Re: BUS: Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Alexis Hunt via agora-discussion]

On Sun, 23 Feb 2020 at 17:22, Aris Merchant via agora-business
 wrote:
>
> I petition the Herald to conduct peer review on my thesis.
>
> -Aris

Ah, my bad, I totally missed it. Apologies.

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Edward Murphy via agora-discussion]

omd wrote:


Each mbox file is append-only, so you can use the "continue download"
option of your favorite tool to sync without having to redownload the
whole thing:

  wget -c 
https://agora:no...@mailman.agoranomic.org/archives/agora-business.mbox


I just set up my home server to do this monthly for all three lists, so
that's one level of protection at least.

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 3:50 PM James Cook wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 15:46, Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> > Also relevant: CFJs 3411-3412.
>
> I was hesitent to raise this morbid concern, but now that the subject
> has been broached, are dead former players persons? R869 would seem to
> say no. This may affect the accuracy of Tailor reports.

At least since 2001, I'm pretty sure none have been confirmed or
alleged.  With so many former players I'm not sure what the odds are
that there's at least one.  And I've just decided to make some kinda
dead switch - not to tell y'all if I died, but to keep automatically
posting zombie-prevention messages forever so you can argue if I'm
real or whether messages from beyond the grave are outside my
technical domain of control.

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion]

Falsifian wrote:
> I was hesitent to raise this morbid concern, but now that the subject
> has been broached, are dead former players persons? R869 would seem to
> say no. This may affect the accuracy of Tailor reports.

https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg45140.html

(petered out with no conclusion)

-twg

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[James Cook via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 23:18, omd via agora-discussion
 wrote:
> I can at least put it through the formal proposal process, by
> submitting a proposal expressing the sense of Agora that it's okay to
> publish players' email addresses on the web.  However, that only
> accounts for current active players.  If I published a copy of the
> list archives, it would probably be everything going back to 2002
> (when the Mailman list was created, under a previous Distributor), so
> it would expose former players' addresses.  In theory I could split
> the archives – a static obfuscated zip file for the past, unobfuscated
> files for the present onward – but ugh, I really don't want to do
> that.  Agoran historical records have enough fragmentation as it is.

I'm in favour of clarifying this in the rules. Might as well turn it
into a more general clarification in R478 (Fora) setting the
expectation that public messages are public, including sender and
other headers.

- Falsifian

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[James Cook via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 15:46, Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion
 wrote:
> Also relevant: CFJs 3411-3412.

I was hesitent to raise this morbid concern, but now that the subject
has been broached, are dead former players persons? R869 would seem to
say no. This may affect the accuracy of Tailor reports.

- Falsifian

DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 3:26 PM Timon Walshe-Grey wrote:
>
> omd wrote:
> > However, I vaguely remember having proposed this in the past, and
> > someone objecting to it. But I can't find the thread; searching for
> > "scrapers", only this thread comes up. I could be misremembering.
>
> Is this it?
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg29597.html
>

If it was that, I wasn't worried about it or objecting - I was just
mentioning that at one point, someone had been worried about email
harvesting, (which was my memory for why the security had been put
there).

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Alexis Hunt via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 18:26, Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> omd wrote:
> > However, I vaguely remember having proposed this in the past, and
> > someone objecting to it. But I can't find the thread; searching for
> > "scrapers", only this thread comes up. I could be misremembering.
>
> Is this it?
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg29597.html
>
> -twg
>

I mean...
https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-official@agoranomic.org/msg09786.html

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion]

omd wrote:
> However, I vaguely remember having proposed this in the past, and
> someone objecting to it. But I can't find the thread; searching for
> "scrapers", only this thread comes up. I could be misremembering.

Is this it?

https://www.mail-archive.com/agora-discussion@agoranomic.org/msg29597.html

-twg

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[omd via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:47 PM Jason Cobb via agora-discussion
 wrote:
> Couldn't someone just zip the files and put them in a public GitHub
> repo? If we really cared, the zip files could be encrypted and the
> password could be put in the README, since I think most of the major
> operating systems have builtin support for encrypted ZIPs.

Putting everything in one zip file would require Git to store a
separate copy of the file for each revision, since Git doesn't do
binary diffing.

