20:00:16 <ahf> #startmeeting anti-censorship checkin 2019/03/14
20:00:16 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Mar 14 20:00:16 2019 UTC.  The chair is ahf. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
20:00:16 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
20:00:20 <ahf> hello everyone o/
20:00:34 <ahf> this weeks pad is at: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-censorship-2019-keep
20:00:45 <ahf> i deleted some entries that it looked like hadn't been touched for a while
20:00:52 <ahf> please remove old stuff and do updates 8)
20:01:23 <pili> hi :)
20:01:34 <cohosh> i think dgoulet, gaba, and dcf are all away for this meeting
20:01:44 <ahf> oki! so very few people
20:01:47 <cohosh> so it will be pretty small
20:01:52 <cohosh> pili: hi!
20:02:07 <ahf> catalyst, kat5: you here?
20:02:07 <pili> hey cohosh, how's it going? :)
20:02:17 <kat5> Yep, just looking at the pad.
20:02:18 <cohosh> good :)
20:02:22 <catalyst> o/
20:02:27 <catalyst> oops updating pad now
20:03:00 <ahf> o/
20:03:13 <ahf> no worries, i think it will be a pretty short meeting today when we are so few
20:04:04 <ahf> we can start with some good news!
20:04:14 <ahf> the sysadmin team have set up everything for the gitlab instance for us
20:04:19 <ahf> so now it's totally blocking on me 8)
20:04:25 <cohosh> ah yay \o/
20:04:47 <ahf> which is very good, so tomorrow morning i'm gonna start with trying to run the debian ansible stuff and see if anything magically appears on the website
20:05:02 <ahf> i /hope/ that by next thursday we have an instance we can actually use
20:05:31 <ahf> let's start by looking at snowflake roadmap
20:05:48 <ahf> https://storm.torproject.org/shared/OdNtwrtRrqklh76l4PfcngBbQFDbjv_jRroj0WeSY0B
20:06:13 <ahf> we have created some new child tickets over the week, we should probably get those in
20:06:56 <cohosh> right, I can take the action item on that
20:07:11 <cohosh> I think the two pads are related? or are they maintained separately?
20:07:11 <ahf> should we move #25688 back to backlog/icebox and get the geoip one into needs review, no?
20:07:36 <cohosh> ahf: eh i'm actively working on that one even though i keep switching to other tasks
20:07:46 <cohosh> and yes, geoip should be in review
20:08:27 <kat5> Which one is geoip?
20:08:40 <cohosh> kat5: it's not on the kanban board yet
20:08:41 <ahf> i added 29736
20:08:48 <ahf> cohosh: ah, makes sense
20:08:49 <kat5> cohosh: okay, thanks.
20:08:50 <cohosh> #29734
20:09:02 <ahf> i can put that on in the review pile?
20:09:11 <cohosh> we split up #29207 to smaller tasks
20:09:13 <ahf> i guess it needs one more iteration from the review feedback
20:09:14 <cohosh> ahf: yup!
20:09:24 <cohosh> i need to address review feedback but it should be quick
20:10:01 <ahf> okay, it has been added now
20:10:02 <ahf> cool
20:10:12 <ahf> i think that was it in terms of desync from real world?
20:10:41 <cohosh> yup and the websocket ticket you're working on
20:10:47 <ahf> ya, added that one to in progress
20:10:51 <cohosh> ok cool
20:10:59 <ahf> i think i need to go over some of the tickets and get points added
20:11:22 <ahf> hm, i don't think anything have happened with bridgedb this week with dgoulet being AFK
20:12:07 <catalyst> i might try to look at what's needed to do the actual "release"
20:12:28 <ahf> awesome
20:12:53 <ahf> i think sysrqb is the goto person to hear about that
20:13:12 <catalyst> ok
20:13:40 <ahf> hm, looks like the other roadmaps are good
20:14:00 <cohosh> i have the bridge probe test code in review
20:14:12 <cohosh> so if someone could take a look at that i'd appreciate it
20:14:34 <ahf> i can take a look at that one. maybe it would be good to have dcf's eyes on it too?
20:14:35 <cohosh> meanwhile the next step is probably to get a vps in china to test it out for few days before we hand it off to NGO contacts
20:14:44 <ahf> cool!
20:14:57 <ahf> should we talk with arma about that?
20:15:00 <cohosh> yeah that would be great, it's basically just a few modifications to dcf's code from a previous experiment
20:15:12 <cohosh> yeah it would be good to update arma on the status
20:15:32 <cohosh> is there a procedure in TPO for getting VPS's for these things? So far I've just been doing stuff myself
20:16:05 <ahf> i don't know :-o that was why i was thinking we could talk with roger about it
20:16:10 <cohosh> ah yeah okay
20:16:22 <ahf> i have never had a need for a VPS around tor stuff before
20:16:31 <ahf> the gitlab thing is the first sysadminy task i've tried
20:17:31 <ahf> pili: it's a very good question you have asked...
