[tor-talk] Tails statistics / browser homepage [Was: CloudFlare]

[intrigeri]

Hi,

NoName wrote (22 Apr 2013 06:00:48 GMT) :
> Only there is no conspiracy. Only plain stupidity.

Regardless of the actual wording of the emitted judgment, I suggest
you check your facts, and make sure you know what you're talking of,
before judging other people's action. Just a friendly advice.

> Take Tails for example: once upon a time they used to default to
> check.torproject.org. Only that somebody decided it would be cool to
> have some statistics. Now it defaults to the tails homepage.

For the record, this is an entirely incorrect description of the
decision process we had.

Facts:

  * the homepage was changed in Tails 0.16, released on January 11
    this year
  * the "Tails report for August, 2012" has boot statistics

=> We were publishing boot statistics _months before_ the browser home
page was changed... no magic involved: the data from which these stats
are computed simply does *not* depend on the web browser homepage.

I think I've guessed what may have confused you in the first place:
the Tails report you're pointing to reads "this number is an
approximation from the requests made to the security announcements
feed". I'm sorry that "security announcement feed" is vague enough for
you to mix it with the connection the web browser makes to the Tails
news page.

The language we use in our reports is aimed at end-users, and may not
be as technically precise as what you'd like. As I'm sure you are
interested in drawing conclusions from more precise technical
information, I suggest you read the "3.4 Notification of security
issues and new Tails release" section of our design document, that
points to the actual code: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/

Cheers,
--
  intrigeri
  | GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc
  | OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc