<channel>
<title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
<description></description>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
- <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
+ <atom:link href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The curiosity got the better of me when
-<a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
-reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
-and a few days later it was reported that
-<a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
-tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
-learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
-already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
-Debian</a>. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
-transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
-Studio to build binaries.</p>
-
-<p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
-quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
-taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A
-new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
-
-<p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
-introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to
-learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself,
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
-page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
-
-<p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
-standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
-test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible
-to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
-very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If
-you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
+ <title>«Virkninger av angrefristloven», hovedfagsoppgaven som fikk endret en lov</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Virkninger_av_angrefristloven___hovedfagsoppgaven_som_fikk_endret_en_lov.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Virkninger_av_angrefristloven___hovedfagsoppgaven_som_fikk_endret_en_lov.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 29 Oct 2023 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-10-29-bok-angrefrist.svg" width="20%" align="center"></a>
+
+<p>I 1979 leverte Ole-Erik Yrvin en hovedfagsoppgave for Cand. Scient.
+ ved Institutt for sosiologi på Universitetet i Oslo på oppdrag fra
+ Forbruker- og administrasjonsdepartementet. Oppgaven evaluerte
+ Angrefristloven fra 1972, og det han oppdaget førte til at loven ble
+ endret fire år senere.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg har kjent Ole-Erik en stund, og synes det var trist at hans
+ oppgave ikke lenger er tilgjengelig, hverken fra oppdragsgiver
+ eller fra universitetet. Hans forsøk på å få den avbildet og lagt
+ ut på Internett har vist seg fånyttes, så derfor tilbød jeg meg for
+ en stund tilbake å publisere den og gjøre den tilgjengelig med
+ fribruksvilkår på Internett. Det er nå klart, og hovedfagsoppgaven
+ er tilgjengelig blant annet via <a
+ href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">min liste over
+ publiserte bøker</a>, både som nettside,
+ <a href="https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Ole-Erik+Yrvin">digital
+ bok i ePub-format og på papir fra lulu.com</a>. Jeg regner med at
+ den også vil dukke opp på nettbokhandlere i løpet av en måned eller
+ to.</p>
+
+<p>Alle tabeller og figurer er gjenskapt for bedre lesbarhet, noen
+ skrivefeil rettet opp og mange referanser har fått flere detaljer
+ som ISBN-nummer og DOI-referanse. Selv om jeg ikke regner med at
+ dette blir en kioskvelter, så håper jeg denne nye utgaven kan komme
+ fremtiden til glede.</p>
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
+det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
+til min adresse
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>. Merk,
+betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Totalovervåkning av innbyggernes bevegelser - nei takk!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Jeg er blitt spurt hva jeg synes om lansering av smittestopp-appen,
-overvåkningsløsningen lansert av Folkehelseinstituttet,
-Simula-senteret og Regjeringen i dag, fulgt av klare trusler fra
-regjeringen om konsekvenser hvis befolkningen ikke tar den i bruk.
-Rekker ikke skrive noe fyldig om temaet, men det er klart for meg at
-den utraderer retten til privatliv samt utgjør en personlig
-sikkerhetsrisiko for alle som tar den i bruk. Bare det er nok til at
-det fremstår som en svært dårlig ide å bli med på denne "dugnaden".
