Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It is a fallback relay - is it still useful as such?
It is still useful yes.
Well, at least there is that, thank goodness. And at least I
finally
have a plausible explanation for the authorities' seemingly bizarre
behavior
over the past many moons in which they appear to be awarding, then
withholding,
then awarding, then withholding various flags, including HSDir, Stable,
and
even Fast, at random when my relay has been up and unfiddled with the
whole time
from what I have been able to see, and without any apparent rhyme or
reason. I
had given up trying to figure out what the authorities were doing,
much less why,
and therefore had stopped giving a dam about it.
That situation, in combination with the involvement in the tor
project of
very vocal persons lacking apparent comprehension of the basic
relationships
between hardware, firmware, supervisory (i.e., privileged) software,
and
application software w.r.t. security matters, led me to stop providing
a relay
for about a year. I finally decided to return it to service, but have
mostly
stopped reading the overly chatty tor-relays list and any worry over
additional
security issues w.r.t. tor. I take care of my relay the best I know
how with
one exception on the authority of Roger Dingledine and leave it at
that.
Because I don't like accepting such things on authority, rather than
proof or at
least damned good evidence and reason, I mostly stopped caring, which
is a real
drag because I once was convinced that tor was a truly good effort to
provide
what should have been designed into the Internet in the first place.
Unfortunately, there appear to be still no viable alternatives
available.