Tails report for December, 2020 [1]

IN MEMORIAM OF KARSTEN LOESING

We join the Tor project in mourning Karsten Loesing [2]. Our sincere condolences to Karsten's family and colleagues.

Those of us who were lucky enough to cross Karsten's path remember him as a very kind, thoughtful, and smart person.

Rest in peace, Karsten.

RELEASES

*

Tails 4.14 was released on December 15 [3]. *

Tails 4.15 is scheduled for January 26 [4].

The following changes were introduced in Tails 4.15:

*

Add support for the Ledger hardware wallets in _Electrum_. (#15353 [5]) *

Remove the _Unifont_ font. (!263 [6]) *

Fix Additional Software by updating the APT key for deb.torproject.org. (#18042 [7]) *

Fix changing the administration password stored in the Persistent Storage. (#18018 [8]) *

Fix opening the Persistent Storage of another Tails USB stick in the _Files_ browser. (#18050 [9]) *

Restore automatically a _GnuPG_ public keyring from its backup when it gets corrupt. (#17807 [10])

🎉 NEW CORE DEVELOPER 🎂

Today, we celebrate the arrival in our Foundations Team [11] of a new member: boyska. His skills and experience in operating systems, software development, and collective projects will:

*

Accelerate development of new features, user experience improvements, and bug fixes. *

Make our day-to-day maintenance work more sustainable.

This work has no visible impact most of the time, except that Tails is still alive after more than a decade, and here to stay! *

Decrease our reliance on a tiny number of key persons.

This is one important step we're taking, among others, towards making Tails a healthier project.

I'm boyska, a fellow who always loved computers. When I realized the profound social implications of technology, I tried to make my part: that's how I got involved with free software, security and hacking in general. A post-it note in my brain remembers me that computing should be fun, not scary.

Additionally, we would like to thank:

*

the thousands of people whose donation allowed us to fund this new position

Please consider donating today [12] to fight surveillance and censorship. *

the dozens of people who applied to this job offer [13]

It's been truly heart-warming to see so many great applicants interested in working with us.

Welcome, boyska! :)

CODE

*

We implemented a mechanism for adding a "Don't Show Again" button to some notifications. We'll try it out in Tails 4.15 for the warning displayed when starting Tails in a virtual machine; then we'll iterate from there. *

We finished porting our Python code to Python 3. Yeah! *

We made plans for rewriting _Persistent Storage_ in Python, making it compatible with Wayland, and redesigning its UX from scratch.

DOCUMENTATION AND WEBSITE

*

Started rewriting /doc/about/warning:

*

Samuel DiBella rewrote the section about contextual identities [14] (#17882 [15]) *

We rewrote the sections about confirmation attacks and global adversaries [16] (#17869 [17])

*

Added an FAQ about "Is it safe to use an older version of Tails? [18]" (#18001 [19]) *

Improved our security [20] page and replaced "hole" by "vulnerability" everywhere on our website, as per our style guide. (#18032 [21])

USER EXPERIENCE

*

Started analyzing the search queries on our website, following a methodology by Susan Farrell [22]. (#11649 [23]) *

Started preparing the redesign of the Persistent Storage that we'll work on in January. (#15572 [24]) *

Investigated what it would take to stop distributing ISO images:

* #18047 [25]: Users unintentionally install ISO to USB instead of the .img * #18054 [26]: Distribute USB images by default for all virtual machines * #18055 [27]: Stop distributing ISO images

*

Added some depth to the buttons on our website. (#15111 [28])

FUNDING

GRANTS

* Our proposal to the UXFund to work on a replacement for Tor Launcher was approved buy scaled down by 20%.

DONATIONS

*

Received 57.8kEUR from 88 donations at CCT since the beginning of the campaign.

It's 70% more donations, that's the important part, and 599% more money thanks to a 50kEUR donation from some crypto trading company, that's the big cherry on top of the cake! *

Blogged about our achievements in 2020 [29].

SPONSORS

*

Renamed "partners" as "sponsors [30]" after DeepOnion listed Tails as their partner on their website.

The word "partners" implies reciprocity and a deeper relationship, while the word "sponsor" doesn't and is more accurate, honest, and common. *

Got invited to the Lifetime Raffle [31] of ProtonMail.

OUTREACH

PAST EVENTS

* Tails and Tor were presented (among other tools) to journalism students at Sciences Po Rennes [32] (Rennes, France) as part of their digital safety lessons.

TRANSLATIONS

ALL THE WEBSITE

* fr: 79% (5378) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * es: 48% (3273) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * it: 28% (1945) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy * de: 27% (1829) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * fa: 20% (1359) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy * pt: 18% (1266) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE [33]

* es: 82% (1741) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * fr: 79% (1676) strings translated, 10% strings fuzzy * it: 54% (1151) strings translated, 20% strings fuzzy * de: 44% (935) strings translated, 24% strings fuzzy * pt: 38% (818) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * fa: 19% (407) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy

CORE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE FOR LANGUAGES NOT ACTIVATED ON THE WEBSITE YET

* zh_TW: 21% (451) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy * zh: 10% (218) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * tr: 7% (155) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * ca: 7% (153) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * ru: 7% (152) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy * pl: 7% (150) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy * ar: 7% (146) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy * id: 5% (115) strings translated, 5% strings fuzzy * sr_Latn: 4% (93) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy

METRICS

* Tails has been started more than 978 192 times this month. This makes 31 554 boots a day on average.

How do we know this? [34]

Links: ------ [1] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/report_2020_12.html [2] https://blog.torproject.org/in-memoriam-of-karsten-loesing [3] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/version_4.14.html [4] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/calendar.html [5] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15353 [6] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/merge_requests/263 [7] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18042 [8] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18018 [9] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18050 [10] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17807 [11] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/working_together/roles/foundations_team.html [12] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/donate.html [13] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/jobs/Linux_generalist.html [14] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/doc/about/warning.html#identities [15] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17882 [16] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/doc/about/warning.html#correlation [17] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17869 [18] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/support/faq.html#older-version [19] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18001 [20] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/security.html [21] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18032 [22] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-log-analysis/ [23] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/11649 [24] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15572 [25] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18047 [26] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18054 [27] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18055 [28] https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/15111 [29] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/news/achievements_in_2020.html [30] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/sponsors.html [31] https://protonmail.com/blog/lifetime-account-auction-2020/ [32] http://www.sciencespo-rennes.fr/en/ [33] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/contribute/l10n_tricks/core_po_files.txt [34] file:///home/amnesia/Persistent/Tor%20Browser/master/support/faq.html#boot-statistics