[tor-reports] George's status report: April 2015

[George Kadianakis]

# Activities of April 2015

- Posted a proposal about fast-but-not-hidden services:
  https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-April/008625.html
  Received useful feedback as well as lots of discussion on better
  names for this feature. It seems that Alec Muffet has already
  written some code for this:
  https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-April/008631.html

- Started a [tor-dev] thread on whether popularity-hiding is a
  security property of hidden services:
  https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-April/008597.html

- Helped Karsten and Donncha explore the introduction point health of
  hidden services. It was an interesting project and we hope to
  summarize our results to the wider public soon. You can find the
  graphs and results on the ticket:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15513

- For further hidden service stats, we decided to evaluate the
  correctness of our introduction point logic by gathering statistics
  on a few relays. By doing this we hope to improve the performance of
  hidden services by tuning the magic numbers and parameters of the
  system. Check the ticket for more info:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15744

- On the same tone, we started a project for improving those and other
  constants in the introduction point system:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15714
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4862

- Wrote a small patch for the website to mention ahmia in the hidden
  service configuration page. That's for hidden service operators who
  want to make their hidden service public and well known. Check the
  ticket for more ideas:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15008

  I now need to get someone to review the patch and merge it to the
  website.

# Activities for May 2015

- Update the fast-but-not-hidden services proposal with the received
  feedback. Unfortunately, I still can't choose which of the proposed
  names I like the most. I think I will just pick one bikeshed color
  here to move this forward, and figure this out later.

- Continue work on hidden service statistics and related activities:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15513
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15744

- Try to think more about per-transport-per-country user statistics
  for obfuscated bridges, and maybe come up with a proposal:
  https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10218
  
- Move crowdfunding forward.

- Answer more mailing list mails.