There are alternatives, like one zip file per message or per month or
something; they're just a bit inconvenient.  But personally, I think
the idea of keeping email addresses hidden from spammers is pretty
outdated at this point.  I'd rather abandon it, and then be able to
use the standard maildir format for the Git repo.

However, I vaguely remember having proposed this in the past, and
someone objecting to it.  But I can't find the thread; searching for
"scrapers", only this thread comes up.  I could be misremembering.

I can at least put it through the formal proposal process, by
submitting a proposal expressing the sense of Agora that it's okay to
publish players' email addresses on the web.  However, that only
accounts for current active players.  If I published a copy of the
list archives, it would probably be everything going back to 2002
(when the Mailman list was created, under a previous Distributor), so
it would expose former players' addresses.  In theory I could split
the archives – a static obfuscated zip file for the past, unobfuscated
files for the present onward – but ugh, I really don't want to do
that.  Agoran historical records have enough fragmentation as it is.

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Alexis Hunt via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 17:48, omd via agora-discussion <
agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 7:29 AM Matthew Berlin via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
> > A custom Agora blockchain for the ruleset and BUS actions? I'd
> > certainly be up for running a node...and could help with dev,
>
> I mean, Git is a blockchain. :)
>

This reminds me of a contract idea I had...

(the actual relationship to cryptocurrency is mostly puns, though)

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[omd via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 7:29 AM Matthew Berlin via agora-discussion
 wrote:
> A custom Agora blockchain for the ruleset and BUS actions? I'd
> certainly be up for running a node...and could help with dev,

I mean, Git is a blockchain. :)

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Aris Merchant via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:47 PM Jason Cobb via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On 1/28/20 2:14 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:03 AM omd via agora-discussion
> >  wrote:
> >
> >> I suppose I could mirror the archives on GitHub, which would be less
> >> idiosyncratic and more resilient to me getting hit by a bus.  That
> >> would, however, imply giving up on obfuscating email addresses, unless
> >> I made the repo private (which defeats the purpose of resilience) or
> >> obfuscated the repo contents somehow (which defeats the purpose of
> >> avoiding idiosyncracy).  Thoughts?
> > You can share a private repo with three people (they've started
> > letting people do that recently-ish). If one picked three Agorans
> > who've been playing relatively steadily for a long while, it would
> > make things much safer (the possibility of four Agorans getting
> > incapacitated at once is decidedly low, absent a global crisis, in
> > which case we have bigger problems).
> >
> > -Aris
>
>
> Couldn't someone just zip the files and put them in a public GitHub
> repo? If we really cared, the zip files could be encrypted and the
> password could be put in the README, since I think most of the major
> operating systems have builtin support for encrypted ZIPs.
>
> This would allow people who actually cared to easily access the archives
> (as long as the ZIP specification survives, which it probably will),
> while preventing all but the most dedicated automatic scanners from
> getting to it.

I don't really care as long as there's a way of updating them
regularly automatically.

-Aris

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Alexis Hunt via agora-discussion]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 15:47, Jason Cobb via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> On 1/28/20 2:14 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:03 AM omd via agora-discussion
> >  wrote:
> >
> >> I suppose I could mirror the archives on GitHub, which would be less
> >> idiosyncratic and more resilient to me getting hit by a bus.  That
> >> would, however, imply giving up on obfuscating email addresses, unless
> >> I made the repo private (which defeats the purpose of resilience) or
> >> obfuscated the repo contents somehow (which defeats the purpose of
> >> avoiding idiosyncracy).  Thoughts?
> > You can share a private repo with three people (they've started
> > letting people do that recently-ish). If one picked three Agorans
> > who've been playing relatively steadily for a long while, it would
> > make things much safer (the possibility of four Agorans getting
> > incapacitated at once is decidedly low, absent a global crisis, in
> > which case we have bigger problems).
> >
> > -Aris
>
>
> Couldn't someone just zip the files and put them in a public GitHub
> repo? If we really cared, the zip files could be encrypted and the
> password could be put in the README, since I think most of the major
> operating systems have builtin support for encrypted ZIPs.
>
> This would allow people who actually cared to easily access the archives
> (as long as the ZIP specification survives, which it probably will),
> while preventing all but the most dedicated automatic scanners from
> getting to it.

Just put them anywhere archive.org can get.

