X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/70d7feaf12630f9d2a1934db1ea2af50581916ea..dab433fb0808144159d85b05b298c7a1e549ee20:/blog/index.html diff --git a/blog/index.html b/blog/index.html index 8439ea77cf..de9f6e58b0 100644 --- a/blog/index.html +++ b/blog/index.html @@ -20,36 +20,42 @@
-
Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago
-
28th May 2016
-

A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and -the current President of the Tor -project, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the -Norwegian Unix User group (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 -watch the live stream using a web -browser with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video -on demand page for the talk -"Tor: Anonymous -communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.".

- -

Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with -HTML video and Ogg Theora support:

- -

- -

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. :)

+ +
1st November 2018
+

As part of my involvement in +the Nikita +archive API project, I've been importing a fairly large lump of +emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would +go. I picked a subset of my +notmuch email database, all public emails sent to me via +@lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import. +In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in +these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed +that one of the most common attachment formats do not have +an +official MIME type registered with IANA/IETF. The output from +diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats +included in these emails. At the moment people seem to use either +text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered. It +would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used +everywhere.

+ +

To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought +up the topic on +the +media-types mailing list. If you are interested in discussion +which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in +making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like +to join the discussion?

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -57,67 +63,79 @@ want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)

- -
25th May 2016
-

The isenkram -system 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).

- -

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 -PackageKit, -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'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 isenkram package and insert some hardware dongle -and see if it is recognised.

- -

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:

+ +
22nd October 2018
+

+ +

My current home stereo is a patchwork of various pieces I got on +flee markeds over the years. It is amazing what kind of equipment +show up there. I've been wondering for a while if it was possible to +measure how well this equipment is working together, and decided to +see how far I could get using free software. After trawling the web I +came across an article from DIY Audio and Video on +Speaker +Testing and Analysis describing how to test speakers, and it listing +several software options, among them +AUDio MEasurement +System (AUDMES). It is the only free software system I could find +focusing on measuring speakers and audio frequency response. In the +process I also found an interesting article from NOVO on +Understanding +Speaker Specifications and Frequency Response and an article from +ecoustics on +Understanding +Speaker Frequency Response, with a lot of information on what to +look for and how to interpret the graphs. Armed with this knowledge, +I set out to measure the state of my speakers.

+ +

The first hurdle was that AUDMES hadn't seen a commit for 10 years +and did not build with current compilers and libraries. I got in +touch with its author, who no longer was spending time on the program +but gave me write access to the subversion repository on Sourceforge. +The end result is that now the code build on Linux and is capable of +saving and loading the collected frequency response data in CSV +format. The application is quite nice and flexible, and I was able to +select the input and output audio interfaces independently. This made +it possible to use a USB mixer as the input source, while sending +output via my laptop headphone connection. I lacked the hardware and +cabling to figure out a different way to get independent cabling to +speakers and microphone.

+ +

Using this setup I could see how a large range of high frequencies +apparently were not making it out of my speakers. The picture show +the frequency response measurement of one of the speakers. Note the +frequency lines seem to be slightly misaligned, compared to the CSV +output from the program. I can not hear several of these are high +frequencies, according to measurement from +Free Hearing Test +Software, an freeware system to measure your hearing (still +looking for a free software alternative), so I do not know if they are +coming out out the speakers. I thus do not quite know how to figure +out if the missing frequencies is a problem with the microphone, the +amplifier or the speakers, but I managed to rule out the audio card in my +PC by measuring my Bose noise canceling headset using its own +microphone. This setup was able to see the high frequency tones, so +the problem with my stereo had to be in the amplifier or speakers.

+ +

Anyway, to try to role out one factor I ended up picking up a new +set of speakers at a flee marked, and these work a lot better than the +old speakers, so I guess the microphone and amplifier is OK. If you +need to measure your own speakers, check out AUDMES. If more people +get involved, perhaps the project could become good enough to +include in Debian? And if +you know of some other free software to measure speakers and amplifier +performance, please let me know. I am aware of the freeware option +REW, but I want something +that can be developed also when the vendor looses interest.

