Month: September 2022

Tor 的 Rust 計畫 Arti 推進到 1.0.0 版

在「Arti 1.0.0 is released: Our Rust Tor implementation is ready for production use.」這邊看到 Tor 的 Rust 計畫進入了 1.0.0 版。

不過每次編 Rust 的東西都會發現 Rust 版本不夠新，這次也不例外，就不知道是 Rust community 的特性還是真的太少用 Rust...

    Updating crates.io index
  Downloaded arti v1.0.0
error: failed to parse manifest at `/home/gslin/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/arti-1.0.0/Cargo.toml`

Caused by:
  feature `edition2021` is required

  this Cargo does not support nightly features, but if you
  switch to nightly channel you can add
  `cargo-features = ["edition2021"]` to enable this feature

用 rustup update 更新後就能編了，然後跑起來看起來沒什麼問題：

$ arti proxy -p 9150
2022-09-03T17:13:30.234032Z  INFO arti: Starting Arti 1.0.0 in SOCKS proxy mode on port 9150...
2022-09-03T17:13:30.238606Z  INFO tor_circmgr: We now own the lock on our state files.
2022-09-03T17:13:30.238652Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Didn't get usable directory from cache.
2022-09-03T17:13:30.238674Z  INFO arti::socks: Listening on 127.0.0.1:9150.
2022-09-03T17:13:30.238686Z  INFO arti::socks: Listening on [::1]:9150.
2022-09-03T17:13:30.238713Z  INFO tor_dirmgr::bootstrap: 1: Looking for a consensus.
2022-09-03T17:13:33.833304Z  INFO tor_dirmgr::bootstrap: 1: Downloading certificates for consensus (we are missing 9/9).
2022-09-03T17:13:34.335754Z  INFO tor_dirmgr::bootstrap: 1: Downloading microdescriptors (we are missing 6629).
2022-09-03T17:13:41.041683Z  INFO tor_dirmgr::state: The current consensus is fresh until 2022-09-03 17:00:00.0 +00:00:00, and valid until 2022-09-03 19:00:00.0 +00:00:00. I've picked 2022-09-03 18:35:38.290798754 +00:00:00 as the earliest time to replace it.
2022-09-03T17:13:41.061978Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Marked consensus usable.
2022-09-03T17:13:41.065536Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: Directory is complete.
2022-09-03T17:13:41.065557Z  INFO tor_dirmgr: We have enough information to build circuits.
2022-09-03T17:13:41.065564Z  INFO arti: Sufficiently bootstrapped; system SOCKS now functional.

用 curl 測試也的確是 Tor 的 exit node 了：

$ curl -i --socks5 127.0.0.1:9150 https://httpbin.org/ip
HTTP/2 200 
date: Sat, 03 Sep 2022 17:21:20 GMT
content-type: application/json
content-length: 32
server: gunicorn/19.9.0
access-control-allow-origin: *
access-control-allow-credentials: true

{
  "origin": "85.93.218.204"
}

$ host 85.93.218.204
204.218.93.85.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer tor.localhost.lu.

看起來 client 的功能能用了...

Kagi 公佈了收費三個月後的進展

Kagi 公佈了收費三個月後的進展 (可以參考「Kagi 開始收費了」這篇)：「Kagi status update: First three months」。

搜尋的部份 (Kagi 這個產品線)，目前有 2600 個付費使用者，以 US$10/mo 的費用來算大概是 US$26K/mo 的收入：

Kagi search is currently serving ~2,600 paid customers. We have seen steady growth since the launch 3 months ago. Note, this is with zero marketing and fully relying on word of mouth. We prefer to keep things this way for now, as we are still developing the product towards our vision of a user-centric web search experience.

後面在講財務狀況也是類似的數字 (幾乎都是 Kagi 的付費收入)：

Between Kagi and Orion, we are currently generating around $26,500 USD in monthly recurring revenue, which incidentally about exactly covers our current API and infrastructure costs.