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Jason Cobb via agora-discussion]

On 1/28/20 2:14 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:03 AM omd via agora-discussion
>  wrote:
>
>> I suppose I could mirror the archives on GitHub, which would be less
>> idiosyncratic and more resilient to me getting hit by a bus.  That
>> would, however, imply giving up on obfuscating email addresses, unless
>> I made the repo private (which defeats the purpose of resilience) or
>> obfuscated the repo contents somehow (which defeats the purpose of
>> avoiding idiosyncracy).  Thoughts?
> You can share a private repo with three people (they've started
> letting people do that recently-ish). If one picked three Agorans
> who've been playing relatively steadily for a long while, it would
> make things much safer (the possibility of four Agorans getting
> incapacitated at once is decidedly low, absent a global crisis, in
> which case we have bigger problems).
>
> -Aris


Couldn't someone just zip the files and put them in a public GitHub
repo? If we really cared, the zip files could be encrypted and the
password could be put in the README, since I think most of the major
operating systems have builtin support for encrypted ZIPs.

This would allow people who actually cared to easily access the archives
(as long as the ZIP specification survives, which it probably will),
while preventing all but the most dedicated automatic scanners from
getting to it.

-- 
Jason Cobb

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Aris Merchant via agora-discussion]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 12:03 AM omd via agora-discussion
 wrote:

> I suppose I could mirror the archives on GitHub, which would be less
> idiosyncratic and more resilient to me getting hit by a bus.  That
> would, however, imply giving up on obfuscating email addresses, unless
> I made the repo private (which defeats the purpose of resilience) or
> obfuscated the repo contents somehow (which defeats the purpose of
> avoiding idiosyncracy).  Thoughts?

You can share a private repo with three people (they've started
letting people do that recently-ish). If one picked three Agorans
who've been playing relatively steadily for a long while, it would
make things much safer (the possibility of four Agorans getting
incapacitated at once is decidedly low, absent a global crisis, in
which case we have bigger problems).

-Aris

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Timon Walshe-Grey via agora-discussion]

Matthew Berlin wrote:
> A custom Agora blockchain for the ruleset and BUS actions?

It seems to me that an equally efficient, and somewhat lower-tech,
solution would be for several different people to keep copies of the
archives using the link omd provided upthread.

Of course this doesn't protect against a situation where every person
who plays the game dies simultaneously, but there are limits to what we
can make contingencies for.

Also relevant: CFJs 3411-3412.

-twg

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Matthew Berlin via agora-discussion]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2020 21:59:44 -0800
Aris Merchant via agora-discussion 
wrote:


> To the best of my knowledge, we have no contingency plans for
> preserving Agoran history in such an eventuality. Our Distributor is
> amazing, but sooner or later e will die, and that death may come
> before e has transferred control of the archives to a successor.
> Perhaps e even has backups in secure locations, and has left
> instructions for what to do with them, but what if a fire destroys
> all copies, or some other grave misfortune occurs?
> 

A custom Agora blockchain for the ruleset and BUS actions? I'd
certainly be up for running a node...and could help with dev,

Your use of "hard-fork" got the gears turning,

- Matt

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[omd via agora-discussion]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 10:12 PM Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion
 wrote:
> Speaking of which, last I checked, the link (at the top of the mailman 
> archive) to download the full archive is broken.

Fixed.  Seems like a Mailman bug introduced in this commit [1], which
nobody has noticed in over a year... I guess I should report it.

But a long time ago I set up an alternate way to download the
archives, directly through the web server so it supports range
requests etc.:

https://agora:no...@mailman.agoranomic.org/archives/

Each mbox file is append-only, so you can use the "continue download"
option of your favorite tool to sync without having to redownload the
whole thing:

 wget -c https://agora:no...@mailman.agoranomic.org/archives/agora-business.mbox

The authentication was added out of concern for ancient etiquette
rules about exposing email addresses to web scrapers.  Almost
certainly pointless these days.  Especially, in our case, considering
that Registrar's report is published on the web, and includes all
players' email addresses, obfuscated only by replacing "@" with " at
", which I doubt stops any scrapers (but who knows).

I suppose I could mirror the archives on GitHub, which would be less
idiosyncratic and more resilient to me getting hit by a bus.  That
would, however, imply giving up on obfuscating email addresses, unless
I made the repo private (which defeats the purpose of resilience) or
obfuscated the repo contents somehow (which defeats the purpose of
avoiding idiosyncracy).  Thoughts?