-

-% isenkram-lookup 
-bluez
-cheese
-fprintd
-fprintd-demo
-gkrellm-thinkbat
-hdapsd
-libpam-fprintd
-pidgin-blinklight
-thinkfan
-tleds
-tp-smapi-dkms
-tp-smapi-source
-tpb
-%p
-

- -

The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way -is for packages to announce their hardware support using -the -cross distribution appstream system. -See -previous -blog posts about isenkram to learn how to do that.

+

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -125,53 +143,58 @@ blog posts about isenkram to learn how to do that.

- -
23rd May 2016
-

Yesterday I updated the -battery-stats -package in Debian 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.

- -

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.

- -

- -

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: - -

- -

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. :(

- -

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.

- -

If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please -check out the -battery-stats -in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on -Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from github. -Patches are very welcome.

+ +
21st October 2018
+

Bittorrent is as far as I know, currently the most efficient way to +distribute content on the Internet. It is used all by all sorts of +content providers, from national TV stations like +NRK, Linux distributors like +Debian and +Ubuntu, and of course the +Internet archive. + +

Almost a month ago +a new +package adding Bittorrent support to VLC became available in +Debian testing and unstable. To test it, simply install it like +this:

+ +

+apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
+

+ +

Since the plugin was made available for the first time in Debian, +several improvements have been made to it. In version 2.2-4, now +available in both testing and unstable, a desktop file is provided to +teach browsers to start VLC when the user click on torrent files or +magnet links. The last part is thanks to me finally understanding +what the strange x-scheme-handler style MIME types in desktop files +are used for. By adding x-scheme-handler/magnet to the MimeType entry +in the desktop file, at least the browsers Firefox and Chromium will +suggest to start VLC when selecting a magnet URI on a web page. The +end result is that now, with the plugin installed in Buster and Sid, +one can visit any +Internet +Archive page with movies using a web browser and click on the +torrent link to start streaming the movie.

+ +

Note, there is still some misfeatures in the plugin. One is the +fact that it will hang and +block VLC +from exiting until the torrent streaming starts. Another is the +fact that it +will pick +and play a random file in a multi file torrent. This is not +always the video file you want. Combined with the first it can be a +bit hard to get the video streaming going. But when it work, it seem +to do a good job.

+ +

For the Debian packaging, I would love to find a good way to test +if the plugin work with VLC using autopkgtest. I tried, but do not +know enough of the inner workings of VLC to get it working. For now +the autopkgtest script is only checking if the .so file was +successfully loaded by VLC. If you have any suggestions, please +submit a patch to the Debian bug tracking system.

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address @@ -180,7 +203,7 @@ activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address

- Tags: debian, english. + Tags: english, verkidetfri, video.
@@ -188,34 +211,80 @@ activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
- -
21st May 2016
-

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 -Amazon -($19.99), -Barnes -& Noble ($?) and as always from -Lulu.com -($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).

- -

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 -available -from github.

+ +
18th October 2018
+

This morning, the new release of the +Nikita +Noark 5 core project was +announced +on the project mailing list. The 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 0.2 +since version 0.1.1 (from NEWS.md): + +