-Det finnes andre og bedre tilnærminger enn den valgt av FHI. Har de
-valgt sin tilnærming for å sikre seg nok et datasett i den fremtidige
-ehelse-portalen? Potensialet for misbruk av informasjon samlet inn av
-appen er for stort, effekten på neste krise for klar og gevinsten for
-liten.</p>
-
-<p>For å si det med forhenværende leder i Datatilsynet, Georg Apenes,
-som skrev i en kronikk den gang Datatilsynet vernet
-privatsfæren at
-«<a href="https://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/rent-mel-i-bilen/66333882">SENTRALT
-I en liberal forestillingsverden finner vi aksept av borgerens rett
-til å kunne velge å være i fred; å være u-iakttatt, uregistrert og
-anonym</a>». Det er ikke uten grunn han startet kronikken med
-«Personvern et fremmedord i enkelte av de statsorganene som samler
-inn, oppbevarer og bruker personopplysninger». Der har nok
-statsorganene bare blitt dårligere på 13 år.</p>
-
-<p>Det er jo også verdt å merke seg at personvernrådet i EU (EDPB)
-mener smittestopp-appen
-<a href="https://nrkbeta.no/2020/04/16/personvernrad-i-eu-mener-norsk-app-bryter-med-viktig-personvernprinsipp/">opererer
-i strid med prinsippet om dataminimering</a>. Også de ser at det
-finnes mye bedre måter å gjøre dette på.</p>
+ <title>«underordnet tjenestemann blir inhabil fordi en overordnet er inhabil».</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_underordnet_tjenestemann_blir_inhabil_fordi_en_overordnet_er_inhabil__.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_underordnet_tjenestemann_blir_inhabil_fordi_en_overordnet_er_inhabil__.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 7 Sep 2023 09:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Medlemmene av Norges regjering har demonstert de siste månedene at
+habilitetsvureringer ikke er deres sterke side og det gjelder både
+Arbeiderpartiets og Senterpartiers representater. Det er heldigvis
+enklere i det private, da inhabilitetsreglene kun gjelder de som
+jobber for folket, ikke seg selv. Sist ut er utenriksminister
+Huitfeldt. I går kom nyheten om at
+<a href="https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/riksadvokaten_-okokrim-nestsjef-kan-behandle-huitfeldt-saken-1.16545162">Riksadvokaten
+har konkludert med at nestsjefen i Økokrim kan behandle sak om
+habilitet og innsidekunnskap</a> for Huitfeldt, på tross av at hans
+overordnede, sjefen for Økokrim, har meldt seg inhabil i saken. Dette
+er litt rart. I veilednigen
+«<a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/krd/vedlegg/komm/veiledere/habilitet_i_kommuner_og_fylkeskommuner.pdf">Habilitet
+i kommuner og fylkeskommuner</a>» av Kommunal- og regionaldepartementet
+forteller de hva som gjelder, riktig nok gjelder veiledningen ikke for
+Økokrim som jo ikke er kommune eller fylkeskommune, men jeg får ikke
+inntrykk av at dette er regler som kun gjelder for kommune og
+fylkeskommune:
+<blockquote>
+<p>«<strong>2.1 Oversikt over inhabilitetsgrunnlagene</strong>
+
+<p>De alminnelige reglene om inhabilitet for den offentlige
+forvaltningen er gitt i
+<a href="https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1967-02-10/KAPITTEL_2#KAPITTEL_2">forvaltningsloven
+§§ 6 til 10</a>. Forvaltningslovens hovedregel om inhabilitet framgår
+av § 6. Her er det gitt tre ulike grunnlag som kan føre til at en
+tjenestemann eller folkevalgt blir inhabil. I § 6 første ledd
+bokstavene a til e er det oppstilt konkrete tilknytningsforhold mellom
+tjenestemannen og saken eller sakens parter som automatisk fører til
+inhabilitet. Annet ledd oppstiller en skjønnsmessig regel om at
+tjenestemannen også kan bli inhabil etter en konkret vurdering av
+inhabilitetsspørsmålet, der en lang rekke momenter kan være
+relevante. I tredje ledd er det regler om såkalt avledet
+inhabilitet. Det vil si at en underordnet tjenestemann blir inhabil
+fordi en overordnet er inhabil.»</p>
+</blockquote>
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+<p>Loven sier ganske enkelt «Er den overordnede tjenestemann ugild,
+kan avgjørelse i saken heller ikke treffes av en direkte underordnet
+tjenestemann i samme forvaltningsorgan.» Jeg antar tanken er at en
+underordnet vil stå i fare for å tilpasse sine konklusjoner til det
+overordnet vil ha fordel av, for å fortsatt ha et godt forhold til sin
+overordnede. Men jeg er ikke jurist og forstår nok ikke kompliserte
+juridiske vurderinger. For å sitere «Kamerat Napoleon» av George
+Orwell: «Alle dyr er like, men noen dyr er likere enn andre».
