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Anti-censorship team monthly report: September 2020
by Philipp Winter 12 Oct '20

12 Oct '20

Hi all, Here's what the anti-censorship team accomplished in September 2020: Snowflake --------- * Merged a contribution from Peter Gerber to consider more IP address ranges local, for the purpose of stripping from SDP offers sent to the broker. Rdsys ----- * Built an HTTP streaming API between rdsys's backend and its distributors that allows distributors to receive resource updates (e.g. a bridge changing its IP address) in real-time. * Implemented a registration API that allows standalone-proxies (i.e. without a corresponding Tor bridge) to register themselves: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 * Added lots of unit tests. Rdsys's domain logic is 72.1% tested. * Experimented with reCAPTCHA support in rdsys. We could port BridgeDB's HTTPS distributor to rdsys and replace our Gimp-generated CAPTCHAs with Google's reCAPTCHA. To prevent exposing our users to Google, we would have to set up a reverse proxy, so Google only gets to see our machine's IP address. This is possible but messy to build. * Started brainstorming Salmon's user interface; in particular how we can best integrate it in Tor Browser: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/7 * Started writing up rdsys's design and architecture. The goal is to eventually publish a technical blog post that discusses how we built rdsys. Bridgestrap ----------- * Wrapped up a "minimum viable product" of bridgestrap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/trac/-/issues/31874 * Filed issues to improve how bridgestrap spawns a Tor instance to test bridges: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/1 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/2 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 Miscellaneous ------------- * Our infrastructure monitoring daemon's emails started getting rejected by Gandi's spam filter. We reported the issue and Gandi fixed it shortly after. * Read the HTTPT paper as part of our reading group and filed several issues that summarise what's necessary to deploy HTTPT as our next pluggable transport: https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/50 https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Frolov2020b https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… * Filed an issue to improve our terminology around bridges: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/8 * Brainstormed how Tor Browser could detect censorship: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-spec/-/issues/40… Outreach -------- * Philipp will present rdsys in a lightning talk at the Pluggable Transport Implementer's Meeting on Oct 13: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/ptim2020/ * Published a blog post about Hashik's experience as one of Tor's GSoC'20 students: https://blog.torproject.org/gsoc-2020-snowflake-proxy-mobile * Recorded a brief video that summarises Tor's anti-censorship work for a class at the University of Michigan.

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Tails report for September 2020
by intrigeri 10 Oct '20

10 Oct '20

Hi, here's the Tails report for September: https://tails.boum.org/news/report_2020_09/ I'm attaching a HTML version for your offline reading convenience :)

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 8 October 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

