[tor-reports] George's status report: October 2014

[George Kadianakis]

# Activities of October 2014

- Continued work on the guardfraction project.

  Specifically, I implemented the little-t-tor side and pushed a
  branch with the code:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9321#comment:27

  Basically, it implements the part where dirauths vote and produce
  consensuses with guardfraction information, and then clients parse
  that info and use it when doing path selection.

  Nick did an initial code review and pointed out some issues. I
  updated the branch to address them and it's now in needs_review
  state again. Nick said that he wants another person to review it.

- Roger asked me to help out with SponsorR planning. Collect the tasks
  that need to be done, prioritize them, etc.

  I wrote a [tor-dev] post with some ideas:
  https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-October/007642.html
  The post has received lots of good feedback.

- I attended the OONI real life hackfest where we focused on the
  bridge reachability project. We had some very productive days that
  delivered good results. As far as I know, Arturo will write a report
  soon.

- I reviewed a few little-t-tor tickets (#11824  #6938 #11243  #11291).

# Activities for November 2014

- Continue with SponsorR planning.

  The [tor-dev] thread has received tons of feedback that I need to go
  through. I need to collect the suggested ideas and the ones from my
  original post and put them in a wiki. Then we will probably need to
  filter them, and make deliverables out of them.

- I also need to do some more SponsorR tasks. For example:

  * Write a document with Karsten about the HS statistics that we can
    collect and analyze the security implications of collecting those
    statistics.

  * Understand how Karsten does the HS performance benchmarks in #1944.
    See if the control port events work as they should, how they can
    be improved, and what else can be done on the benchmarks.

- Hopefully I can get the guardfraction little-t-tor patch
  reviewed/merged soon.

  I also need to start working towards deployment on the dirauth
  side. I will need to robustly test the python script, and find a
  brave dirauth operator who will start using it in a
  dirauth. Hopefully this way we can weed out any bugs and simplify
  the deployment procedure, so that more dirauth operators can join
  the fun.

- Continue my non-regular patch reviewing activity. I should review
  Matt's #12538 branch and Yawning's go-fw-helper code.