[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-checkins@python.org/msg09051.html

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Aris Merchant via agora-discussion]

*slaps head*

Okay, that makes my prophecy quite a bit less terrifying, now doesn't
it. I don't know how I never thought of that. I've been worrying about
this for literally years. It goes back pretty far, though it's hard to
tell how far (it only goes to 15 pages of results by date for each
list, despite having more). However, it's a lot less convenient IMO
then the archives (better if you want to search, but it's harder to
get a picture of what's going on). So losing access to the main
archives would still be bad, but I'm not sure if it would be bad
enough to justify the thesis.

By the way, I won't be offended at all if this never gets a thesis. I
do have future plans for other theses, I just thought this might get
me my A.N.

-Aris

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 10:12 PM Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion
 wrote:
>
> Speaking of which, last I checked, the link (at the top of the mailman 
> archive) to download the full archive is broken.
>
> In terms of your actual thesis, it’s worth mentioning that mail-archive.org 
>  would also have to go down (although I’m not sure 
> how far it’s history goes).
>
> Gaelan
>
> > On Jan 27, 2020, at 9:59 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > Agora has been around a very long time, and it looks like it’ll be around
> > much longer. That means that, someday, inevitably, my worst nightmare will
> > come true. Unless we do something to stop it.
> >
> > A Prophecy of Doom
> >
> > One day, all of a sudden, the lists fail. The archives go down with them.
> > An Agoran quickly notices and alerts the backup list, unless by some
> > terrible twist of fate that is down too, in which case e sends their
> > message directly to every player listed in the last Registrar’s report
> > (plus any new arrivals). E contacts the Distributor as well, informing em
> > of what has taken place.
> >
> > Everyone waits, at first with patience, then with annoyance, and then with
> > fear. They wait for the Distributor to respond. Days pass. Then a week.
> > More emails are sent. Finally, someone says “E’s never going to respond, is
> > e?” The Speaker sends out a message, claiming that as the figurehead leader
> > of all Agora, e should assume control. The Prime Minister, a popular
> > newcomer who has been recently elected to the office and has little
> > experience, quickly agrees.
> >
> > Orders are sent out. New lists are to be established. Recent reports are to
> > be copied from mailboxes or officer’s archives. The gamestate is to be
> > reconstructed. A new Distributor is to be chosen.
> >
> > Eventually, it is all set up. Everything runs again. Except for one thing.
> > The archives, containing everything that has happened in Agoran history
> > since 2002, are gone. The past soon turns to legend, with older players
> > recounting stories to the newcomers, and upon occasion searching their
> > inboxes for aged texts, relics of a past almost forgotten. Perhaps some old
> > backups are found, but they are years out of date. Much of Agoran history
> > is still lost, like that of the days before 2002 is now.
> >
> > The End
> >
> > To the best of my knowledge, we have no contingency plans for preserving
> > Agoran history in such an eventuality. Our Distributor is amazing, but
> > sooner or later e will die, and that death may come before e has
> > transferred control of the archives to a successor. Perhaps e even has
> > backups in secure locations, and has left instructions for what to do with
> > them, but what if a fire destroys all copies, or some other grave
> > misfortune occurs?
> >
> > I believe that this eventuality is the worst thing that could ever happen
> > to Agora. Even if the game were somehow ossified, we could fix it with a
> > hard fork. It’s questionable whether the new game would still really be
> > Agora, but it would be close enough. However, we have no redundancy to keep
> > our history, our most prized treasure, safe. I think we should do something
> > about that. I don’t know what.
> >
> > -Aris
>

Re: DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion]

Speaking of which, last I checked, the link (at the top of the mailman archive) 
to download the full archive is broken.

In terms of your actual thesis, it’s worth mentioning that mail-archive.org 
 would also have to go down (although I’m not sure 
how far it’s history goes).