Here are our meeting notes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-08-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 8th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Links to Useful documents == Our anti-censorship roadmap: Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home Past meeting notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors we are working on: All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == Kyle MacMillan, Jordan Holland, and Prateek Mittal published a report on Snowflake distinguishability. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.03254 == Discussion == We're still having a lot of issues making snowflake work for clients behind symmetric NATs (snowflake#33666). I'd like feedback on some solutions like snowflake#40013 == Actions == Please add your September 2020 highlights to our monthly report: https://pad.riseup.net/p/1lE-JDUjauoQL6lAGd5t == Interesting links == Pluggable Transports Implementer's Meeting schedule: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/ptim2020/ == Reading group == We will discuss "" on Questions to ask and goals to have: What aspects of the paper are questionable? Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. phw: This week (2020-10-08): Lots of refactoring and unit tests of rdsys's domain logic. Reviewed snowflake-webext!4. Set up Salmon demo to give Antonela and Matt an impression of what it looks like. Lots of refactoring in the process. Started working on September 2020 monthly report. Summarised plan for bridge testing in tpo/core/tor#30477. Meeting with my old college in Austria; proposed projects for BSc student. Refactored bridgestrap to make it faster by using SETCONF instead of spawning a Tor process each time. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 Next week: Hopefully wrap up bridgestrap. Help with: cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-08 Last week: - set up account for Georgetown ppl to run raven tests on our VPS - revised and deployed snowflake#33157 - updated snowflake webextension, badge, and standalone proxies - updated tor browser binaries for gettor - worked on writing up snowflake stats - started a review of new rdsys code - took a brief look at telegram bot for gettor - snowflake-webext#17 This week: - revisit NAT-punching problems for symmetric NATs by doing a probe test to determine whether proxies will work with symmetric NATs (snowflake#40013) - more review of rdsys - finish a write up of collected snowflake data from last month - follow up with the guardian project on their issues with snowflake - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - plan improvements motivated by kyle et al.'s snowflake report Needs help with: - review of snowflake-webext!5 - fixing our snowflake-webext mirror (gitlab admin team) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-08 Last week: - reviewed patch for Snowflake client IP inference https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - archived snowflake-webextension-0.4.2 - ported the Snowflake fingerprinting page from the old wiki https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - reviewed patch to shorten Snowflake web proxy polling interval https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - update English translations strings https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: - how does one make changes to translation/messages.json? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-08 Last week: -Finished patch for #34218 -Started with #5 (rdsys) but didn't quite finish it yet Next week: -Definetly finnish rdysy #5 -Dig deeper into Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 Help with: -Review of #34218 hanneloresx: 2020-09-17 Last week: - Start on #33727 - Continue investigating and respond to comments on #32117 Next week: - Continue last week's work. Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-06 This week: - Next week: - Will be back shortly Help with: -

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Outreachy contribution period starting today
by gus 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

Dear Tor Project, The contribution period for Outreachy[1] is starting today! Probably you will see new people hanging out on our IRC channels during this month. We're running two projects this round (December 2020 / March 2021): * Anonymous Ticket Handling - mentor Alex (Ahf) * Help Tor Project support our users - mentor Gus (ggus) If you have time, please answer applicants questions about Tor Project and make them feel welcome in our community. Both projects have instructions on Outreachy application page, Ahf, Gaba, and Gus are online to help. You can help Outreachies by: 1. Sharing this email with them! 2. Asking them to subscribe to the relevant mailing lists. They can find all the mailing lists here: https://lists.torproject.org 3. Tell them to register an IRC account, so they can chat with Tor folks and see what's happening. IRC is a little bit tricky to start, and we suggest you use an IRC client (for example, Hexchat) and follow the instructions at https://support.torproject.org/get-in-touch/irc-help/ 4. Create an account in https://gitlab.torproject.org. Ping Gaba or Ahf to create an account for you. They will be available on #tor-project channel as Gaba and ahf, respectively. cheers, Gus [1] https://www.outreachy.org/ -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead http://expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion/

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User experience team monthly meeting on October 13th
by Antonela D 02 Oct '20

02 Oct '20

Hi! We will be having the User Experience team meeting on October 13th in #tor-meeting*. During this meeting we will discuss the improvements we are planning in Tor Browser, Tor Launcher and its use for censorship circumvention. Also, we will have some space for an open floor so feel free to list yourself in the pad. https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep Remember, the User Experience team meetings are willing to cultivate an open space for discussions around ethical user research, user interface design, and user experience, meanwhile building privacy-enhancing products. I hope to see you around! Peace and love, A [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead torproject.org @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

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September 2020 Tor DEMO Day
by Gaba 29 Sep '20