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Ny URL til den frie norske stavekontrollen</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_URL_til_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_URL_til_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2020 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Det er lenge siden jeg har sett på den norske stavekontrollen, sist
-jeg skrev om temaet var i 2016, og i mellomtiden har nettstedet
-no.speling.org forsvunnet, og både git-depotet på Alioth og
-mailman-tjenesten som hadde epostlistene for oversettelser blitt lagt
-ned. Men bokmål og nynorsk trenger fortsatt stavekontroll, så etter
-et par purringer fra en som har lyst til å forbedre stavekontrollen
-har jeg endelig fått lagt ut ny offentlig kopi av git-depotet. Jeg
-valgte gitlab foran github.. Siste utgave av stavekontrollen kan
-hentes ned fra
-<a href="https://gitlab.com/norwegian-language-tools/spell-norwegian">https://gitlab.com/norwegian-language-tools/spell-norwegian</a>.
-Ingen ny versjon i denne omgang altså, bare et nytt sted å samle
-forbedringer til den frie norske stavekontrollen. :)
+ <title>Invidious add-on for Kodi 20</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Invidious_add_on_for_Kodi_20.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Invidious_add_on_for_Kodi_20.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2023 19:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I still enjoy <a href="https://kodi.tv/">Kodi</a> and
+<a href="https://libreelec.tv/">LibreELEC</a> as my multimedia center
+at home. Sadly two of the services I really would like to use from
+within Kodi are not easily available. The most wanted add-on would be
+one making <a href="https://archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a>
+available, and it has
+<a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Internet_Archive">not been
+working</a> for many years. The second most wanted add-on is one
+using <a href="https://invidious.io/">the Invidious privacy enhanced
+Youtube frontent</a>. A plugin for this has been partly working, but
+not been kept up to date in the Kodi add-on repository, and its
+upstream seem to have given it up in April this year, when the git
+repository was closed. A few days ago I got tired of this sad state
+of affairs and decided to
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kodi-invidious-plugin">have
+a go at improving the Invidious add-on</a>. As
+<a href="https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/3872">Google has
+already attacked</a> the Invidious concept, so it need all the support
+if can get. My small contribution here is to improve the service
+status on Kodi.</p>
+
+<p>I added support to the Invidious add-on for automatically picking a
+working Invidious instance, instead of requiring the user to specify
+the URL to a specific instance after installation. I also had a look
+at the set of patches floating around in the various forks on github,
+and decided to clean up at least some of the features I liked and
+integrate them into my new release branch. Now the plugin can handle
+channel and short video items in search results. Earlier it could
+only handle single video instances in the search response. I also
+brushed up the set of metadata displayed a bit, but hope I can figure
+out how to get more relevant metadata displayed.</p>
+
+<p>Because I only use Kodi 20 myself, I only test on version 20 and am
+only motivated to ensure version 20 is working. Because of API changes
+between version 19 and 20, I suspect it will fail with earlier Kodi
+versions.</p>
+
+<p>I already
+<a href="https://github.com/xbmc/repo-plugins/pull/4363">asked to have
+the add-on added</a> to the official Kodi 20 repository, and is
+waiting to heard back from the repo maintainers.</p>
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Nikita version 0.5 released - updated free software archive API server</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nikita_version_0_5_released___updated_free_software_archive_API_server.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nikita_version_0_5_released___updated_free_software_archive_API_server.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 2 Mar 2020 19:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Today, after many months of development, a new release of
-<ahref="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core/">Nikita
-Noark 5 core project</a> was finally
-<ahref="https://lists.nuug.no/pipermail/nikita-noark/2020-March/000519.html">announced
-on the project mailing list</a>. The Nikita free software solution is
-an implementation of the Norwegian archive standard Noark 5 used by
-government offices in Norway. These were the changes in version 0.5
-since version 0.4, see the email link above for links to a demo
-site:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li>Updated to Noark 5 versjon 5.0 API specification.
