If you start a comment out with "not strictly [related to linked article]" and hijack the discussion by plugging a website it seems like the decent thing to do is mention that you are the developer behind said website. I think this is even more important when you include so much <pre> text that the other comments are pushed so far down the page.
If you're interested in using the http://ipinfo.io API for this, so you don't have to worry about keeping your database up to date and you get additional details, let me know. I'd be happy to hook you up with a free unlimited plan specifically for this site.
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$ cat ips | xargs -I% curl -s http://ipinfo.io/%/country | paste - ips | sort
AT 86.59.21.38
DE 131.188.40.189
DE 193.23.244.244
NL 194.109.206.212
NL 82.94.251.203
SE 171.25.193.9
US 128.31.0.39
US 154.35.32.5
US 199.254.238.52
US 208.83.223.34
And here are the organizations they're associated with:
$ cat ips | xargs -I% curl -s http://ipinfo.io/%/org | paste ips -
128.31.0.39 AS3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
86.59.21.38 AS8437 Tele2 Telecommunication GmbH
194.109.206.212 AS3265 XS4ALL Internet BV
82.94.251.203 AS3265 XS4ALL Internet BV
131.188.40.189 AS680 Verein zur Foerderung eines Deutschen Forschungsnetzes e.V.
193.23.244.244 AS50472 Chaos Computer Club e.V.
208.83.223.34 AS40475 Applied Operations, LLC
171.25.193.9 AS198093 Foreningen for digitala fri- och rattigheter
154.35.32.5 AS14987 Rethem Hosting LLC
199.254.238.52 AS16652 Riseup Networks
For what it's worth, XS4ALL has a tremendous reputation when it comes to privacy in The Netherlands, being one of the first ISPs in NL, founded by true hackers. They were the first (and only one?) that started disclosing how many subpoenas they were receiving from the government, have fought a lot against blocking TPB in court, etc -- I'm not surprised at all they are the ones hosting the Tor servers (I am a customer, and am allowed to run an Exit node, and they are very supportive when they receive abuse complaints, their entire customer support staff knows about Tor). I would be surprised if they would easily cave to a government order / seizure of their servers.
Do note that XS4ALL is owned by KPN, which is a monolith like Comcast or Verizon. If the authorities come knocking hard enough, KPN will make sure it it shut down, or worde. XS4ALL is a good provider, I enjoy my IPv6 and fiber to home very much, service is good, they still provide a shell server which I use for IRC, I like them
Sad as it might be, I have to agree with you. Upon acquisition, KPN said it will let XS4ALL be as independent as possible, and as far as I can tell, they put their money where their mouth is (let them fight court battles, where KPN (the ISP) does not), but if there is little legal room for XS4ALL to move in, KPN will make sure XS4ALL complies.
On the other hand, XS4ALL is always looking for the boundaries of privacy and free speech -- if there is no more (legal) room left, and as such have reached the boundary, I have no doubt they would comply. But they probably make a big stunt out of it again, using it as a marketing opportunity, which KPN, of course, will have no problems with. As long as they comply with the law.
MIT runs Lincoln Lab which is a think tank / R&D facility for the military. You have to pass through an armed checkpoint to get to the the complex located on an AF base. I would consider that node compromised already.
Note that 'the military' and 'a hypothetical government agency opposed to Tor' are not necessarily the same thing.
Counterintuitively sometimes the best protection is to operate under another agency. That makes moving against Tor a battle of internal politics rather than a legal battle.
'The government' rarely has uniform views on something as complex as Tor.
The mistake of course being that the military (and the CIA, it's very useful for their assets) is pro-TOR and were the ones who developed it. It's the FBI/NSA that are anti-TOR. The government is rarely monolithic, especially when it comes to the security divisions.
It's not monolithic but power is magnified. A branch of the military relying on Tor for operational security ensures that the DoD will be at least split on officially sanctioning the technology.
It's also open source. Can we stop with this fucking red herring already? He's talking about a service, right now, under the direct control of the US military. You're talking about grant funding for an open source tool.
No, he's not. He's talking about a single research laboratory MIT runs on a military base. Which somehow makes the entire university under direct control of the military?
Assuming the PTR RRs are accurate, that would appear to be true:
$ traceroute 128.31.0.39
...
15 mitnet.trantor.csail.mit.edu (18.4.7.65) 40.218 ms 40.661 ms 40.900 ms
16 asperta.helicon.csail.mit.edu (128.30.0.246) 45.345 ms 47.082 ms *
17 belegost.csail.mit.edu (128.31.0.39) 44.074 ms !X 45.023 ms !X 45.549 ms !X
I remember reading something very similar to this (but can't remember where, ha), where it said the important thing about reading is how if affects your general thinking rather than the individual pieces of information that you're likely to remember (or not).
I spent several years reading a ton of different books on economics and I can recall very few facts from those books, but it did and has completely altered my world view of many things.
pg's analogy of a program where you've lost the source code doesn't feel quite right, because you can't make modifications to the program without the code. Some sort of machine learning model seems more appropriate, where you've lost the original training data but can still update the model later with fresh data (a new book), and end up with a better/different model, but then lose that training data again.
I think a machine learning model provides a nice version of Graham's "The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life."
Using an artificial neural net analogy instead of a compilation analogy: "The same book would optimize your neural net towards a different local minimum at different points in your life."
