[tor-talk] still unable to reach StartPage or Ixquick

[Matthew Finkel]

On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 06:19:57PM -0500, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
> On 10/7/2013 5:27 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 05:18:17PM -0500, Joe Btfsplk wrote:
> >> Haven't been able to reach StartPage or Ixquick sites or do search
> >> for a week or more, in TBB 2.3.25-12.  Can't even reach their home
> >> pages through another search engine, like Google or Yahoo.
> >>
> >> ** Are others able to access these 2 search engines in the *same TBB
> >> version* as I'm using?  If so, maybe I need to re-extract the TBB
> >> files & start over.
> >>
> >> TBB has been closed / restarted many times since problem began.
> > Tor 0.2.3.x is not so fun to use these days:
> > https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-tor-clients
> >
> > I recommend trying the TBB 3.0a4 (assuming you're not on Win XP and you
> > don't need pluggable transports):
> > https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/tbb-30
> >
> > We'll hopefully declare Tor 0.2.4.x stable real soon now. We keep getting
> > distracted though. Soon I hope! :)
> >
> Thanks, but - Whoa!  Tor 0.2.4.x isn't declared stable, so skip it - go 
> straight to 3.0a?  I know it's got a lot of ? unproven as rock solid? 
> features, but what about my secret "double naught" spying duties?

So these are actually two versions number for two different
programs. 0.2.4.x referred to the tor version which is packaged in TBB.
3.0a referred to the TBB version. Your current version of TBB just
happens to have a very similar version number to tor's. TBB will be
jumping to 3.x soon, though, as Roger said, tor will remain on the
0.2.x.y path.

> But, no XP here.
> 
> Anyway, what about others reaching Startpage & Ixquick using 2.3.25-12?  
> If they're largely unreachable for others, no point in worrying about 
> that - plenty of other stuff to occupy myself.

I actually experienced this yesterday. I was too busy to troubleshoot
the connection issue, but it appeared that the request timed out. This
happened for both startpage and DDG, but not the other websites I
loaded. T'was strange, but probably just circuit dependent. In short,
if this is what you saw then it isn't only you, but I don't know why
it's happening.