name these different types of services?
I think not. I feel we may perhaps be on the same page. :-)
-a