- <ul>
- <li>Changed formatting of _links from [] to {} to match IETF draft
- on JSON HAL.</li>
- <li>Merged Registrering og Basisregistrering in version 4 to
- combined Registrering.</li>
- <li>DokumentObjekt is now subtype of ArkivEnhet.</li>
- <li>Introducing new entity Arkivnotat.</li>
- <li>Changed all relation keys to use /v5/ instead of /v4/.</li>
- <li>Corrected to use new official relation keys when possible.</li>
- <li>Renamed Sakspart to Part and connect it to Mappe, Registrering
- and Dokumentbeskrivelse instead of only Saksmappe.</li>
- <li>Moved Korrespondansepart connection from Journalpost to
- Registrering.</li>
- <li>Moved Part and Korrespondansepart from package sakarkiv to
- arkivstruktur.</li>
- <li>Renamed presedensstatus to presedensStatus.</li>
- <li>Use new JSON content-type "application/vnd.noark5+json".</li>
- <li>Updated prepopulated format list to use PRONOM codes.</li>
- <li>Implemented endpoint for system information.</li>
- <li>Implemented national identifiers for both file and record.</li>
- <li>Implemented comments.</li>
- <li>implemented sign off.</li>
- <li>implemented conversion.</li>
- </ul></li>
- <li>Improved/implemented OData search and paging support for more entities.</li>
- <li>No longer exposes attribute Dokumentobjekt.referanseDokumentfil,
- one should use the relation in _links instead.</li>
- <li>Corrected relation keys under
- https://rel.arkivverket.no/noark5/v5/api/administrasjon/, replacing
- 'administrasjon' with 'admin'.</li>
- <li>Fixed several security and stability issues discovered by Coverity.</li>
- <li>Corrected handling ETag errors, now return code 409.</li>
- <li>Improved handling of Kryssreferanse.</li>
- <li>Changed internal database model to use UUID/SystemID as primary keys
- in tables.</li>
- <li>Changed internal database table names to use package prefix.</li>
- <li>Changed time zone handling for date and datetime attributes, to be
- more according to the new definition in the API specification.</li>
- <li>Change revoke-token to only drop token on POST requests, not GET.</li>
- <li>Updated to newer Spring version.</li>
- <li>Changed primary key and URL component for metadata code lists to
- use the 'kode' value instead of a SystemID.</li>
- <li>Corrected implementation of Part and Sakspart.</li>
- <li>Changed instance lists with subtypes (like .../registrering/ and
- .../mappe/) to include the attributes and _links entries for the
- subtype in the supertype lists.</li>
- <li>Adjusted _links relations to make it possible to figure out the
- entity of an instance using the self->href->relation key lookup
- method.</li>
- <li>Fixed several end points to make sure GET, PUT, POST and DELETE
- match each other.</li>
- <li>Updated DELETE endpoints to work with UUID based entity
- identifiers.</li>
- <li>Restructured code to use more common URL related constants in entry
- point values and replace @RequestMapping with method specific
- annotations.</li>
- <li>Added first unit test code.</li>
- <li>Updated web GUI to work with the updated API.</li>
- <li>Changed integer fields, enforce them as numeric.</li>
- <li>Rewrote and simplify metadata handling to use common service and
- controller code instead of duplicating for each type.</li>
- <li>Implemented the remaining metadata types.</li>
- <li>Changed Country list source from Wikipedia to Debian iso-codes and
- updated the list of Countries.</li>
- <li>Many many corrections and improvements.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>If free and open standardized archiving API sound interesting to
-you, please contact us on IRC
-(<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nikita">#nikita on
-irc.freenode.net</a>) or email
-(<a href="https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark">nikita-noark
-mailing list</a>).</p>
+ <title>What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>With yesterdays
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
+12 Bookworm</a>, I am happy to know the
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is available for a wider audience.
