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 <h1
>Browser does not support HTML5 video
</h1
>
32 Please use Chrome, Opera, Firefox or any other browser which
34 </video
></p
>
36 <p
>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarized quite simply: If you
37 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)
</p
>
42 <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</title>
43 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</link>
44 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</guid>
45 <pubDate>Wed,
25 May
2016 10:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
46 <description><p
><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram
">The isenkram
47 system
</a
> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
48 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
49 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
50 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
51 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
52 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
53 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
54 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
55 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
56 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
57 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p
>
59 <p
>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
60 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
61 is going away and is generally being replaced by
62 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/
">PackageKit
</a
>,
63 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
64 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
65 rewrite finally took place. I
've just uploaded a new version of
66 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
67 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
68 install the
<tt
>isenkram
</tt
> package and insert some hardware dongle
69 and see if it is recognised.
</p
>
71 <p
>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
72 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
73 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p
>
75 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
91 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
93 <p
>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
94 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
95 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/
">the
96 cross distribution appstream system
</a
>.
98 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/
">previous
99 blog posts about isenkram
</a
> to learn how to do that.
</p
>
104 <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</title>
105 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</link>
106 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</guid>
107 <pubDate>Mon,
23 May
2016 09:
35:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
108 <description><p
>Yesterday I updated the
109 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
110 package in Debian
</a
> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
111 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
112 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
113 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
114 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
115 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
116 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
117 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
118 graph window pop up as expected.
</p
>
120 <p
>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
121 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
122 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
123 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
126 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-rate.png
"/
></p
>
128 <p
>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
129 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
130 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
131 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
133 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-history.png
"/
></p
>
135 <p
>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
136 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
137 shrinking. :(
</p
>
139 <p
>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
140 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
141 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
142 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
143 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
146 <p
>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
148 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
</a
>
149 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
150 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
151 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats
">github
</a
>.
152 Patches are very welcome.
</p
>
154 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
155 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
156 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
161 <title>French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble
</title>
162 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</link>
163 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</guid>
164 <pubDate>Sat,
21 May
2016 10:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
165 <description><p
>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
166 2004 book Cultura Libre was published. Today I noticed that the book
167 is now available from book stores. You can now buy it from
168 <a href=
"http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/
8269018260">Amazon
</a
>
170 <a href=
"http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/
1123776705">Barnes
171 & Noble
</a
> ($?) and as always from
172 <a href=
"http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-
22645082.html
">Lulu.com
</a
>
173 ($
19.99). The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project. If
174 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $
10.59, while if you buy
175 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
176 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
179 <p
>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
180 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon. Not quite sure how
181 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
182 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
183 the paperback edition, they are
184 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig
">available
185 from github
</a
>.
</p
>
190 <title>I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)
</title>
191 <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>
192 <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>
193 <pubDate>Thu,
19 May
2016 14:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
194 <description><p
>I just donated to the
195 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">NUUG defence
196 "fond
"</a
> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
197 site popcorn-time.no tested in court. I hope everyone that agree with
198 me will do the same.
</p
>
200 <p
>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
201 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
202 talking to a judge first? I am. What if the free software system
203 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
204 and was called Popcorn Time? Would that affect your view? It still
205 make me worried.
</p
>
207 <p
>In March
2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
208 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
209 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
210 the courts. I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
211 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
212 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
213 permission first. I was even more surprised when I had a look at
214 <a href=
"https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no
">the web
215 site content on the Internet Archive
</A
>, and only found news coverage
216 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
217 holders permissions.
</p
>
219 <p
>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
220 example
<a href=
"http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/
2016/
03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim
">Hegnar Online
</a
> and
221 <a href=
"http://itavisen.no/
2016/
03/
08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/
">ITavisen
<a/
>
223 <a href=
"http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-
1.12842452">NRK
</a
>),
224 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
226 <a href=
"http://blogg.torvund.net/
2016/
03/
09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/
">protests
227 from the law professor Olav Torvund
</a
> and
228 <a href=
"http://www.klassekampen.no/article/
20160311/ARTICLE/
160319995">lawyer
229 Jon Wessel-Aas
</a
>. It even got some
230 <a href=
"https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-
160418/
">coverage
231 on TorrentFreak
</a
>.
</p
>
234 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
">
235 wrote about the case a month ago
</a
>, when the
236 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a
> (NUUG),
237 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
238 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
239 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
240 legally challenged. They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
241 those that want to support the request.
