safing-web/_publications/2020-08-31-progress-update-august.md

category	layout	title	date	author	custom_thumbnail_name	progress_update	cards
blog	blog	#002 - Progress Update August	2020-08-31	David	progress-update	true	done in_progress discarded title description projects team progress SPN Pre-Alpha Deploy the SPN in v0.1. Give access to Marvin and Visionary Kickstarter backers. Communicate that this is only the first step and that it will take a few weeks or months until the network is stable enough to support hundreds/thousands of users. SPN Daniel Patrick type text h5 Hatching from the Egg type text p Getting the SPN out was painful, but so relieving. We planned to launch in June, then July and in the end it ended up being beginning of August. Yes, this is natural as things take time, but nevertheless was it stressful. So we are very happy that we finally got it out! type text h5 Fighting in a Dragon's Den type text p The SPN is buggy in its current form, but this too is normal. We lived through the same when the Portmaster launched back in April. Looking back, we are amazed at how the product matured technically in the last couple of months. The same will happen with the SPN, so after a short gasp of relief, we are back rolling up our sleeves: a lot of bug fixing lies ahead of us. title description projects team progress IntelHub Create a service that aggregates filterlists, updates this intelligence frequently and distributes it to Portmaster clients so they do not have to do this resource heavy work themselves. Also aggregate and distribute IP address meta-data like ownership and location (GeoIP) so the SPN module can calculate optimal routes through the SPN. Portmaster Patrick type text h5 After Weeks in Staging it's Now in Production type text p Patrick tackled most of the workload in July and in the beginning of August, enabling him to run and test the IntelHub for a few weeks in a staging environment. After inspecting the process and some fine tuning, it now is online, serving Portmasters around the world. title description projects team progress Next Page & Backlog Properly communicate what we currently are working on so you know what to expect from us in the nearer future. Also provide a backlog to acknowledge everything that needs to be done further down the road. Encourage participation so you can easily let us know where we might need to adapt or what we might have missed in the bigger picture. Website Community Luke David type text h5 Mid- & Long-Term Plans Are Live type text p Don't know about you, but we love the next page! David was a bit bummed out when communication around SPN took his focus away from the backlog. This resulted in a bit of a delay, but right after that tangent, he quickly pushed this forward. As it concluded, we are happy that everybody can have a big-picture overview of our mid- & longterm plans. type href text a https://safing.io/backlog/ Explore the Backlog title description projects team progress Stabilize the Network After v0.1, focus on stabilizing the typical issues that arise with early software. Fix bugs, improve performance & stability. Detect failures in the network and react accordingly. Deliver to more and more pre-orders as the network matures. SPN Daniel type text h5 Earliest Kickstater Backers Got Access type text p As promised, the MARVIN and VISIONARY backers were the first to get access to our closed pre-alpha. The SPN is buggy in its current form, but this is normal. We lived through the same when the Portmaster launched back in April. We know that a lot of bug fixing lies ahead of us, but we are on it. type text h5 Routing Revamp is the First Step type text p Now that the machine is working in its first form, it became pretty clear what the biggest painpoint is: Routing and Connection Management. Daniel already started to inspect these modules to then greatly improve upon. We will keep you posted. title description projects team progress Full UI Redesign Completely overhaul the Portmaster user interface to simplify all aspects of it. Easily block connections from the Monitor, easily block all connection of an app, etc... Portmaster Patrick Luke type text h5 As Technical Pain Decreased, UI Pain Became More Evident type text p We are happy how much the Portmaster could mature in the last few months. Big thanks to all testers! At the same time, it became more clear that the UI is not really ... easy to use. We decided to prioritize to change that. type text h5 Planning Done & Ground Work In Progress type text p After collecting suggested ideas throughout the last months Daniel had a kick-off meeting with Patrick and Luke. We will use Angular for the frontend and Patrick already dived deep into the task to prepare and complete some ground work. type text h5 Design Concepts Almost Kicking Off type text p Luke will soon join the party with all of his might, right after completing the redesign of account.safing.io, which is nearly wrapped up. type text p This will be worth the wait. title description projects team progress Safing API Enable you to sign in to your Safing account on the Portmaster client via the Safing API. Also respond with details regarding your SPN subscription. Implement device management so you can sign out of devices from the Safing website. SPN Portmaster Website David Daniel type text h5 Will Be Wrapped Up in the UI Redesign type text p As mentioned last month, the API is already live. The thing missing is the frontend. Since the new UI is being worked on we decided to delay this to prevent double spending our