1 <?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='
2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/
1.0/' xmlns:
atom=
"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen
</title>
5 <description></description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/
</link>
7 <atom:link href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel=
"self" type=
"application/rss+xml" />
10 <title>Tor - from its creators mouth
11 years ago
</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</guid>
13 <pubDate>Sat,
28 May
2016 14:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
14 <description><p
>A little more than
11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
15 the current President of the Tor project, Roger Dingledine, gave a
16 talk for the members of the Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG). A video
17 of the talk was recorded, and today I finally was able to publish the
18 video of the talk on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station
19 where NUUG currently publishes its talks. You can
20 <a href=
"http://frikanalen.no/se
">watch the live stream using a web
21 browser
</a
> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
22 on demand page for the talk
23 "<a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/
625599">Tor: Anonymous
24 communication for the US Department of Defense...and you.
</a
>".
</p
>
26 <p
>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
27 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:
</p
>
29 <p
><video width=
"70%
" poster=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/large_thumb/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg
" controls
>
30 <source src=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/theora/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv
" type=
"video/ogg
"/
>
31 </video
></p
>
33 <p
>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarized quite simply: If you
34 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)
</p
>
39 <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</title>
40 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</link>
41 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</guid>
42 <pubDate>Wed,
25 May
2016 10:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
43 <description><p
><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram
">The isenkram
44 system
</a
> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
45 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
46 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
47 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
48 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
49 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
50 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
51 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
52 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
53 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
54 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p
>
56 <p
>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
57 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
58 is going away and is generally being replaced by
59 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/
">PackageKit
</a
>,
60 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
61 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
62 rewrite finally took place. I
've just uploaded a new version of
63 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
64 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
65 install the
<tt
>isenkram
</tt
> package and insert some hardware dongle
66 and see if it is recognised.
</p
>
68 <p
>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
69 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
70 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p
>
72 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
88 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
90 <p
>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
91 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
92 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/
">the
93 cross distribution appstream system
</a
>.
95 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/
">previous
96 blog posts about isenkram
</a
> to learn how to do that.
</p
>
101 <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</title>
102 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</link>
103 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</guid>
104 <pubDate>Mon,
23 May
2016 09:
35:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
105 <description><p
>Yesterday I updated the
106 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
107 package in Debian
</a
> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
108 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
109 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
110 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
111 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
112 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
113 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
114 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
115 graph window pop up as expected.
</p
>
117 <p
>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
118 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
119 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
120 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
123 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-rate.png
"/
></p
>
125 <p
>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
126 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
127 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
128 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
130 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-history.png
"/
></p
>
132 <p
>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
133 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
134 shrinking. :(
</p
>
136 <p
>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
137 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
138 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
139 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
140 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
143 <p
>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
145 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
</a
>
146 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
147 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
148 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats
">github
</a
>.
149 Patches are very welcome.
</p
>
151 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
152 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
153 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
158 <title>French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble
</title>
159 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</link>
160 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</guid>
161 <pubDate>Sat,
21 May
2016 10:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
162 <description><p
>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
163 2004 book Cultura Libre was published. Today I noticed that the book
164 is now available from book stores. You can now buy it from
165 <a href=
"http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/
8269018260">Amazon
</a
>
167 <a href=
"http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/
1123776705">Barnes
168 & Noble
</a
> ($?) and as always from
169 <a href=
"http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-
22645082.html
">Lulu.com
</a
>
170 ($
19.99). The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project. If
171 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $
10.59, while if you buy
172 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
173 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
176 <p
>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
177 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon. Not quite sure how
178 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
179 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
180 the paperback edition, they are
181 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig
">available
182 from github
</a
>.
</p
>
187 <title>I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)
</title>
188 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</link>
189 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</guid>
190 <pubDate>Thu,
19 May
2016 14:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
191 <description><p
>I just donated to the
192 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">NUUG defence
193 "fond
"</a
> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
194 site popcorn-time.no tested in court. I hope everyone that agree with
195 me will do the same.
</p
>
197 <p
>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
198 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
199 talking to a judge first? I am. What if the free software system
200 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
201 and was called Popcorn Time? Would that affect your view? It still
202 make me worried.
</p
>
204 <p
>In March
2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
205 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
206 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
207 the courts. I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
208 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
209 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
210 permission first. I was even more surprised when I had a look at
211 <a href=
"https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no
">the web
212 site content on the Internet Archive
</A
>, and only found news coverage
213 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
214 holders permissions.
</p
>
216 <p
>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
217 example
<a href=
"http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/
2016/
03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim
">Hegnar Online
</a
> and
218 <a href=
"http://itavisen.no/
2016/
03/
08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/
">ITavisen
<a/
>
220 <a href=
"http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-
1.12842452">NRK
</a
>),
221 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
223 <a href=
"http://blogg.torvund.net/
2016/
03/
09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/
">protests
224 from the law professor Olav Torvund
</a
> and
225 <a href=
"http://www.klassekampen.no/article/
20160311/ARTICLE/
160319995">lawyer
226 Jon Wessel-Aas
</a
>. It even got some
227 <a href=
"https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-
160418/
">coverage
228 on TorrentFreak
</a
>.