+I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
+about some of the programs connecting to the Internet. Some programs
+are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
+clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
+were more dubious. For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
+the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
+blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it. Another
+surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
+mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
+web pages. This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
+always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
+Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
+use Gnome). It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
+permissions. Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
+any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
+a time sensitive gaming session.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
+to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
+OpenSnitch (only <tt>apt install opensnitch</tt> away in Debian
+Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
+your desktop machine.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
+is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
+the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
+depending in content in /proc/. This should enter unstable fairly
+soon.</p>
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2023-06-12</strong>: I got a tip about
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
+issues in Free Software</a> and the
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
+channel</a> discussing these topics.</p>
+
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Blockchain and IoT articles accepted into Records Management Journal</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blockchain_and_IoT_articles_accepted_into_Records_Management_Journal.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blockchain_and_IoT_articles_accepted_into_Records_Management_Journal.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 27 Feb 2020 09:05:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>On Tuesday, two scietific articles we have been working on for a
-while, was finally accepted for publication into
-<a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/0956-5698">Records
-Management Journal</a>. Still waiting for the assigned DOI urls to
-start working, but you can have a look at the LaTeX originals here.</p>
-
-<p>The first article is
-"<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-02-25-rmj-iot-record-keeping.pdf">A
-record-keeping approach to managing IoT-data for government
-agencies</a>" (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-09-2019-0050">DOI
-10.1108/RMJ-09-2019-0050<a/>) by Thomas Sødring, Petter Reinholdtsen
-and David Massey, and sketches some approaches for storing measurement
-data (aka Internet of Things sensor data) in a archive, thus providing
-a well defined mechanism for screening and deletion of the information </p>
-
-<p>The second article is
-"<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-02-25-rmj-block-chain-record-keeping.pdf">Publishing
-and using record-keeping structural information in a blockchain</a>"
-(<a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-09-2019-0056">DOI
-10.1108/RMJ-09-2019-0056</a>) by Thomas Sødring, Petter Reinholdtsen
-and Svein Ølnes, where we describe a way for third parties to validate
-authenticity and thus improve trust in the records kept in a
-archive.</p>
+ <title>wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 19 May 2023 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
+gas, electricity or heat distribution meters. The
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
+(EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
+to talk to and collect meter data. I ran into this standard when I
+wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
+free software that could do the job. The meters in question broadcast
+encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
+part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor. With this
+in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
+graphing.</p>
+
+<p>The free software systems in question,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
+read the messages from a software defined radio, and
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
+decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
+and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters. I got in touch
+with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
+the packages via Debian. I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
+Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
+assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
+sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive. Sadly we completed
+it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
+(Bookworm). The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue. It
+will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
+find a solution soon.</p>
+
+<p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
+standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
+packages.</p>
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2020-04-26</strong>: Initially managed to swap the
-DOI numbers. Fixed it.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Redaksjon på plass for Noark 5 tjenestegrensesnitt</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Redaksjon_p__plass_for_Noark_5_tjenestegrensesnitt.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Redaksjon_p__plass_for_Noark_5_tjenestegrensesnitt.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 5 Feb 2020 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Arbeidet med å lage et godt, fritt og åpent standardisert maskinelt
-grensesnitt for arkivering, med tilhørende fri
-programvareimplementasjon fortsetter. Jeg snakker om
-<a href="https://github.com/arkivverket/noark5-tjenestegrensesnitt-standard">Noark
-5 Tjenestegrensesnitt</a> og
-<a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core/">Nikita</a>.
-Siste nytt etter
-<a href="https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20200127-noark-seminar/">seminaret
-for noen dager siden</a>, er vi i Nikita-prosjektet har fått beskjed
-fra Arkivverket at det blir satt ned en redaksjon for å videreutvikle
-spesifikasjonen. Redaksjonen består av Mona Danielsen og Anne Sofie
-Knutsen ved arkivverket, Thomas Sødring ved OsloMet, og meg selv fra
-NUUG. De to sistenevnte tar seg av de åpenbare forbedringene, mens
-hele redaksjonen diskuterer tvilstilfeller. Jeg håper dette vil bidra
-til at vi lykkes i å gjøre denne protokollspesifikasjonen så entydig
-og klar at den vil bidra til et velfungerende marked for
-arkivsystemer, og sikre at programmer som trenger å snakke med
-arkivsystemet kan snakke med enhver implementasjon av
-API-spesifikasjonen. Nikita er den første implementasjonen, men det
-bør blir flere.</p>
-
-<p>Det gjenstår riktig nok endel før vi er i mål, selv om svært mye
-allerede er på plass. Med innspill og forslag til forbedringer fra
-alle som vil ha et leverandøruavhengig og fullstendig
-datamaskinlesbart grensesnitt til arkivet, så tror jeg vi vil
-lykkes.</p>
+ <title>The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 14 May 2023 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days. A lot of
+patches and issues have seen activity on
+<a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
+pages</a> recently. A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
+over at the <a href="https://tormach.com/">Tormach</a> headquarter in
+Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway. If you
+wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:</p>
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+<blockquote>
+"LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
+machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
+cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
+joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
+several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
+interactive development)."