29 Sep '20

............................................ ██████ .███████ ███ ...███ .██████ .███████ ██ ██ ██ ████ .████ ██ ██ ██ ██ ..██ █████ ..██ ████ ██ ██ ...██ ███████ ██ ..██ ██ ..██ ██ ██ ██ ...██ ██ ██████ ███████ ██ . .██ ██████ ███████ ............................................ Hello, We will have DEMO day this Wednesday September 30th! When? ----- During the All Hands Meeting on Wednesday September 30th at 16 UTC Where? ------ At https://tor.meet.coop/ant-v5k-1mm-poj How ---- - We will have 3 to 5 minutes length presentations. Agenda ---- - Current situation with sbws/bandwidth measurements (juga) - Obfuscation design (Roger) - Datashare Network (Kasra / Soline, ICIJ) - OnionShare (micahflee) - Ricochet (pospeselr) - "arti" (nickm) - TPA: the documentation system (anarcat) - Namecoin in Tor Browser for Windows and macOS (Jeremy Rand) - Riseup emails + onions 💌 🧅 (micah) - TBA meets Fenix (sysqb) cheers, gaba -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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Kickoff meeting for Sponsor 61: Making the Tor network faster & more reliable for users in Internet-repressive places
by Gaba 29 Sep '20

29 Sep '20

Hi! Next week we are going to have the kickoff meeting to plan work ahead for the scalability project. Meeting pad: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/spo… When: Monday 5th at 15utc Room: #tor-meeting in irc.oftc.net cheers, gaba -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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Tor's Bug Smash Fund: Fundraising Campaign
by Al Smith 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hello Tor! Today, the Tor Project is launching our second annual Bug Smash Fund,[1] a month-long fundraising campaign (7/31 - 8/31). The goal of the Bug Smash Fund campaign is to raise unrestricted funds that we allocate to finding and fixing bugs / doing maintenance / and addressing issues that aren’t flashy or exciting for most funders, but totally necessary for the health of Tor and all of the third party apps that rely on Tor to provide privacy, security, and anonymity to their users. Unrestricted funding, like what we’re raising for the Bug Smash Fund, is key for the Tor Project to improve our agility and stop relying on the slow, piecemeal process of grant funding in order to accomplish our goals and respond to emergent issues. Last year during our first Bug Smash Fund campaign, we raised $86,081 that we used to close 74 tickets.[2] In 2019, we were able to allocate all of the donations we raised in-person at DEF CON to the Bug Smash Fund. That was about $40,000. As we all know, this year is different, and it will be a big stretch to meet or exceed the amount we raised last year without this event. So your help to amplify this campaign could really help make this campaign a success. How to help: -- Tweet about the Bug Smash Fund using the #TorBugSmash and a link to our launch blog post. Here are some suggested posts.[3] -- Quote tweet @torproject posts about the Bug Smash Fund with your own take about why unrestricted funds are so important for the health of Tor. -- Forward this email to those who might be able to amplify the campaign. Activities in August to support the Bug Smash Fund campaign: -- Hosting a second PrivChat event featuring stories about smashing bugs in software development on (date tbd) -- Sharing regularly on social media and engaging our friends to amplify the campaign -- Sending two emails to previous donors who have not made a donation in the last 90 days -- Promoting a new cryptocurrency campaign on Blockchair: https://blockchair.com/donut/tor-project If you have any questions about or ideas for the Bug Smash Fund campaign, please email me or Isabela or grants(a)torproject.org, we would be happy to talk about it. Happy Friday, Al [1] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-bug-smash-fund-2020 [2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-bug-smash-fund-2019-final-update [3] https://pad.riseup.net/p/OiWVPFGPw7I9vnX7MnN2 -- Al Smith (they/them) Fundraising • Communications The Tor Project