這個收入差不多 cover 目前的 infrastructure 部份，但還有薪資與其他的 operating cost 大約在 US$100K/mo 這個數量級，看起來還有很大的距離：

Between Kagi and Orion, we are currently generating around $26,500 USD in monthly recurring revenue, which incidentally about exactly covers our current API and infrastructure costs.

That means that salaries and all other operating costs (order of magnitude of $100K USD/month) remain a challenge and are still paid out of the founders’ pocket (Kagi remains completely bootstrapped).

然後要大概是目前十倍的付費數量才會打平 (25K 個使用者)：

We are planning to reach sustainability at around 25,000 users mark, by further improving the product, introducing new offerings and pricing changes. With the product metrics being as good as they are, we should be able to reach this as our visibility increases.

比較好一點的消息是 churn rate 很低：

Product stickiness is also very high, with churn being lower than 3%.

然後提到每個使用者大約 27 次查詢 (包括 free tier)，有些 user 大約在 100 次，peak 是 400 次：

We are currently serving around 70,000 queries a day or around ~27 queries/day/user (this includes free users which are about 10% of total users). There is a lot of variance in use though, with some users regularly searching >100 times a day. Every time we see a search count go >400 times in day we are happy to be an important part of someone’s search experience.

我看了一下自己的用量，看起來偏高一些，但沒到他說的每天平均 100 次：

然後提到了推出新方案的計畫，包括 Teams Plan & Family Plan，而目前在跑的方案會被分類到 Individual Plans。

另外比較重要的是 Individual Plans 有漲價的計畫。新的方案預定分成三個層級，主要是增加了一個 Kagi Starter 的版本：

  • Kagi Unlimited - $19/mo or $180/year ($15/mo) or $288/biennial ($12/mo) - Original Kagi experience, with unlimited searches
  • Kagi Starter ($5/mo; 200 searches) - For casual users who make less than 200 searches per month
  • Free basic - 50 free searches that reset every month

漲不少，雖然有提到在漲價前既有的付費使用者將會維持原價：

If such change to Individual plans is to occur, we plan to grandfather-in all early adopters (meaning all current and future paid customers, up until this change) allowing them to keep their existing subscription price as long as they don’t cancel it.

繼續觀察看看...

美國政府禁止 NVIDIA 將高階顯卡輸出到中國與俄羅斯

Hacker News 首頁上看到「US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia (sec.gov)」這篇，是 NVIDIA 發出了 Form 8-K，說明美國政府禁止 A100 與 H100 或是更高階 (更快) 的卡以及產品輸出到中國 (包括香港) 與俄羅斯：「nvda-20220826.htm」。

先是指出 A100、H100 以及 A100X (Ampere) 被管制：

On August 26, 2022, the U.S. government, or USG, informed NVIDIA Corporation, or the Company, that the USG has imposed a new license requirement, effective immediately, for any future export to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia of the Company’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits. DGX or any other systems which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits and the A100X are also covered by the new license requirement.

另外是禁止新產品的部份，效能與 A100 相等或是更好的卡也被禁止輸出，除非有取得授權：

The license requirement also includes any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits.

然後有提到軍事相關考量：

A license is required to export technology to support or develop covered products. The USG indicated that the new license requirement will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia. The Company does not sell products to customers in Russia.

有看到一些報導指出 AMD 也有收到類似的禁令 (畢竟也是個顯卡大廠)，但在「SEC Filings」這邊沒看到...

