[Tails-dev] Tails report for December 2020

Author: sajolida
Date:
To: tails-dev
CC: tor-project
Subject: [Tails-dev] Tails report for December 2020

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.

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