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 17 Sep 2020
by Philipp Winter 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hi all, Here are our meeting minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-17-15.59.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday September 17th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress). == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Links to Useful documents == * Our anti-censorship roadmap: * Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home * Past meeting notes can be found at: * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ * Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors we are working on: * All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… * Sponsor 30 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 * Sponsor 28 * must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 * possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels * Public bug-reporting pad: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == * Our GitLab instance now supports open registration. * (As an experiment, for now.) * No anti-censorship meeting next week, on Sep 24. == Discussion == * == Actions == * == Interesting links == * == Reading group == * We will discuss "Triplet Censors: Demystifying Great Firewall's DNS Censorship Behavior" on 2020-10-01 * https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci20/presentation/anonymous * Questions to ask and goals to have: * What aspects of the paper are questionable? * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? * Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. phw: This week (2020-09-17): * Turned last week's reading group discussion into GitLab issues: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/http… * Proposed and implemented a "registration API" that HTTPT and other proxies can use to register themselves with rdsys: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 * Started updating GetTor links after somebody pointed out that its Tor Browser copies are outdated. * Dealt with my hosting provider because their SMTP server would reject monit's email as spam. It's fixed now. * Recorded 10-minute overview of Tor's anti-censorship efforts for University of Michigan class. * Plenty of rdsys work. * Made Salmon distributor work with HTTP streaming interface. * Simplified data structures and added unit tests. * Started working on technical blog post that talks about rdsys's design and implementation. * Experimented with integrating Google's reCAPTCHA. Seems difficult to proxy requests so that Google doesn't see client IP addresses :( Next week: * Help with: * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/trac/-/issues/31874 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgedb/-/issues/31871 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/4 cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-08-27 Last week: - deployed snowflake#40008 - started snowflake measurements in china to track performance and censorship attempts (snowflake#32657) - continuous monitoring of NAT situation - prep for being away next month - meeting with tunnel bear This week: - Away Needs help with: - still need a review of fix for snowflake#21314 (snowflake!9) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-09-17 Last week: Next week: Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-09-17 Last week: -Nothing to add for last week Next week: -Finish #34318 -Look into #31873 -Get familiar with Go and start to work on rdsys issue #5 Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-09-17 Last week: - Start on #33727 - Continue investigating and respond to comments on #32117 Next week: - Continue last week's work. Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-08-27 This week: - GSoC blog Next week: - Away on exams Help with: -

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Metrics Meeting September 17th 2020 - Next one will be in November
by Gaba 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

Hi! We had the last metrics meeting until November 5th. Remember that you can send a mail to metrics-team(a)lists.torproject.org if there is anything metrics related that needs to be discussed. Meeting pad for 2020: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/tor… Content of the pad: **************************************************************************************** This pad is shared publicly. **************************************************************************************** Public pad URL is: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-metricsteam-2020.1-keep Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 15 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress). Links: Metrics Team wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/team OnionPerf board: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/onionperf/-/boards OnionPerf milestone: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/metrics/-/milestones/1 All Metrics Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/metrics/-/boards Next meeting: Thursday, November 5th , 15 UTC ----------------------------------------------------- Agenda Thursday, September 17th, 15 UTC ----------------------------------------------------- OnionPerf development wrapping (freezing for the next 2 months) karsten tags 0.8 this evening, unless somebody raises concerns very soon. karsten continues uploading tarballs, updates the wiki (documentation overview, table of and instructions for long-running instances), and updates the link on m-web. acute thinks about alternatives for onionperf.torproject.org and updates the issue accordingly. Funding proposal for next OnionPerf phase (link in the mail that was sent). OnionPerf Deployment Architecture: https://people.torproject.org/~gaba/onionperf-architecture-1.pdf Objective 1: Diversify the demographics of our data O1.1 Decide on regions, set up instances (manually at first, automatically later) O1.2 Evaluate measurement data using a big PostgreSQL database Objective 2: Automate setup of OnionPerf instances. O2.1 Improve ease of deployment and maintenance O2.2 Improve monitoring Objective 3: Improve automation for visualization of data O3.1: Update existing visualizations to accomodate larger number of measurements O3.2: Create visualizations for Shadow results (?) Objective 4: Improve the storage of instance’s old data 4.1 Set up storage, upload tarballs, and keep them there (and add new ones) throughout the year. 4.2 Setup storage for Shadow simulation runs or results Objective 5: Add memory and infrastructure to run a network simulator with Shadow jnewsome following up with rob Do we suspend metrics meeting until November? Yes Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-17-14.58.log… -- she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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