    +
  • Fix typos in REL names
  • +
  • Tidy up error message reporting
  • +
  • Fix issue where we used Integer.valueOf(), not Integer.getInteger()
  • +
  • Change some String handling to StringBuffer
  • +
  • Fix error reporting
  • +
  • Code tidy-up
  • +
  • Fix issue using static non-synchronized SimpleDateFormat to avoid + race conditions
  • +
  • Fix problem where deserialisers were treating integers as strings
  • +
  • Update methods to make them null-safe
  • +
  • Fix many issues reported by coverity
  • +
  • Improve equals(), compareTo() and hash() in domain model
  • +
  • Improvements to the domain model for metadata classes
  • +
  • Fix CORS issues when downloading document
  • +
  • Implementation of case-handling with registryEntry and document upload
  • +
  • Better support in Javascript for OPTIONS
  • +
  • Adding concept description of mail integration
  • +
  • Improve setting of default values for GET on ny-journalpost
  • +
  • Better handling of required values during deserialisation
  • +
  • Changed tilknyttetDato (M620) from date to dateTime
  • +
  • Corrected some opprettetDato (M600) (de)serialisation errors.
  • +
  • Improve parse error reporting.
  • +
  • Started on OData search and filtering.
  • +
  • Added Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct to project.
  • +
  • Moved repository and project from Github to Gitlab.
  • +
  • Restructured repository, moved code into src/ and web/.
  • +
  • Updated code to use Spring Boot version 2.
  • +
  • Added support for OAuth2 authentication.
  • +
  • Fixed several bugs discovered by Coverity.
  • +
  • Corrected handling of date/datetime fields.
  • +
  • Improved error reporting when rejecting during deserializatoin.
  • +
  • Adjusted default values provided for ny-arkivdel, ny-mappe, + ny-saksmappe, ny-journalpost and ny-dokumentbeskrivelse.
  • +
  • Several fixes for korrespondansepart*.
  • +
  • Updated web GUI: +
      +
    • Now handle both file upload and download.
    • +
    • Uses new OAuth2 authentication for login.
    • +
    • Forms now fetches default values from API using GET.
    • +
    • Added RFC 822 (email), TIFF and JPEG to list of possible file formats.
    • +
  • +
+ +

The changes and improvements are extensive. Running diffstat on +the changes between git tab 0.1.1 and 0.2 show 1098 files changed, +108666 insertions(+), 54066 deletions(-).

+ +

If free and open standardized archiving API sound interesting to +you, please contact us on IRC +(#nikita on +irc.freenode.net) or email +(nikita-noark +mailing list).

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -223,67 +292,111 @@ from github.

- -
19th May 2016
-

I just donated to the -NUUG defence -"fond" 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.

- -

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.

- -

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 -the web -site content on the Internet Archive, and only found news coverage -about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right -holders permissions.

- -

The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for -example Hegnar Online and -ITavisen +

+
8th October 2018
+

I have earlier covered the basics of trusted timestamping using the +'openssl ts' client. See blog post for +2014, +2016 and -NRK), -at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based -on -protests -from the law professor Olav Torvund and -lawyer -Jon Wessel-Aas. It even got some -coverage -on TorrentFreak.

- -

I - -wrote about the case a month ago, when the -Norwegian Unix User Group (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.

- -

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 show -your support by donating to NUUG. +2017 +for those stories. But some times I want to integrate the timestamping +in other code, and recently I needed to integrate it into Python. +After searching a bit, I found +the +rfc3161 library which seemed like a good fit, but I soon +discovered it only worked for python version 2, and I needed something +that work with python version 3. Luckily I next came across +the rfc3161ng library, +a fork of the original rfc3161 library. Not only is it working with +python 3, it have fixed a few of the bugs in the original library, and +it has an active maintainer. I decided to wrap it up and make it +available in +Debian, and a few days ago it entered Debian unstable and testing.

+ +

Using the library is fairly straight forward. The only slightly +problematic step is to fetch the required certificates to verify the +timestamp. For some services it is straight forward, while for others +I have not yet figured out how to do it. Here is a small standalone +code example based on of the integration tests in the library code:

