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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from May 2016</title>
                <description>Entries from May 2016</description>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 28 May 2016 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
the current President of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot;&gt;the Tor
project&lt;/a&gt;, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User group&lt;/a&gt; (NUUG).  A
video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
currently publishes its talks.  You can
&lt;a href=&quot;http://frikanalen.no/se&quot;&gt;watch the live stream using a web
browser&lt;/a&gt; with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
on demand page for the talk
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599&quot;&gt;Tor: Anonymous
communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
HTML video and Ogg Theora support:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;video width=&quot;70%&quot; poster=&quot;http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg&quot; controls&gt;
  &lt;source src=&quot;http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv&quot; type=&quot;video/ogg&quot;/&gt;
&lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2016 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;The isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
is going away and is generally being replaced by
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt;,
so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
rewrite finally took place.  I&#39;ve just uploaded a new version of
Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
install the &lt;tt&gt;isenkram&lt;/tt&gt; package and insert some hardware dongle
and see if it is recognised.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% isenkram-lookup 
bluez
cheese
fprintd
fprintd-demo
gkrellm-thinkbat
hdapsd
libpam-fprintd
pidgin-blinklight
thinkfan
tleds
tp-smapi-dkms
tp-smapi-source
tpb
%p
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
is for packages to announce their hardware support using
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
cross distribution appstream system&lt;/a&gt;.
See
&lt;a href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;previous
blog posts about isenkram&lt;/a&gt; to learn how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2016 09:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday I updated the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats
package in Debian&lt;/a&gt; with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
graph window pop up as expected.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
capacity.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:

&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
shrinking. :(&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
check out the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;battery-stats&lt;/a&gt;
in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from &lt;a
href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
Patches are very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
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        <item>
                <title>French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes &amp; Noble</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 21 May 2016 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
2004 book Cultura Libre was published.  Today I noticed that the book
is now available from book stores.  You can now buy it from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018260&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;
($19.99),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/1123776705&quot;&gt;Barnes
&amp; Noble&lt;/a&gt; ($?) and as always from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html&quot;&gt;Lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;
($19.99).  The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project.  If
you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $10.59, while if you buy
from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
less).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon.  Not quite sure how
that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
the paperback edition, they are
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;available
from github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2016 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I just donated to the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml&quot;&gt;NUUG defence
&quot;fond&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
site popcorn-time.no tested in court.  I hope everyone that agree with
me will do the same.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
talking to a judge first?  I am.  What if the free software system
combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
and was called Popcorn Time?  Would that affect your view?  It still
make me worried.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In March 2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
the courts.  I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
permission first.  I was even more surprised when I had a look at
&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no&quot;&gt;the web
site content on the Internet Archive&lt;/A&gt;, and only found news coverage
about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
holders permissions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/2016/03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim&quot;&gt;Hegnar Online&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://itavisen.no/2016/03/08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/&quot;&gt;ITavisen&lt;a/&gt;
and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-1.12842452&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt;),
at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
on
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogg.torvund.net/2016/03/09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/&quot;&gt;protests
from the law professor Olav Torvund&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.klassekampen.no/article/20160311/ARTICLE/160319995&quot;&gt;lawyer
Jon Wessel-Aas&lt;/a&gt;.  It even got some
&lt;a href=&quot;https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-160418/&quot;&gt;coverage
on TorrentFreak&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I
&lt;a href=&quot;https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html&quot;&gt;
wrote about the case a month ago&lt;/a&gt;, when the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; (NUUG),
where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
legally challenged.  They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
those that want to support the request.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
suggest you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml&quot;&gt;show
your support by donating to NUUG&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2016 07:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://zfsonlinux.org/&quot;&gt;ZFS for Linux&lt;/a&gt; finally entered
Debian.  The package status can be seen on
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux&quot;&gt;the package tracker
for zfs-linux&lt;/a&gt;.  and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
team status page&lt;/a&gt;. If you want to help out, please join us.
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git&quot;&gt;The
source code&lt;/a&gt; is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
great if you could help out with
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms&quot;&gt;the dkms package&lt;/a&gt;, as
it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 8 May 2016 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
Debian claim support for most file formats.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
plugin supported most file formats / media types.
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;The
result&lt;/a&gt; can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
players.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/822245&quot;&gt;missing MIME type in the VLC
desktop file&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
support most file formats.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport&quot;&gt;a
table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
in the table&lt;/a&gt;, with the package supporting most MIME types being
listed first in the table.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;/p&gt;The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
support?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 4 May 2016 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>A friend of mine made me aware of
&lt;a href=&quot;https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/&quot;&gt;The Pyra&lt;/a&gt;, a
handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5&quot;
LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
production started.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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