Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 12:12 PM ais523 via agora-discussion wrote: > > On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 13:54 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > > Your client itself will normally display the timestamp attached by the > > sending machine. This is usually assumed to be honest, but could > > actually be forged (to amusing results, such as pushing a new email way > > back in your inbox because it reports and old date, I believe ais523 or > > someone else actually did this for an email in the archives). The > > archives also use this date I believe. > > I've been known to forge email timestamps in the past, mostly just > because it's another fun corner of the Agoran rules to mess around > with. > > It is much harder nowadays than it used to be: the email system has a > lot more anti-forgery protection in it than it used to (the idea being > to make it hard for spammers to disguise where their messages are > coming from, thus making the spam easier to block), so if you try to > forge email timestamps the way I traditionally used to forge them, the > computers along the way are actually somewhat likely to notice > nowadays. > > It is, however, still possible. I could probably manage it if I really > wanted to, but (assuming that I wanted the timestamp to be believable) > the easiest way to get an email with a given timestamp on it would be > to actually send it at that specific time. (With automation, it isn't > too hard to send an email at a specific time, if you know in advance > that you're going to have to.) > > The *really* fun variant, which AFAIK has never been tested at Agora, > is to exploit the fact that the start of an email arrives before the > end of the email does – if the email is being sent over a sufficiently > slow connection, the end of the email can theoretically contain text > that was chosen based on reacting to things that have happened since > the email started to be received. In this case, I think the email > servers along the way might nonetheless use the timestamp of when the > email started to be sent, although I'm far from certain about this. > (Some of the modern anti-forgery features stop this working, > incidentally, because the proof that the email's body has not been > modified during transit appears in the email headers, which appear > before the body, so you have to have the whole thing written in advance > in order to be able to come up with a header and body that match each > other.) It's worth adding a slightly-deeper concept that comes from CFJs - in CFJs, the term "Technical Domain of Control" (sometimes abbreviated TDOC) has been invented/used. The concept is that the best approximation of date/time is the moment when the sender loses control of the message (that is, the message leaves the sender's TDOC) and can't stop it from being received by the list. For standard email use on a single message, this is best approximated by (is closest to) the time of hitting the send button. So that's the ideal timestamp to use. Unfortunately, it's also the timestamp that's most forgeable - though maybe as ais523 says it's a less important concern these days, due to anti-forgery measures. For a "slow" message, it could be asked whether the sender can stop it partway through or not (whether it's left eir TDOC)? (we've also got an unresolved question on whether a message can be split over multiple emails - an old CFJ said it can, but I'm very doubtful that the precedent would seem reasonable if pushed very hard with the current ruleset). -G.
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 13:54 -0500, nix via agora-discussion wrote: > Your client itself will normally display the timestamp attached by the > sending machine. This is usually assumed to be honest, but could > actually be forged (to amusing results, such as pushing a new email way > back in your inbox because it reports and old date, I believe ais523 or > someone else actually did this for an email in the archives). The > archives also use this date I believe. I've been known to forge email timestamps in the past, mostly just because it's another fun corner of the Agoran rules to mess around with. It is much harder nowadays than it used to be: the email system has a lot more anti-forgery protection in it than it used to (the idea being to make it hard for spammers to disguise where their messages are coming from, thus making the spam easier to block), so if you try to forge email timestamps the way I traditionally used to forge them, the computers along the way are actually somewhat likely to notice nowadays. It is, however, still possible. I could probably manage it if I really wanted to, but (assuming that I wanted the timestamp to be believable) the easiest way to get an email with a given timestamp on it would be to actually send it at that specific time. (With automation, it isn't too hard to send an email at a specific time, if you know in advance that you're going to have to.) The *really* fun variant, which AFAIK has never been tested at Agora, is to exploit the fact that the start of an email arrives before the end of the email does – if the email is being sent over a sufficiently slow connection, the end of the email can theoretically contain text that was chosen based on reacting to things that have happened since the email started to be received. In this case, I think the email servers along the way might nonetheless use the timestamp of when the email started to be sent, although I'm far from certain about this. (Some of the modern anti-forgery features stop this working, incidentally, because the proof that the email's body has not been modified during transit appears in the email headers, which appear before the body, so you have to have the whole thing written in advance in order to be able to come up with a header and body that match each other.) -- ais523
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On 4/11/23 13:59, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: How bad would it be to send several emails in a short period of time with the hope that one of them has the best timing? Oh also, depending on what client you're using, you can schedule emails. That's probably a better bet than doing that manually. But as G. said, if scheduling emails becomes a common practice, it probably means the rules need improvement. -- nix Prime Minister, Herald
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 11:59 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > How bad would it be to send several emails in a short period of time with > the hope that one of them has the best timing? I think it's logical to try, but if it's a necessary strategy it points to problem with the game design (no fault of the person trying it) - racing to be the first to send after a time mark is a type of game we really try to avoid, unless it's for minor things that people don't really compete over. Because that's not very exciting gameplay.