+ +
+#!/usr/bin/python3
+
+"""
+
+Python 3 script demonstrating how to use the rfc3161ng module to
+get trusted timestamps.
+
+The license of this code is the same as the license of the rfc3161ng
+library, ie MIT/BSD.
+
+"""
+
+import os
+import pyasn1.codec.der
+import rfc3161ng
+import subprocess
+import tempfile
+import urllib.request
+
+def store(f, data):
+    f.write(data)
+    f.flush()
+    f.seek(0)
+
+def fetch(url, f=None):
+    response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
+    data = response.read()
+    if f:
+        store(f, data)
+    return data
+
+def main():
+    with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as cert_f,\
+    	 tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as ca_f,\
+    	 tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as msg_f,\
+    	 tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() as tsr_f:
+
+        # First fetch certificates used by service
+        certificate_data = fetch('https://freetsa.org/files/tsa.crt', cert_f)
+        ca_data_data = fetch('https://freetsa.org/files/cacert.pem', ca_f)
+
+        # Then timestamp the message
+        timestamper = \
+            rfc3161ng.RemoteTimestamper('http://freetsa.org/tsr',
+                                        certificate=certificate_data)
+        data = b"Python forever!\n"
+        tsr = timestamper(data=data, return_tsr=True)
+
+        # Finally, convert message and response to something 'openssl ts' can verify
+        store(msg_f, data)
+        store(tsr_f, pyasn1.codec.der.encoder.encode(tsr))
+        args = ["openssl", "ts", "-verify",
+                "-data", msg_f.name,
+	        "-in", tsr_f.name,
+		"-CAfile", ca_f.name,
+                "-untrusted", cert_f.name]
+        subprocess.check_call(args)
+
+if '__main__' == __name__:
+   main()
+
+ +

The code fetches the required certificates, store them as temporary +files, timestamp a simple message, store the message and timestamp to +disk and ask 'openssl ts' to verify the timestamp. A timestamp is +around 1.5 kiB in size, and should be fairly easy to store for future +use.

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -291,20 +404,63 @@ your support by donating to NUUG.
- -
12th May 2016
-

Today, after many years of hard work from many people, -ZFS for Linux finally entered -Debian. The package status can be seen on -the package tracker -for zfs-linux. and -the -team status page. If you want to help out, please join us. -The -source code is available via git on Alioth. It would also be -great if you could help out with -the dkms package, as -it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.

+ +
4th October 2018
+

A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian. To try to +rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive. +I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this +automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from +the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA to do the +task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to +run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync. +Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.

+ +

I first created ~/googledrive, entered the directory and +ran 'grive -a' to authenticate the machine/user. Next, I +created a autostart hook in ~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop +to start the sync when the user log in:

+ +

+[Desktop Entry]
+Name=Google drive autosync
+Type=Application
+Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
+

+ +

Finally, I wrote the ~/bin/grive-sync script to sync +~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.

+ +

+#!/bin/sh
+set -e
+cd ~/
+cleanup() {
+    if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
+        kill $syncpid
+    fi
+}
+trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
+/usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%" &
+syncpdi=$!
+while true; do
+    if ! xhost >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
+        echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
+        exit 1
+    fi
+    if [ ! -e /run/user/1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
+        /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
+    fi
+    sleep 300
+done 2>&1 | sed "s%^%$0:%"
+

+ +

Feel free to use the setup if you want. It can be assumed to be +GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I +doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -317,49 +473,161 @@ it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.

- -
8th May 2016
-

Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in -Debian claim support for most file formats.

- -

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. -The -result 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.

- -

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 -missing MIME type in the VLC -desktop file. 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.

- -

The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as -a -table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included -in the table, with the package supporting most MIME types being -listed first in the table.

- -

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?

+ +
29th September 2018
+

It would come as no surprise to anyone that I am interested in +bitcoins and virtual currencies. I've been keeping an eye on virtual +currencies for many years, and it is part of the reason a few months +ago, I started writing a python library for collecting currency +exchange rates and trade on virtual currency exchanges. I decided to +name the end result valutakrambod, which perhaps can be translated to +small currency shop.

+ +

The library uses the tornado python library to handle HTTP and +websocket connections, and provide a asynchronous system for +connecting to and tracking several services. The code is available +from +github.