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
+to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
+to LinuxCNC. Up to date information about the gathering can be found
+in
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
+developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
+Thanks to the good people at
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
+<a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
+<a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
+have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
+traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to join the
+gathering, get in touch.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Artikkel om Noark 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt og Nikita i Arkivråd nummer 3 for 2019</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Artikkel_om_Noark_5_Tjenestegrensesnitt_og_Nikita_i_Arkivr_d_nummer_3_for_2019.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Artikkel_om_Noark_5_Tjenestegrensesnitt_og_Nikita_i_Arkivr_d_nummer_3_for_2019.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 26 Dec 2019 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Like før julaften ble en artikkel jeg har skrevet om vedlikehold av
-<a href="https://github.com/arkivverket/noark5-tjenestegrensesnitt-standard">Noark
-5 Tjenestegrensesnitt</a> og Nikita publisert i <a
-href="https://www.arkivrad.no/arkivrad">tidsskriftet Arkivråd</a>.
-Det er basert på
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pen_og_gjennomsiktig_vedlikehold_av_spesifikasjonen_for_Noark_5_Tjenestegrensesnitt.html">min bloggpost
-om samme tema</a> som ble publisert 2019-03-11. Jeg oppdaget nettopp
-at nettsiden til tidsskriftet Arkivråd er oppdatert med siste utgave,
-og artikkelen dermed er tilgjengelig for alle. Du finner den i
-<a href="https://www.arkivrad.no/sites/arkivrad/files/arkivrad_03_2019_nett.pdf">PDF-en
-til nummer 2019/3 på side 30-33</a>. Jeg håper leserne av
-tidsskriftet får lyst til å sjekke ut tjenestegrensesnittet og at
-artikkelen vil gjøre det enklere for flere å bidra til en enda bedre,
-klarere og mer entydig API-spesifikasjon. Det kan gjøre at
-<a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core/">arkivsystemet
-Nikita</a> kan bli enda bedre når spesifikasjonen forbedres.</p>
+ <title>OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 13 May 2023 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A bit delayed,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> package in Debian now got the
+latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm. Because it depend on a
+package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
+testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
+actually working, so the migration was delayed. A bug in the package
+dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
+(opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
+installed by default. I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
+his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
+connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
+offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me. If you
+too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
+Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing <tt>apt
+install opensnitch</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.</p>
+
+<p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
+Debian. Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
+suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
+header files to get it working.</p>
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Meningsløst, men for hvem...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Meningsl_st__men_for_hvem___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Meningsl_st__men_for_hvem___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2019 10:35:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>En historie som har betydd endel for meg, og som jeg av og til
-tenker på når hverdagen tynger, ble så vidt jeg har klart å finne ut,
-skrevet av <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Eiseley">Loren
-Eiseley</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Thrower">i
-flere ulike varianter</a>. På norsk tror jeg den går under navnet
-«Gutten og sjøstjernen», og jeg fant en oversettelse av en utgave av den
-hos
-<a href="https://no.quora.com/Hva-er-din-favoritthistorie">Quora</a>.