20:17:44 <pili> it came from GeKo really :D
20:17:51 <cohosh> pili: i would say concentrate on snowflake
20:17:52 <ahf> i really don't know the answer to it. i tried to write to John from RedJack last week and i got an email bounce back
20:17:59 <ahf> which sort of tells me he is no longer working there
20:18:02 <cohosh> i'm a bit worried about marionette for a few things:
20:18:04 <pili> yeah, I had a quicklook at their github repo
20:18:11 <pili> doesn't seem like there's been any work there for a while
20:18:14 <ahf> so i'd say, if we go the marionette way, we have to maintain it, which i don't think we have capacity for right now
20:18:20 <ahf> so i think we should focus on snowflake
20:18:28 <cohosh> 1) maintenance is a big question. it doesn't work well out of the box and we don't have time to spend on it on our roadmap right now
20:18:42 <pili> right, that was my follow up question, whether we'd want to fork it and take it on ourselves
20:18:51 <cohosh> 2) we haven't fully looked at or assessed the method or implementation yet
20:19:08 <ahf> yeah, #2 is actually the worst, #1 is just the here and now scary part
20:19:13 <cohosh> and I'd like to be sure it's in good shape before spending time working out deployment details that might change if we need to drastically restructure the code
20:19:28 <ahf> makes sense
20:19:31 <pili> sounds perfectly reasonable to me :)
20:19:32 <cohosh> pili: yes exactly
20:19:54 <kat5> I also have a question on the pad.
20:20:03 <kat5> QUESTION: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25430 is in the bridgedb roadmap. Is there more to consider here than "moat fixes this"?
20:20:07 <ahf> pili: if we decide to skip marionette for now does this mean that snowflake/browser integration work can begin earlier?
20:20:22 <kat5> (Sorry..)
20:20:23 <ahf> kat5: looking
20:20:40 <pili> ahf: I think so, it might even have started already (sorry, I've not followed that too closely)
20:20:54 <pili> let me see if I can find out where that is atm
20:21:19 <ahf> kat5: hmm, good question
20:21:42 <cohosh> kat5: i'm also looking and wondering whether this is the case
20:22:04 <ahf> i wonder if we can ask the user if this is still a problem
20:22:19 <cohosh> do we have moat usage stats by country?
20:23:01 <pili> ahf: ah yes, I remember now, I think we're still waiting on others to finish their bits first in #28672 and #25483
20:24:00 <cohosh> oof, if reproducible builds is a blocker for the applications team, maybe we should move the ticket up that looks at swapping out the webrtc dependency?
20:24:01 <arma1> cohosh: i wonder if moat even passes the geoip in. this is a parallel situation to the snowflake stats. worth exploring imo.
20:24:25 <ahf> i asked irl now in the other channel
20:24:34 <arma1> and yes tor browser doesn't want to ship things that don't build reproducibly.
20:24:45 <cohosh> okay let me find that ticket...
20:24:51 <arma1> cohosh: also, turkey is a good place for running our "what's up with obfs4" scripts once we have them
20:24:52 <ahf> pili: ah, cool! thanks
20:25:10 <arma1> because turkey was doing confusing censorship things last we heard
20:25:14 <kat5> Re: my question, I guess I'll just hold off on documenting that ticket for a bit.
20:25:17 <GeKo> i think android might be easier fwiw
20:25:25 <GeKo> but windows is hard
20:25:32 <ahf> pili: maybe one of those tickets are interesting to take for the browser team?
20:25:34 <GeKo> (harder as usual)
20:25:45 <cohosh> GeKo: pili: we were thinking of looking at alternatives for webrtc
20:25:50 <ahf> so the anti-censorship team tries to do the windows one, the browser team takes the android one? i think the android is already in progress by HC?
20:26:01 <cohosh> that might also affect the reproducible build situation
20:26:09 <cohosh> but they are on the roadmap for april it seems
20:26:18 <arma1> kat5: i think moat is a good answer to that ticket, yes.
20:26:53 <kat5> arma1: Does that mean that someone should close the ticket and take it off the roadmap?
20:26:58 <arma1> ahf, cohosh: do we have any monitoring for whether azure works in every situation? that is, if azure gets blocked in fooistan, then moat will stop working; how will we learn this?