resources. title description projects team progress Portscan Detection Detect and block malicious actors trying to expose vulnerabilities by scanning through all networking ports on your device. Research thoroughly to prevent false positives. Portmaster Thomas (intern) type text h5 Finished and waiting for integration type text p The Portscan detection is finished in its first version. Before we move it to production we need to clean up the integration with all the other Portmaster modules. This is currently paused while we prioritize the new Portmaster UI and the SPN. title description projects team progress Portmaster Documentation You can see our high level concepts & you can inspect our code. But nothing in between. Fill that gap by providing proper documentation of the Portmaster. What does each component do? With what other components does it interact? Where is its code located? Portmaster Website David Patrick Daniel type text h5 System Overload - No Progress in August type text p Too much things were going on so sadly, we could not start out with this project. It still is a dear project to us, so expect some progress here soon. title description projects team progress Administration Interface Enable admins to easily accept cash payments, manage refunds or suspend rogue users. Also provide some basic insights on signups, payments, survey results, etc... Website Alex type text h5 An Invisible Ally Almost Ready to Spawn type text p Altough in the end you won't notice, this is an important aspect to us as a company. And there has been lots of progress on this end: We already had two rounds of reviews and being in the third round now, we are getting ever so close to deploying this onto production. It probably won't take too long. title description projects team progress Redesign account.safing.io When visiting https://account.safing.io/ to manage your Safing account, the design clearly breaks from the main website. Unify these designs so you get a more wholesome web experience. Website Luke David type text h5 Completed Design and HTML Implementation type text p Luke has been busy completely redesigning the payment side of the website. After spending plenty of time on creating concepts he went on to implement his finished work into HTML and CSS. type text h5 Last Part: Integrate HTML into the Backend type text p As Luke is literally wrapping up the HTML and CSS of his designs as we speak, the only step left will be to integrate the code into our backend framework. This should not take too long, so expect this nice redesign soon! title description projects team progress Credit Card Payments Enable you to pay for the SPN with credit cards. Website Alex type text h5 We Are Planning and Specifying type text p As all projects, we started out with planning and specifying the requirements. In this case a big part was choosing which payment provider should process the credit card data of our customers. We wanted to have a company residing in the European Union, enforcing them to comply to the GDPR. We picked a winner (we will keep you in the loop) and are now writing the technical specs and clarifying last questions. title description projects team progress AMA on r/privacytoolsio Reach out to the PTIO team. Together, schedule and host an IAMA event so people can ask us anything. Community David Raphael type text h5 We Have A Date: 18th of September type text p We already reached out to the PTIO and set up a date for the upcoming AMA. They are super helpful in guiding us through the preparations, giving feedback to the texts and providing us with their great wiki on how we should go about this. We are looking forward to all the incoming questions. We are looking forward to a great time with you! title description link projects team progress Inception: Reaching Out As the SPN will saw the light of day, the time has come to spread the word, also by spending money. Reach out to YouTube channels and newsletters in the privacy scene who offer sponsored shout-outs. You are very welcome to give us suggestions in this context. text url Share your ideas on reddit https://reddit.com/r/safing/ Marketing Raphael Tabitha type text h5 cron.weekly Newsletter type text p We purchased two sponsorship slots for the amazing cron.weekly newsletter, presenting the Portmaster. This resulted in a few stars over on GitHub and even made some big names stumble upon our website. We have two more slots booked - looking forward! type text h5 Sponsored YouTube Video Coming Up type text p Yes, we have joined the YouTube sponsorship game. Happy to learn and grow from these experiences. One video is scheduled to come out in September and we are on the lookout to sponsor more privacy related content. type href text a https://ma.ttias.be/cronweekly/ Check out cron.weekly title description projects team progress Conclude FFG Funding 19/20 Co-operate with the FFG to wrap up the funding of the past year. Prepare and fine tune our documents so we can promptly respond to any requests as they make spot checks. Back Office Raphael Tabitha type text h5 We Are Preparing Documents and Time Sheets type text p Since starting the FFG funding in the summer of 2019, a lot of work went into the outlined research. Documenting our progress and time spent naturally is part of the deal. And with this funding coming to an end, Tabitha and Raphael are collecting all the related documents so we can promptly respond to any requests and questions the FFG may have in regards to the grant. Vital stuff!

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