Hi everyone!

This is my third status report for the stem.client TSoP project [1]. You may see my previous reports on the tor-project ml. [2][3]

This report comes a bit late - sorry about that!

# Updates

Last week I was feeling ill, so I didn't tackle things quite as big (long periods of concentration were hard to achieve) nor get quite as much done.

## stem.client

I pushed things forward a bit on code review [4][5][6], including branching some discussion/findings out into separate tickets [7][8][9].

Still waiting on some architecture discussion [10].

## stem, general

I did a few small fixes: * document the --quiet testing flag [11] * improve reliability of an integration test [12] * address some linter findings [13]

I also spent some time working on the tox configuration, although that's not push-ready, so I don't have a reference for that.

## tor protocol, general

Per previous suggestion from Roger, I've been glancing through the tor-design paper [14][15][16] and updates [17][18][19] while reading the specification, and that's been helping solidify my understanding.

I neglected to mention in my last update that I brought up handling of padding bytes [20] at the network-team meeting that week. There's been a bit of discussion thereon with atagar in the context of stem.client.

# What's next

## stem.client

Per my previous plan, I'll be tackling some not-so-architecture-dependent changes. Hoping to get some feedback on the architecture soon, and start implementing some of those changes!

## stem, general

I still have a few 'dev' tickets I'd like to work on. As mentioned above, I've done some work on improving the tox configuration, so I plan to wrap that up.

## tor-spec

As aforementioned, I'll push forward on the padding bytes ticket [20] into a spec change.

# Other Tor things

On the side, I've spent time chatting with a lot of people about tor in the past few weeks, and it's really cool to see how many people are interested in it! This has spanned a wide range of professions from journalists, to artists, to musicians, to librarians, to software developers, to students, and more (I can't even remember all of it - lots of informal discussions).

The Tor Browser manual's graphic showing a connection to a website [21] has been pretty helpful for ad-hoc descriptions. And when I haven't had paper to draw on, I've used various small objects to cover up parts of the graphic to contrast Tor with a VPN, and people have been able to make the mental leap!

One person already came with some pre-existing knowledge of Tor, and so with him I asked him to explain what he thought Tor was / how it worked prior to any other input / visual aid (didactic strategy of having others teach you), and he did a pretty good job! I helped set a few things straight, but it was cool to know that he'll likely be able to explain Tor confidently now to anyone else. :)

# Closing

As with before, I've been active and reachable over IRC, where my nick is dmr. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me via IRC or email!

Thanks, Dave

[1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2018-April/013090.html [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-May/001811.html [3] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-June/001830.html [4] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:7 [5] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:9 [6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26227#comment:13 [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26420 [8] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26431 [9] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26432 [10] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26226 [11] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26421 [12] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26225 [13] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26483 [14] https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en#DesignDoc [15] https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf [16] https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.html [17] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-1 [18] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-2 [19] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/top-changes-tor-2004-design-paper-part-3 [20] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26228 [21] https://tb-manual.torproject.org/en-US/media/how-tor-works.png