-Fant også <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qClChUdlfI">en
-filmatisering</a>, men den versjonen jeg liker best fant jeg
-<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/56782.Loren_Eiseley">hos
-Goodreads</a>. Jeg oversatte den utgaven til norsk i går, og har lyst
-til å dele den med deg:
-
-<blockquote><p>Mens jeg tok en pause fra skrivingen og vandret på en
-øde strand ved daggry, så jeg en gutt i det fjerne bøye seg ned og
-kaste noe mens han vandret mot meg over den endeløse stranden. Da han
-kom nærmere, kunne jeg se at han kastet sjøstjerner, som var etterlatt
-i sanden av tidevannet, tilbake i havet. Da han var nær nok spurte jeg
-ham hvorfor han jobbet så hardt på denne merkelige oppgaven. Han sa at
-solen snart ville stå opp og tørke sjøstjernene slik at de ville
-dø.</p>
-
-<p>Jeg sa til ham at dette var helt meningsløst. Det var kilometer på
-kilometer med strand, og det lå sjøstjerner hele veien. En person
-alene kunne ikke gjøre noen forskjell. Han smilte da han plukket opp
-neste sjøstjerne. Mens han kastet den så langt ut i havet som han
-klarte sa han, «for denne gjør det en forskjell». Jeg droppet
-skrivingen og tilbrakte resten av morgenen med å kaste
-sjøstjerner.</p>
-
-<p>- Loren Eiseley</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>Kanskje noe du også kan ha glede av å tenke på når ting virker
-håpløst?</p>
-
-<p>Teksten er gjengitt og oversatt basert på utgaven på Good Read,
-uten tillatelse fra noen andre enn meg selv. Jeg håper på tilgivelse,
-hvis det er et problem for noen, da det er gjort i beste mening. Hvis
-eventuell rettighetshaver tar kontakt vil jeg fjerne teksten og i
-stedet legge ut henvendelsen der teksten kreves fjernet.</p>
-
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+ <title>Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
+it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
+transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
+stuff I need to write. The background is that long drives often bring
+up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
+of the question while driving. With the release of
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper</a>, this
+seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
+go. OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
+audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
+audio recording. It handle multiple languages and according to its
+creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
+one. I have not tested the latter feature. It can either use the CPU
+or a GPU with CUDA support. As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
+limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards. I have few of those, as
+they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
+the GPU option. While looking into the matter, I did discover some
+work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
+the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
+spent much time looking into GPU support yet. I've so far used an old
+X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
+CPU.</p>
+
+<p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
+under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
+ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
+system locally on my own computers. The only sensible approach to me
+is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
+to upload the needed packages into Debian. Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
+discovered that only three packages were missing,
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken</a>,
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton</a>, and
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper</a>. For a while
+I also believed
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python</a> was
+needed, but as its
+<a href="https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
+seem to have vanished</a> I found it safer
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
+whisper</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
+into Debian. I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
+<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
+Learning Team</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
+packages. Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
+that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
+versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
+Bookworm is released.</p>
+
+<p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
+<a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
+queue</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
+Bookworm is released. An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
+network models used by Whisper. The default behaviour of Whisper is
+to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
+<tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt> on first invocation. This obviously would
+fail <a href="https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
+deserted island test of free software</a> as the Debian packages would
+be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
+powered computer on a deserted island.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
+mirror system. This is problematic, as the models are very large
+files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
+infrastructure around the globe. The strain would be even higher if
+the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
+not. The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
+for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
+either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB). The medium model, which to me
+seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
+and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB). I would assume
+everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
+highest quality. I believe the models themselves would have to go
+into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
+including any useful source code for updating the models. The
+"source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
+consist of "680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
+data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
+unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public. In other
+words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
+Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.</p>
+
+<p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
+model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
+is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
+archive. In any case I wrote build rules for a
+<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
+Whisper model package</a> and
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
+Whisper code base</a> to prefer shared files under <tt>/usr/</tt> and
+<tt>/var/</tt> over user specific files in <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt>
+to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
+possibility. One solution might be to include only one of the models
+(small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
+download the others from the Internet. Not quite sure what to do
+here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).</p>
+
+<p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
+clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm. I
+selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
+would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
+missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
+to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
+Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
+first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
+then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
+and one of the models:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
+ -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
+mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &lt;&lt;EOF
+deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
+deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
+EOF
+apt update
+apt install openai-whisper
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