</p
>
243 <p
>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
244 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
245 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
246 suggest you
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">show
247 your support by donating to NUUG
</a
>.
</a
>
252 <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</title>
253 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</link>
254 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</guid>
255 <pubDate>Thu,
12 May
2016 07:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
256 <description><p
>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
257 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/
">ZFS for Linux
</a
> finally entered
258 Debian. The package status can be seen on
259 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux
">the package tracker
260 for zfs-linux
</a
>. and
261 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
">the
262 team status page
</a
>. If you want to help out, please join us.
263 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git
">The
264 source code
</a
> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
265 great if you could help out with
266 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms
">the dkms package
</a
>, as
267 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p
>
272 <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
273 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
274 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
275 <pubDate>Sun,
8 May
2016 09:
40:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
276 <description><p
><strong
>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
277 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong
></p
>
279 <p
>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
280 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
281 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
282 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
283 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
284 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia
">The
285 result
</a
> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
286 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
287 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
290 <p
>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
291 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
292 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
293 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/
822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
294 desktop file
</a
>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
295 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
296 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
297 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
298 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
299 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
300 support most file formats.
</p
>
302 <p
>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
303 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">a
304 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
305 in the table
</a
>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
306 listed first in the table.
</p
>
308 </p
>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
309 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
310 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
316 <title>The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled
</title>
317 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</link>
318 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</guid>
319 <pubDate>Wed,
4 May
2016 10:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
320 <description>A friend of mine made me aware of
321 <a href=
"https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
">The Pyra
</a
>, a
322 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
323 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
</p
>
325 <p
>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
326 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a
5"
327 LCD touch screen. The
6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
328 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
329 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
330 last I heard last night was that
22 more orders were needed before
331 production started.
</p
>
333 <p
>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
334 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
335 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
</p
>
340 <title>NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no
</title>
341 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
</link>
342 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
</guid>
343 <pubDate>Mon,
18 Apr
2016 10:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
344 <description><p
>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
345 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">the Norwegian Unix User group
</a
>, a
346 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
347 standards and unix-like operating systems. NUUG announced today it
349 <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
350 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
351 unlawful
</a
>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
352 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
353 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
354 police. The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
355 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
356 a month ago. I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
357 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
358 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.
</p
>
363 <title>Ny utgave (v2.2) av den frie norske stavekontrollen gitt ut
</title>
364 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_2__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html
</link>
365 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_utgave__v2_2__av_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen_gitt_ut.html
</guid>
366 <pubDate>Fri,
15 Apr
2016 21:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
367 <description><p
>I dag tok jeg mot til meg og pakket sammen en ny versjon av den
368 frie norske stavekontrollen, ca. tre og et halvt år etter forrige
369 gang. Resultatet kan lastes ned fra
370 <a href=
"http://no.speling.org/
">no.speling.org-prosjeksiden
</a
>, både
371 som kildekodepakke og som
"pack
"-fil som kanskje fortsatt kan brukes
372 av OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice. Byggesystemet trenger oppussing, men i
373 denne omgang hadde jeg bare tid til å fikse byggefeil forårsaket av
374 endringer i GNU grep. De øvrige endringene var gjort tidligere i
375 påvente av en ny utgave.
</p
>
377 <p
><strong
>Her er det som er nytt (fra NEWS-fila i
378 kildekodepakken):
</strong
></p
>
380 <p
>Release
2.2 (
2016-
04-
15)
</p
>
384 <li
>Rewrite how scripts/speling2words handle tripple consonants, to
385 avoid importing duplicate words from no.speling.org, and getting
386 rid of the existing duplicates in norsk.words.
</li
>
387 <li
>Remove duplicate entries with tripple consonants from norsk.words.
</li
>
388 <li
>Update frequency for entries in norsk.words based on
389 <URL:http://helmer.aksis.uib.no/nta/ordlistf.zip
> (ran
'make
390 freq-update
').
</li
>
391 <li
>Correct nn ispell build, avoid crash in munchlist causing lots of
392 words to fall out of the database.
</li
>
393 <li
>Use grep -a to convince grep it is working on text files, to work
394 with newer grep versions.
</li
>
396 <li
>Remove some words disputed in the no.speling.org review process:
398 <li
>apparent (nb)
</li
>
399 <li
>likke (nb)
</li
>
400 <li
>ugjest, ugjesten, ugjestens (nb)
</li
>
401 </ul
></li
>