Gaelan

> On Jan 27, 2020, at 9:59 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion 
>  wrote:
> 
> Agora has been around a very long time, and it looks like it’ll be around
> much longer. That means that, someday, inevitably, my worst nightmare will
> come true. Unless we do something to stop it.
> 
> A Prophecy of Doom
> 
> One day, all of a sudden, the lists fail. The archives go down with them.
> An Agoran quickly notices and alerts the backup list, unless by some
> terrible twist of fate that is down too, in which case e sends their
> message directly to every player listed in the last Registrar’s report
> (plus any new arrivals). E contacts the Distributor as well, informing em
> of what has taken place.
> 
> Everyone waits, at first with patience, then with annoyance, and then with
> fear. They wait for the Distributor to respond. Days pass. Then a week.
> More emails are sent. Finally, someone says “E’s never going to respond, is
> e?” The Speaker sends out a message, claiming that as the figurehead leader
> of all Agora, e should assume control. The Prime Minister, a popular
> newcomer who has been recently elected to the office and has little
> experience, quickly agrees.
> 
> Orders are sent out. New lists are to be established. Recent reports are to
> be copied from mailboxes or officer’s archives. The gamestate is to be
> reconstructed. A new Distributor is to be chosen.
> 
> Eventually, it is all set up. Everything runs again. Except for one thing.
> The archives, containing everything that has happened in Agoran history
> since 2002, are gone. The past soon turns to legend, with older players
> recounting stories to the newcomers, and upon occasion searching their
> inboxes for aged texts, relics of a past almost forgotten. Perhaps some old
> backups are found, but they are years out of date. Much of Agoran history
> is still lost, like that of the days before 2002 is now.
> 
> The End
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, we have no contingency plans for preserving
> Agoran history in such an eventuality. Our Distributor is amazing, but
> sooner or later e will die, and that death may come before e has
> transferred control of the archives to a successor. Perhaps e even has
> backups in secure locations, and has left instructions for what to do with
> them, but what if a fire destroys all copies, or some other grave
> misfortune occurs?
> 
> I believe that this eventuality is the worst thing that could ever happen
> to Agora. Even if the game were somehow ossified, we could fix it with a
> hard fork. It’s questionable whether the new game would still really be
> Agora, but it would be close enough. However, we have no redundancy to keep
> our history, our most prized treasure, safe. I think we should do something
> about that. I don’t know what.
> 
> -Aris

DIS: The Very Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen (Attn. Distributor)

[Aris Merchant via agora-discussion]

Agora has been around a very long time, and it looks like it’ll be around
much longer. That means that, someday, inevitably, my worst nightmare will
come true. Unless we do something to stop it.

A Prophecy of Doom

One day, all of a sudden, the lists fail. The archives go down with them.
An Agoran quickly notices and alerts the backup list, unless by some
terrible twist of fate that is down too, in which case e sends their
message directly to every player listed in the last Registrar’s report
(plus any new arrivals). E contacts the Distributor as well, informing em
of what has taken place.

Everyone waits, at first with patience, then with annoyance, and then with
fear. They wait for the Distributor to respond. Days pass. Then a week.
More emails are sent. Finally, someone says “E’s never going to respond, is
e?” The Speaker sends out a message, claiming that as the figurehead leader
of all Agora, e should assume control. The Prime Minister, a popular
newcomer who has been recently elected to the office and has little
experience, quickly agrees.

Orders are sent out. New lists are to be established. Recent reports are to
be copied from mailboxes or officer’s archives. The gamestate is to be
reconstructed. A new Distributor is to be chosen.

Eventually, it is all set up. Everything runs again. Except for one thing.
The archives, containing everything that has happened in Agoran history
since 2002, are gone. The past soon turns to legend, with older players
recounting stories to the newcomers, and upon occasion searching their
inboxes for aged texts, relics of a past almost forgotten. Perhaps some old
backups are found, but they are years out of date. Much of Agoran history
is still lost, like that of the days before 2002 is now.

The End

To the best of my knowledge, we have no contingency plans for preserving
Agoran history in such an eventuality. Our Distributor is amazing, but
sooner or later e will die, and that death may come before e has
transferred control of the archives to a successor. Perhaps e even has
backups in secure locations, and has left instructions for what to do with
them, but what if a fire destroys all copies, or some other grave
misfortune occurs?

I believe that this eventuality is the worst thing that could ever happen
to Agora. Even if the game were somehow ossified, we could fix it with a
hard fork. It’s questionable whether the new game would still really be
Agora, but it would be close enough. However, we have no redundancy to keep
our history, our most prized treasure, safe. I think we should do something
about that. I don’t know what.

-Aris