Re: [Tails-dev] Tails report for April, 2013

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Author: Jacob Appelbaum
Date:  
To: tails-dev
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] Tails report for April, 2013
Tails folks:
>
> Releases
> ========
>
> Tails 0.17.2 was released on April 9th.
>
> https://tails.boum.org/news/version_0.17.2/index.en.html


Hooray! Thanks for your great work on this project!

>
>
> Metrics
> =======
>
> - 121 183 connections of Tails to the Tor network. This makes a boot
> every 21 seconds on average (this is an approximation from the
> requests made to the security announcements feed when Tails is
> connected to Tor).
>


Fantastic job.

> - 71 reports were received through WhisperBack.


Is there a common complaint or are most of these automated?

>
> - 1515 comments were posted on the forum, with 76 signed by Tails. This
> means there has been much more activity on the forum, and that we are
> having a hard time coping with it, but also that anonymous
> contributors are providing more and more good answers without our
> help.


Quite nice. Is English the primary language?

>
>
> Code
> ====
>
> - We had a highly successful "low-hanging fruits" week: at least 16
> tickets were touched, and at least five persons attended one session
> or more.
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002834.html
>
> - The persistence feature to remember installed packages (has matured a
> lot) and should be ready for Tails 0.18.
>
> https://tails.boum.org/todo/remember_installed_packages/


Will it be possible to ensure that this isn't abused for persistent
rootkits? Also, I wonder if there is a way to verify the packages as
being both up to date and actually valid packages from a valid repo?

>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fremember%5Finstalled%5Fpackages
>
> - Support for Obfs3 bridges (has been added).
>


This is fantastic!

>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fobfs3
>
> - Torbutton 1.5.x can now be included in Tails. We also reorganized and
> cleaned our iceweasel prefs to look a bit more like the ones from TBB.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Ftorbutton%2D1%2E5%2Ex
>
> - GNOME accessibility themes were installed to provide high contrast and
> large print themes.
>


Thanks for this too - I know a nearly blind Tails user who really
appreciates having these kinds of accessibility improvements.

>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fgnome%2Daccessibility%2Dthemes
>
> - The "About GNOME" menu entry has been customized to provide
> information about the running version of Tails.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fabout%5Ftails
>
> - A branch is ready to disable wireless devices other than Wi-Fi,
> Bluetooth, WWAN, and WiMAX by default.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fset%2Dwireless%2Ddevices%2Dstate
>


I generally want Bluetooth, WWAN and WiMax disabled, while I often want
Wi-Fi, I don't want it on without having joined the network previously.
This is especially true when the MAC address is not completely
randomized at every if-up or every boot.


> - Some initial work was done to not start the browser automatically
> anymore.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fdont%5Fautostart%5Ficeweasel
>
> - The audio preview when having the mouse pointer on an audio file in
> Nautilus has been disabled.
>



Sounds good. ;-)

>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fdisable%5Faudio%5Fpreview
>
> - The support for non-obfsproxy proxy has been fixed.
>
> https://tails.boum.org/todo/non-obfsproxy_proxy/
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads
> /bugfix%2Fnon%2Dobfsproxy%5Fproxy
>
> - IPv6 is not disabled anymore. It turns out that the IPv6 leaks we
> wanted to fix actually don't exist.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fenable%2DIPv6
>


Unless I'm mistaken, without a random MAC address, IPv6 has some pretty
bad privacy concerns, no?

> - GNOME screenshot has been installed.
>
>
> http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fgnome%2Dscreenshot
>
>
> Documentation and website
> =========================
>
> - "Getting started..." is now the homepage for the Tails documentation
> accessible from the desktop.
>
> - The content of the /bugs section of the website was moved to /todo.
>
> - A bug concerning MD5 Reborned Hasher Hasher has been documented.
>
>
> https://tails.boum.org/doc/get/verify_the_iso_image_using_other_operating_systems/index.en.html
>
> - The instructions for manual installation on Mac have been brought back
> online and the instructions for Linux and Windows have been improved.
>
>
> https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/manual_usb_installation/mac/index.en.html
>
> - The introduction of the bug reporting instructions have been improved.
>
> https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/bug_reporting/index.en.html
>
>
> Translation
> ===========
>
> - A solution was proposed to distribute translation workflows in either
> Git or Transifex.
>
> https://tails.boum.org/contribute/how/translate/
>
> - Tails USB installer: update translations for Arabic, German, Greek,
> Spanish, Farsi, Finnish, Italian, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, and Chinese.
>
> - WhisperBack: update translations for Arabic, German, Greek, Spanish,
> Euskera, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese,
> Russian, Swedish, Chinese Spanish, Korean, Polish, and Russian. New
> translations: Swedish.
>
>
> On-going discussions
> ====================
>
> - "Debian derivatives & DebConf13", about what we can propose for
> DebConf13
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002994.html
> http://debconf13.debconf.org/
>
> - "secure and simple network time (hack)", about tlsdate, a possible
> segmentation fault and its future in Tails
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002843.html


I'm interested in moving this forward - what more needs to be discussed
after I upload version 0.0.7? If there are specific changes, I'd like to
know soon as I'd like to put out the release soon.

>
> - "Discussion on minitube", about replacing minitube with smtube
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002877.html
>
> - "GNOME proxy settings, again", about dropping all GNOME proxy settings
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002853.html
>
>
> Infrastructure
> ==============
>
> - Tails 0.17.2 was the first release assisted with automated tests!
> - Cucumber is used to describe the tests to perform.
> - 82 tests have been written so far
>
> - Huge progress was made on our automatic building infrastructure, based
> on Jenkins.
>
> https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-April/002902.html
>
>
> Funding
> =======
>
> - The grant application we did with OpenITP (Sponsor Echo) was rejected.
> But our proposal made it to their finalist set.


What? That is really sad. Did they explain why?

>
>
> http://openitp.org/?q=openitp_first_round_of_2013_project_funding_now_open_for_proposals
>
> - We started to work on another grant application for more long-term
> funding with sponsor Foxtrot.
>
> - The list of bounties that are going to be funded through the Tor
> project program is closed. It will be made public soon.
>


Great, I can't wait to see it.

All the best,
jacob