Route 53 提供 100% SLA，而 Route 53 Resolver 提供 99.99% SLA

AWS 宣佈 Route 53 提供 100% 的 SLA，而 Route 53 Resolver 則提供 99.99% 的 SLA：「Amazon Route 53 Resolver Endpoints announces 99.99% Service Level Agreement and updates its Service Level Agreement for Route 53 hosted zones」。

Route 53 的部份指的是 hosted zone，參考「Amazon Route 53 Service Level Agreement」這邊，可以看到是 2022/08/29 更新的條款。

Route 53 Resolver 的部份可以參考「Amazon Route 53 Resolver Endpoints Service Level Agreement」這邊，也是 2022/08/29 更新的條款。

要注意 99.99% 是指 Multi-AZ Resolver Endpoints SLA；如果是 Single-AZ Resolver Endpoints SLA 看起來是設定在 99.5%。

不確定是不是 AWS 的第一個 100% SLA 條款...

WebKit 專案將從 Subversion 搬到 GitHub 上

在 Hacker News 首頁上看到 WebKit 專案宣佈從本來的 Subversion 搬到 GitHub 上：「WebKit on GitHub!」，新的專案位置在 WebKit/WebKit 這邊。對應的討論在「WebKit Migrates from Subversion to GitHub (webkit.org)」這邊。

但 issue tracking system 的部份目前看起來還是繼續用 WebKit Bugzilla，沒有開 GitHub 的 issue 功能，但至少是從 Subversion 換成 Git 了。

在 Hacker News 上的討論意外看到已經是歷史的 SVK (試著在 Subversion 上面堆一些功能)，而且還聊到了一些 tricky 的技巧：

Funny story: my first task when I joined the original iPhone team was to merge our forked WebKit with master. It was a sort of hazing ritual slash "when else would we do it but when someone new joins?". Anyways, we used a tool called SVK[1] in order to get very primitive "git-like" abilities. It was basically a bunch of scripts that used SVN under the hood. For example, in order to get the "local everything"-style behaviors of git, the very first thing it did was checkout every single version of the repository in question. For WebKit, this meant that the first day was spent leaving the computer alone and letting it download for hours. I made the mistake of having a space somewhere in the path of the target folder, which broke something or other, so I ended up having to do it all over again.

Anyways, I distinctly remember one of the instructions for merging WebKit in our internal wiki being something like "now type `svk merge`, but hit ctrl-c immediately after! You don't want to use the built-in merge, it'll break everything, but this is the only way to get a magic number that you can find stored in [some file] after the merge has started. If it's not there, try `svk merge` again and let it go a little longer than last time." A few hires later (I think possibly a year after) someone set up a git mirror internally to avoid having to do this craziness, which if I remember correctly, was treated with some skepticism. This was 2007, so why would we try some new-fangled git thing when we had svk?

1. https://wiki.c2.com/?SvkVersionControl

我記得那個時間點 VCS 的選擇的確是個有趣的決策過程... 除了 Git 以外還有 Mercurial，另外還有幾個當時就已經算小眾的 open source solution。

而到了 2010 後就比較明朗了，現在幾乎是 Git 一統天下了，Mercurial 目前最大的使用者應該是 Meta (Facebook)？

CloudFront 在越南開點

AWS 宣佈在越南設立 edge：「AWS announces new edge locations in Vietnam」。

新的 edge 包括了各種服務，像是標題寫到的 CloudFront：

The new locations offer edge networking services including Amazon CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator that are integrated with security service AWS Shield that includes Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), Web Application Firewall (WAF), and bot protection.

看起來是拓點，第一次進到越南，先前應該是會被導去泰國或是香港？

不過在 CloudFront 的「Global Edge Network」頁面上面意外的還沒看到越南的點 (參考 Internet Archive 的這邊以及 archive.today 的這邊)。

AWS 在阿聯開區域了 (me-central-1)

AWS 在阿聯開新的區域了：「Now Open–AWS Region in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)」。

也是首發就 3 AZ：

The Middle East (UAE) Region has three Availability Zones that you can use to reliably spread your applications across multiple data centers.

中東的第一個區域是巴林，首都麥納瑪離阿聯的首都杜拜直線距離大約 500km，算起來蠻近的... 對於主要客群是中東的用戶，看起來可以設計 Active-Active 的機制做到跨區備援？

不過更重要的還是繼續等台灣的 local zone...