+computer than my own. With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
+a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
+model. This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM. Transcribing
+the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
+using around 5.2 GiB of RAM. My test machine had too little memory to
+test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM. In
+short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
+for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.</p>
+
+<p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Artikkel om Nikita i Arkheion nummer 2019/2</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Artikkel_om_Nikita_i_Arkheion_nummer_2019_2.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Artikkel_om_Nikita_i_Arkheion_nummer_2019_2.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 9 Dec 2019 15:05:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Jeg hadde i dag gleden av å oppdage at en artikkel om
-<a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core/">arkivsystemet
-Nikita</a> som vi skrev i sommer, nå er publisert i
-<a href="http://www.arkheion.no/">Arkheion, fagtidsskrift for kommunial
-arkivsektor</a>. Du finner artikkelen på side 30-33 i nummer 2019/2,
-PDF kan lastes ned fra nettstedet til tidsskriftet. Kanskje
-publiseringen kan føre til at noen flere får øynene opp for verdien av
-et åpent standardisert API for arkivering og søk i arkivet.</p>
-
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+ <title>rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux - nice free software</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 7 Apr 2023 23:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
+scanner for my software defined radio. Just for fun I tried to locate
+the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
+the frequencies to see what is in use. I've tried to find a useful
+program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
+tool. This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
+found a description of
+<a href="https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
+over at the Kali site</a>, and was able to track down
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
+Kali package git repository</a> to build a deb package for the
+scanner. Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
+at least in Debian Bullseye. Two runtime dependencies,
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis</a>
+and
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr</a>
+had to be built and installed separately. Luckily '<tt>gbp
+buildpackage</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
+to be manually built. The end result worked out of the box after
+installation.</p>
+
+<p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
+scanner was functioning. But when I tried to scan every frequency
+from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
+completion. After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
+used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
+exception breaking the scan. Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
+better. I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
+up with the following full scan:</p>
+
+<p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width="100%"></a></p>
+
+<p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
+just fine. I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
+the given frequency.</p>
+
+<p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
+python code. Will see if I can find time to send a patch
+<a href="https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream</a>
+later to fix this exception:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
+ save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
+ handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
+TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
+ save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
+ handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
+TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
+</pre>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>When terms and policy turn users away</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_terms_and_policy_turn_users_away.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_terms_and_policy_turn_users_away.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 7 Dec 2019 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>When asked to accept terms of use and privacy policies that state
-it will to remove rights I otherwise had or accept unreasonable terms
-undermining my privacy, I choose away the service. I simply do not
-have the conscience to accept terms I have no indention of upholding.
-But how are the system and service providers to know how many people
-they scared away? Normally I just quietly walk away. But today, I
-tried a new approach. I sent the following email (removing the
-specifics, as I am not out to take the specific service in question)
-to the service provider I decided to not use, to at least give them
-one data point on how many users are unhappy with their terms:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-From: Petter Reinholdtsen
-<br>Subject: When terms of use turn users away
-<br>To: [contact@some.site]
-<br>Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2019 16:30:56 +0100
-
-<p>Dear [Site Owner],</p>
-
-<p>I was eager to test the system, as it seemed like a fun and
-interesting application of [some] technology, but after reading the
-terms of use and privacy policy on &lt;URL:
-https://www.[some.site]/terms-of-use &gt; and &lt;URL:
-https://www.[some.site]/privacy-policy &gt; I want you to know that I
-decided to turn away. There were several provisions in the terms and
-policy turning me off, but the final term that convinced me was being
-asked to sign away my right to reverse engineer.</p>
-
-<p>--
-<br>Happy hacking
-<br>Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>I do not expect much to come out of it, but sharing it here in case
-others want to give something similar a try too. If companies
-discover their terms scare away enough people, perhaps they will be
-improved...</p>
-
+ <title>OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
+Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is now available in Debian
+Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.</p>
+
+<p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
+machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
+ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
+network or the Internet. If some background daemon is trying to dial
+home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
+default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
+up. A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
+in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
+use the network.</p>
+
+<p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
+had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
+package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
+at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
+week after the first upload. It is now team maintained under the Go
+language team umbrella. A few fixes to the default setup is only in
+Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.</p>
+
+<p>During testing I ran into an
+<a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
+with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing</a>, which was quickly
+resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
+change. I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
+use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
+newer eBPF module that can be used. The reason is simply that
+upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
+OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
+which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
+Debian. We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
+package. It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
+build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
+kernel source.</p>
+
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
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