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On 4/11/23 13:59, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: How bad would it be to send several emails in a short period of time with the hope that one of them has the best timing? Unless you were sending from entirely different networks, you would not see different timings generally. I think different people will have different opinions here, but I would personally say "fine to do once as an experiment, but don't do it repeatedly." -- nix Prime Minister, Herald
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
How bad would it be to send several emails in a short period of time with the hope that one of them has the best timing? On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 8:55 PM nix via agora-discussion < agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > On 4/11/23 13:46, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > > Is the timestamp of the mailing list itself the one that appears on the > > archive website? > > So if you download an email and open it in plaintext, or click "view > headers" or "view source" on your client, you will see a ton of metadata > attached to every email. Among that is the complete route it took from > the sender's computer to the receiver's computer. Each stop has a > timestamp on it. > > Your client itself will normally display the timestamp attached by the > sending machine. This is usually assumed to be honest, but could > actually be forged (to amusing results, such as pushing a new email way > back in your inbox because it reports and old date, I believe ais523 or > someone else actually did this for an email in the archives). The > archives also use this date I believe. > > A court could also choose to use this time, but it could be forged. They > might instead use the first time reported by the next machine, which is > extremely unlikely to be forged. Or they might use the time the list > actually received it. All of those options are in the header of every > email, and they all seem to have good arguments for and against them. > > So it's an interestingly complex question, actually. In practice tho, > all of those times are likely to be less than a second or two from each > other, so the majority of the time the winner will be obvious anyway. > > -- > nix > Prime Minister, Herald > >
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 11:47 AM Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Is the timestamp of the mailing list itself the one that appears on the
> archive website?
Yes for private archives, though with a UTC conversion.
There's been some tension on this over Agora's history. The timestamp
that most systems display is the one put on by the sender, under the
Date header. But this is forgeable, see this "June 1993" message
here:
https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/1993-June/014163.html.
And can have issues for other reasons (for example, if email is
composed "offline" it can get a Date stamp hours before sending when
it connects).
However, we tried to use the "date received by the list" for a bit, on
the grounds that it was an unforgeable common denominator, but this
was a huge pain for officers because every time they wanted to record
a time, they'd have to dig into the email headers or archives to find
that, rather than using the Date that their client displayed. To deal
with that issue, the CFJ precedents have sort of settled on "first
credible" timestamp, which means use the Date applied by the sender,
but if there's weird pauses between the Date and when it was received
by the list, use the list date ("weird pauses" being the subject of
CFJs for determining what's too long, as it's a rare event).
For who did something "first" after a set time, we've chatted idly
about setting up "ties", it's not hard for two people to manage to
send something with the same Date down to the second just by hitting
send at the right time. But nobody's tested that, and so far, there
hasn't been a CFJ when message timing mattered and there was a tie in
the Date string, so dunno what a judge would say to that.
-G.
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On 4/11/23 13:46, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: Is the timestamp of the mailing list itself the one that appears on the archive website? So if you download an email and open it in plaintext, or click "view headers" or "view source" on your client, you will see a ton of metadata attached to every email. Among that is the complete route it took from the sender's computer to the receiver's computer. Each stop has a timestamp on it. Your client itself will normally display the timestamp attached by the sending machine. This is usually assumed to be honest, but could actually be forged (to amusing results, such as pushing a new email way back in your inbox because it reports and old date, I believe ais523 or someone else actually did this for an email in the archives). The archives also use this date I believe. A court could also choose to use this time, but it could be forged. They might instead use the first time reported by the next machine, which is extremely unlikely to be forged. Or they might use the time the list actually received it. All of those options are in the header of every email, and they all seem to have good arguments for and against them. So it's an interestingly complex question, actually. In practice tho, all of those times are likely to be less than a second or two from each other, so the majority of the time the winner will be obvious anyway. -- nix Prime Minister, Herald
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
Is the timestamp of the mailing list itself the one that appears on the archive website? On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 8:45 PM nix via agora-discussion < agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > On 4/11/23 13:34, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > > How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day > > when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that > > day? > > Emails are time-stamped by each device that touches them, generally > speaking the court would usually choose the timestamp of the mailing > list itself. > > -- > nix > Prime Minister, Herald > >
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On 4/11/23 13:34, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that day? Emails are time-stamped by each device that touches them, generally speaking the court would usually choose the timestamp of the mailing list itself. -- nix Prime Minister, Herald
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 20:34 +0200, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day > when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that > day? Emails have timestamps in their email headers, added by the various computers that the email goes through on its way to the recipient. Email sending is pretty fast (meaning that all the timestamps on any given email tend to be close to each other), so what normally happens is that the last timestamp on one of the competing emails comes before the first timestamp on the other, and so it's obvious which one came first. If two emails are sent at almost exactly the same time, then there can be some controversy about which of the various timestamps to look at. Normally this needs a CFJ to settle it, and although this sort of thing has been through the Agoran courts several times, I'm not sure whether we've reached a firm conclusion on the matter yet. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
Oh, I meant when different competing players try to be the first person to send a message on a certain Agoran day. On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 8:42 PM Janet Cobb via agora-discussion < agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > On 4/11/23 14:34, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > > How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day > > when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that > > day? > > > Per R478/41: > > > Any action performed by sending a message is performed at the time > > date-stamped on that message. Actions in messages (including > > sub-messages) are performed in the order they appear in the > > message, unless otherwise specified. Allowing actions performed by > > sending a message to take place simultaneously must be done > > explicitly and is secured at power 2. > > > The court has held this to mean "the court picks one" when there are > multiple timestamps on the message. > > -- > Janet Cobb > > Assessor, Rulekeepor, Stonemason >
Re: DIS: Question - Timestamp of an action?
On 4/11/23 14:34, Yachay Wayllukuq via agora-discussion wrote: > How do you determine which action was made first on a certain Agoran day > when multiple competing actions try to be the first message sent on that > day? Per R478/41: > Any action performed by sending a message is performed at the time > date-stamped on that message. Actions in messages (including > sub-messages) are performed in the order they appear in the > message, unless otherwise specified. Allowing actions performed by > sending a message to take place simultaneously must be done > explicitly and is secured at power 2. The court has held this to mean "the court picks one" when there are multiple timestamps on the message. -- Janet Cobb Assessor, Rulekeepor, Stonemason