</p
>
231 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
">
232 wrote about the case a month ago
</a
>, when the
233 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a
> (NUUG),
234 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
235 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
236 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
237 legally challenged. They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
238 those that want to support the request.
</p
>
240 <p
>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
241 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
242 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
243 suggest you
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">show
244 your support by donating to NUUG
</a
>.
</a
>
249 <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</title>
250 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</link>
251 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</guid>
252 <pubDate>Thu,
12 May
2016 07:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
253 <description><p
>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
254 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/
">ZFS for Linux
</a
> finally entered
255 Debian. The package status can be seen on
256 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux
">the package tracker
257 for zfs-linux
</a
>. and
258 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
">the
259 team status page
</a
>. If you want to help out, please join us.
260 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git
">The
261 source code
</a
> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
262 great if you could help out with
263 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms
">the dkms package
</a
>, as
264 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p
>
269 <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
270 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
271 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
272 <pubDate>Sun,
8 May
2016 09:
40:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
273 <description><p
><strong
>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
274 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong
></p
>
276 <p
>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
277 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
278 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
279 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
280 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
281 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia
">The
282 result
</a
> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
283 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
284 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
287 <p
>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
288 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
289 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
290 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/
822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
291 desktop file
</a
>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
292 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
293 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
294 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
295 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
296 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
297 support most file formats.
</p
>
299 <p
>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
300 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">a
301 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
302 in the table
</a
>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
303 listed first in the table.
</p
>
305 </p
>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
306 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
307 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
313 <title>The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled
</title>
314 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</link>
315 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</guid>
316 <pubDate>Wed,
4 May
2016 10:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
317 <description>A friend of mine made me aware of
318 <a href=
"https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
">The Pyra
</a
>, a
319 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
320 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
</p
>
322 <p
>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
323 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a
5"
324 LCD touch screen. The
6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
325 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
326 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
327 last I heard last night was that
22 more orders were needed before
328 production started.
</p
>
330 <p
>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
331 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
332 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
</p
>
337 <title>NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no
</title>
338 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
</link>
339 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
</guid>
340 <pubDate>Mon,
18 Apr
2016 10:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
341 <description><p
>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
342 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">the Norwegian Unix User group
</a
>, a
343 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
344 standards and unix-like operating systems. NUUG announced today it
346 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__NUUG_og_EFN_begj_rer_rettslig_pr_ving_for_DNS_domenebeslag_av_popcorn_time_no.shtml
">try
347 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
348 unlawful
</a
>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
349 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
350 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
351 police. The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
352 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
353 a month ago. I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
354 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
355 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.
</p
>
360 <title>Ny utgave (v2.2) av den frie norske stavekontrollen gitt ut
</title>
361 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_2__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html
</link>
362 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_2__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html
</guid>
363 <pubDate>Fri,
15 Apr
2016 21:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
364 <description><p
>I dag tok jeg mot til meg og pakket sammen en ny versjon av den
365 frie norske stavekontrollen, ca. tre og et halvt år etter forrige
366 gang. Resultatet kan lastes ned fra
367 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org/
">no.speling.org-prosjeksiden
</a
>, både
368 som kildekodepakke og som
"pack
"-fil som kanskje fortsatt kan brukes
369 av OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice. Byggesystemet trenger oppussing, men i
370 denne omgang hadde jeg bare tid til å fikse byggefeil forårsaket av
371 endringer i GNU grep. De øvrige endringene var gjort tidligere i
372 påvente av en ny utgave.
</p
>
374 <p
><strong
>Her er det som er nytt (fra NEWS-fila i
375 kildekodepakken):
</strong
></p
>
377 <p
>Release
2.2 (
2016-
04-
15)
</p
>
381 <li
>Rewrite how scripts/speling2words handle tripple consonants, to
382 avoid importing duplicate words from no.speling.org, and getting
383 rid of the existing duplicates in norsk.words.
</li
>
384 <li
>Remove duplicate entries with tripple consonants from norsk.words.
</li
>
385 <li
>Update frequency for entries in norsk.words based on
386 <URL:http://helmer.aksis.uib.no/nta/ordlistf.zip
> (ran
'make
387 freq-update
').
</li
>
388 <li
>Correct nn ispell build, avoid crash in munchlist causing lots of
389 words to fall out of the database.
</li
>
390 <li
>Use grep -a to convince grep it is working on text files, to work
391 with newer grep versions.
</li
>
393 <li
>Remove some words disputed in the no.speling.org review process:
395 <li
>apparent (nb)
</li
>
396 <li
>likke (nb)
</li
>
397 <li
>ugjest, ugjesten, ugjestens (nb)
</li
>
398 </ul
></li
>