20:27:03 <arma1> kat5: yes
20:27:04 <GeKo> cohosh: yes, i think swapping out the webrtc licrary would help
20:27:16 <GeKo> fwiw, it's not webrtc per se that's the issue here
20:27:27 <ahf> arma1: i don't think there is a plan/tasks for that (yet)
20:27:45 <GeKo> it's more a compiler problem
20:27:56 <cohosh> GeKo: yeah that was my understanding of it
20:28:06 <GeKo> ahf: so, yes, we could think about us looking at android if that would be helpfuk
20:28:10 <GeKo> *helpful
20:28:19 <cohosh> but the compiler issue was due to requirements specifically of the webrtc library we're using?
20:28:21 <GeKo> and coordinating with hc
20:28:40 <ahf> GeKo: cool, that would be useful for us not to worry about
20:28:45 <GeKo> cohosh: i am inclined to say, yes
20:29:00 <GeKo> but it's likely more the whole chrome building system
20:29:07 <cohosh> arma1: (RE: moat) that is a good question and a good thing for us to take a look at :s i am not sure at all about the metrics situation of moat
20:29:23 <GeKo> ahf: deal then :)
20:29:34 <ahf> \o/
20:29:39 <cohosh> GeKo: ahf: do we want to move looking at library changes up in the roadmap then?
20:29:57 <GeKo> depends on how important windows bundles are
20:30:04 <cohosh> i guess we can do that in parallel with trying out the windows build
20:30:05 <ahf> cohosh: we can also ignore windows for now :-/
20:30:08 <cohosh> ok, ack
20:30:11 <GeKo> if the funder is happy with mobile instead
20:30:16 <GeKo> then maybe not
20:30:41 <cohosh> cool
20:30:49 <ahf> cohosh: i think the windows component and our javascript parts are the two most risky parts of this whole project, and i think ditching the library means we end up looking at using a modified browser to do the webrtc code for us, no?
20:30:50 <GeKo> but, sure, having something for the majority of our users would be neat ;)
20:30:53 <ahf> like with meek
20:31:06 <ahf> where we spawn a headless browser that we control to do the webrtc code for us
20:31:13 <cohosh> ahf: not necessarily, but it was one of the options we were looking at
20:31:25 <ahf> we have other libraries we could look at?
20:31:30 <cohosh> i think there was another library mentioned, let me dig it up
20:31:32 <ahf> like firefox' implemention?
20:32:33 <cohosh> i think there's a ticket for it...
20:33:01 <cohosh> using a headless browser could work, but meek has now moved away from that
20:33:05 <cohosh> for being difficult to maintain
20:33:21 <ahf> yeah
20:33:42 <ahf> hm, can't find the ticket under the snowflake component
20:33:49 <ahf> pion?
20:33:57 <ahf> #28942
20:33:59 <kat5> The tickets I've seen are to look at the pions go implementation and firefox.
20:34:13 <cohosh> ahf: that might be it
20:34:20 <cohosh> yeah i think so
20:34:51 <ahf> hm, at that time it didn't support TURN
20:35:08 <cohosh> right, a lot of these implementations are still fairly new
20:36:30 <cohosh> okay if we aren't blocked on Windows, we can leave that for later in the roadmap
20:36:53 <ahf> let's talk with gaba about this when she is around
20:37:04 <ahf> the windows part
20:37:09 <cohosh> ok
20:37:22 <arma1> #22718 is another alternate webrtc impl ticket
20:37:32 <cohosh> arma1: ah yes that's another one
20:37:39 <ahf> hm, why is it closed
20:37:42 <arma1> (abandoned in favor of pion one)
20:37:46 <ahf> ok
20:37:54 <arma1> "I'm going to close this because OpenWebRTC is no longer maintained."
20:38:01 <ahf> oh, no longer maintained
20:38:04 <cohosh> that's fair
20:38:07 <kat5> Doesn't support windows, as well.
20:38:11 <arma1> if you blink, pion will become no longer maintained too
20:38:14 <cohosh> ah lol
20:38:27 <ahf> webkit might support webrtc as well, which might be an option to take
20:38:34 <cohosh> yeah i think choosing something is still a bit risky as far as whether we will have to change again in the future
20:39:11 <ahf> man they have their own campaign website https://www.webrtcinwebkit.org/ lol
20:39:22 <ahf> with openwebrtc
20:39:24 <ahf> okay, never mind
20:39:41 <ahf> https://webkit.org/blog/7726/announcing-webrtc-and-media-capture/
20:39:56 <ahf> webkit is using libwebrtc it seems
20:41:49 <ahf> one possibly really easy alternative to use is to use QtWebEngine (Qt interface to Blink/Chrome_shell), but it's a big dependency in terms of MB's
20:42:33 <ahf> do we have more questions we need to look at today?
20:43:44 <ahf> doesn't look like it
20:43:51 <ahf> anything else?
20:44:28 <cohosh> i think we're good
20:44:35 <kat5> Thanks everyone!
20:44:35 <ahf> \o/
20:44:36 <ahf> #endmeeting