fyi: thorin is officially a tor project core contributor

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

Links

• https://gitweb.torproject.org/community/policies.git/tree/membership.txt
• https://www.torproject.org/about/people/

You need a sponsor/mentor, you have to really earn it, and you are voted in by your peers. I was asked about a year ago if I wanted to become a core contributor, and I waited until after the tor project meetup in Costa Rica back in April (thanks to Mullvad as well). Richard from Tor Project sponsored me, and I was accepted months ago. Am off to Sweden soon (again thanks Mullvad), to plot world domination help the mole people .. no wait, it's actually the tor apps team meetup

Won't be spilling any secrets, sorry. By "ignoring" (wrong word) Mozilla, and working more directly with Tor Project, I can help effect RFP change faster. Besides, FF long term will be better served with FPP.

And I have a great working relationship with Mullvad, and am invested with them as the replacement for AF/LW (can't speak for LW directly, but the 🎣 knows what I'm talking about)

We're in good hands with

• FF: dFPI/partitioning/FPP
• MB: over time with some relaxations, e.g. disk, such as saving passwords, using webrtc, etc
• TB: the serious stuff

And I have my fingers (and prints) in all three .. we'll get there.

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PS: look, tom ritter is there :)

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One thing I want to address .. I am a dude :) Way back in the pre-github days, someone commented at ghacks about me being a guy, and I replied smth like "who said I was male?" and then never replied to subsequent comments about it. And no-one was the wiser. Subsequent articles on ghacks by Martin (who was in on the ruse) always referred to me as a girl, and here and there, over the years I (and others also in on the ruse, such as fxbrit, dngray) have referred to me as female as well.

The whole point being that I find it hilarious that gender has anything to do with this project or anyone's merits, and it's tragically comical seeing the hatred and names coming out in some forums because of that. Anyway, I am an old school spy-craft lover and great believer in disinformation, and the off-the-cuff experiment exceeded expectations - suckers!!

Now the real question you should be asking yourself is .. am I telling you the truth? :)

[iam-py-test]

Congrats!

[1z5q]

Hi, Thorin. As a "dude" that follows you for years, I am very pleased and happy to see your growth and development. This is not only an extremely joyful moment for you, but for all the users around the world. The more you grow and get "control" (I mean involved :)) in the development of TOR Browser, the more all of us benefit. And I really mean that 😊.

By the way, taking this opportunity to say a huge thank you, Thorin, from all my heart! I am constantly learning new things and nuances reading your wise and comprehensive comments here and there. You invest much time and effort in all your comments/responses... and share so much concentrated knowledge. So, thank you, dude😃.

[fxbrit]

I'm shocked to see that people like you and share love messages. I say they haven't interacted with you long enough, if they only knew...oh man oh man.

nah but jokes aside, well deserved as we already discussed. appreciate ya 👖

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

if they only knew...oh man oh man

can't believe we only had 10 mega rage threads 😡 :) ALL HAIL SISU

[crssi]

Congrats! And thank you for your work! ❤️

[KOLANICH]

It's awesome that you have managed to get the jobs you will really enjoy doing. It's a pity this project development will slow down, I wonder if the code base of MB and TB can be restructured to make it easier to share the settings between AF and TB/MB.

Also, I can be a spoilsport, but I feel I have to voice some concerns about Tor Project. I consider them as much less trustworthy then I considered them in 2013. For example, they have demolished Trac and replaced it with GitLab. While GUI of GL looks fancier, GL is a much complex system having large attack surface, executing Turing-complete code from repos on its backend via CI, and on frontend requiring users' browsers to execute Turing-complete JavaScript... In other words, making own developer portal more prone to exploitation and making own developers to use any mode other than 'Safest' (where JS is disabled) while using the dev portal. In other words, while being a high-value target, not doing enough to protect the dev portal itself and developers' machines and ptrivacy. It looks like an invitation for adversaries to compromise the dev portal, then compromise all the devs' machines, then compromise the code base in a subtle way, then attack the users of the software. IMHO it didn't worth to trade the simplicity and pure HTML+CSS frontend of Trac for poshness of GitLab. TP is an org which focus is security and privacy, which is meant to be made of experts in it who fully realize what is said above ... and they still did this. There were other concerns. In Trac there were issues related to blocking. I disliked the tone (that felt kinda histerical) used by some of the staff to communicate that nothing will be done about some of those issues. The time has showed: those issues were real and I suspect that they were exploited. Also I have quite some suspicions that cannot he proven currently, so I won't voice them, but if people think a bit about some well-known historical facts and about capabilities of adversaries, this can make them feel uncomfortable about trusting the software. Also I disliked the premoderation of their blog, where comments critical to TP activity were censored. An org which ultimate goal is protection of human rights of privacy and free speech via technical means is doing private censorship of constructive critics of the org practices. All of this made me feel that TP is much less trustworthy than it used to be.

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

@KOLANICH the ❤️ is for the first paragraph - after that it's all OT. There are always pros/cons (and costs) of why things are done. Without all the information, we aren't qualified to judge. Pretttttttty suuuuuuuuuure all the security was taken into account running their own instance of gitlab - I trust them and their decisions

[g-2-s]

Congrats bro I hope Arkenfox won't disappear completely because the mere prospect of having the Mole browser as the sole real alternative to it kinda depresses me a bit not gonna lie lmao. Also do you have the patience of a saint or something? Just took a look at the issues in the Mole browser repo and the amount of insufferable or plain dumdum fucks over there is amazingly high, I thought we as Arkenfox users used to make amazingly stupid questions but over there is complete madness, how the hell do you keep up with it is beyond me lol. Have a nice one

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

Also do you have the patience of a saint or something?

F no. Me and the 🎣 (and some others) just let it all rip in RAGE threads (in private) .. it's good therapy.

I just try to ignore or not reply and/or just stick to my little world - e.g. I tried to point out a security flaw/issue that floorp created for their users and my comment was marked as off-topic or something, so I deleted it and will never try to help them again

insufferable or plain dumdum

we were all insufferable or plain dumdum fucks at some stage - exhibits A + B .. 🎣 👖

tl;dr: I am the king of this repo, and at tor project I have peers :) life is good

[cryptocat8]

Congratulations @Thorin-Oakenpants , always been your biggest cheerleader. Now give party

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

Now give party

Party at @fxbrit 's house .. BYO pokemon pyjamas

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

obligatory promotion

[earthlng]

congrats mate, that's really fucking cool!! Keep up the great work

[GlassGruber]

This is great news!! Congratulations!! 🎉 🎩 👌

I'm late to the party, but ...

ALL HAIL PANTS WE MUST

[fxbrit]

Party at @fxbrit 's house .. BYO pokemon pyjamas

I've had mine on for the past 3 days yet nobody arrived, are y'all coming? I'm starting to feel lonely........

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

had no pyjamas on for a month ... bitterly disappointed

To all my devoted cult followers, thanks for the kind words - ALL HAIL PANTS. To all the non devoted cult followers ... also ALL HAIL PANTS