X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/a114dd473d0796e17b9f31528afa9e82b2f9c5d7..c5c2b7df2ec2de3a1759fb70d01a401d0a688b6f:/blog/index.rss diff --git a/blog/index.rss b/blog/index.rss index 0adc1247e1..ceb3f6c615 100644 --- a/blog/index.rss +++ b/blog/index.rss @@ -6,6 +6,57 @@ http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ + + All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html + Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0100 + Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most +know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder +people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair +trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and +forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue. I am sure it +is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of +private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals +too. The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous. To have +some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his +TED talk +"<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_shouldn_t_belong_to_a_robot.html">The +kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this +little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed +I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement +through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on +aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to +download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous +vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and +historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones +to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their +own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their +presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic +drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p> + +<p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It +would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles +and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the +radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check +both the government and others use of drones. For such control to be +effective, everyone must be able to do it. What should such beacon +contain? At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS +location. Probably also the origin and target position of the current +flight. And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up +the drone in a central database tracking their movement. Robots +should not have privacy. It is people who need privacy.</p> + + + Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo! http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html @@ -673,142 +724,5 @@ too.</p> - - Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania - http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html - http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html - Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200 - <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing -networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large -areas, depending on the radio technology used. Normal wifi equipment -can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several -successful examples like -<a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and -<a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a> -(see -<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia -for a large list</a>) around the globe. To give you an idea how it -work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which -can be seen from their -<a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically -updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes -automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing. -There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway, -and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p> - -<p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped -to do it as part of my involvement with the <a -href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and -my recent involvement in -<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a> -finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a -Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family -when possible, given that most communication between people are -between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook -communication patterns). It also allow people to communicate without -any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the -private communication of citizens, which have become more and more -important over the years.</p> - -<p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo -working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space -<a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania. They seem to -have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called -<a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo -Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people -behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called -<a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>. Unfortunately the wiki -site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to -reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to -the new project. A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people -from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks. I -came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the -speakers about this talk (from -<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p> - -<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> - -<p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols. -There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to -figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but -given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it -is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a -completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on -batman-adv for now. It sure help me to know that the very cool -<a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a> -is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self -organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and -less industrialized communities. Check out this cool video presenting -that project (from -<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p> - -<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> - -<p>According to the wikipedia page on -<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless -mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing -packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and -B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software -based community mesh networks.</p> - -<p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2 -(as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same -network. One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based -vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your -computer. The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at -least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up. A -<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good -introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project. These are -the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p> - -<p><table> -<tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr> -<tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr> -<tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr> -<td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr> -<td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td> -</table></p> - -<p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs -in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers. (See a nice post from -VillageTelco about -"<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information -about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a> -for details.) When these settings are activated and you have some -other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh -network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to -any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p> - -<p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node, -but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a -firmware supporting batman-adv. If anyone know how to use that old -wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p> - -<p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join -us on IRC, either channel -<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a> -or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on -irc.freenode.net.</p> - -<p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old -research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research -and Innovation called -<a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The -reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere -learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at -Grünerløkka in Oslo. So mesh networks are also interesting for -commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard -to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I -know have closed down the experiment. Perhaps Telenor or others would -be interested in a cooperation?</p> - -<p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just -<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told -by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use -batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based -mesh system.</p> - - -