+ +

There are two example clients of the library. One is very simple and +list every updated buy/sell price received from the various services. +This code is started by running bin/btc-rates and call the client code +in valutakrambod/client.py. The simple client look like this:

+ +

+import functools
+import tornado.ioloop
+import valutakrambod
+class SimpleClient(object):
+    def __init__(self):
+        self.services = []
+        self.streams = []
+        pass
+    def newdata(self, service, pair, changed):
+        print("%-15s %s-%s: %8.3f %8.3f" % (
+            service.servicename(),
+            pair[0],
+            pair[1],
+            service.rates[pair]['ask'],
+            service.rates[pair]['bid'])
+        )
+    async def refresh(self, service):
+        await service.fetchRates(service.wantedpairs)
+    def run(self):
+        self.ioloop = tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.current()
+        self.services = valutakrambod.service.knownServices()
+        for e in self.services:
+            service = e()
+            service.subscribe(self.newdata)
+            stream = service.websocket()
+            if stream:
+                self.streams.append(stream)
+            else:
+                # Fetch information from non-streaming services immediately
+                self.ioloop.call_later(len(self.services),
+                                       functools.partial(self.refresh, service))
+                # as well as regularly
+                service.periodicUpdate(60)
+        for stream in self.streams:
+            stream.connect()
+        try:
+            self.ioloop.start()
+        except KeyboardInterrupt:
+            print("Interrupted by keyboard, closing all connections.")
+            pass
+        for stream in self.streams:
+            stream.close()
+

+ +

The library client loops over all known "public" services, +initialises it, subscribes to any updates from the service, checks and +activates websocket streaming if the service provide it, and if no +streaming is supported, fetches information from the service and sets +up a periodic update every 60 seconds. The output from this client +can look like this:

+ +

+Bl3p            BTC-EUR: 5687.110 5653.690
+Bl3p            BTC-EUR: 5687.110 5653.690
+Bl3p            BTC-EUR: 5687.110 5653.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.560 6593.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.560 6593.690
+Bl3p            BTC-EUR: 5687.110 5653.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.570 6593.690
+Bitstamp        EUR-USD:    1.159    1.154
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.570 6593.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.580 6593.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.580 6593.690
+Hitbtc          BTC-USD: 6594.580 6593.690
+Bl3p            BTC-EUR: 5687.110 5653.690
+Paymium         BTC-EUR: 5680.000 5620.240
+

+ +

The exchange order book is tracked in addition to the best buy/sell +price, for those that need to know the details.

+ +

The other example client is focusing on providing a curses view +with updated buy/sell prices as soon as they are received from the +services. This code is located in bin/btc-rates-curses and activated +by using the '-c' argument. Without the argument the "curses" output +is printed without using curses, which is useful for debugging. The +curses view look like this:

+ +

+           Name Pair   Bid         Ask         Spr    Ftcd    Age
+ BitcoinsNorway BTCEUR   5591.8400   5711.0800   2.1%   16    nan     60
+       Bitfinex BTCEUR   5671.0000   5671.2000   0.0%   16     22     59
+        Bitmynt BTCEUR   5580.8000   5807.5200   3.9%   16     41     60
+         Bitpay BTCEUR   5663.2700         nan   nan%   15    nan     60
+       Bitstamp BTCEUR   5664.8400   5676.5300   0.2%    0      1      1
+           Bl3p BTCEUR   5653.6900   5684.9400   0.5%    0    nan     19
+       Coinbase BTCEUR   5600.8200   5714.9000   2.0%   15    nan    nan
+         Kraken BTCEUR   5670.1000   5670.2000   0.0%   14     17     60
+        Paymium BTCEUR   5620.0600   5680.0000   1.1%    1   7515    nan
+ BitcoinsNorway BTCNOK  52898.9700  54034.6100   2.1%   16    nan     60
+        Bitmynt BTCNOK  52960.3200  54031.1900   2.0%   16     41     60
+         Bitpay BTCNOK  53477.7833         nan   nan%   16    nan     60
+       Coinbase BTCNOK  52990.3500  54063.0600   2.0%   15    nan    nan
+        MiraiEx BTCNOK  52856.5300  54100.6000   2.3%   16    nan    nan
+ BitcoinsNorway BTCUSD   6495.5300   6631.5400   2.1%   16    nan     60
+       Bitfinex BTCUSD   6590.6000   6590.7000   0.0%   16     23     57
+         Bitpay BTCUSD   6564.1300         nan   nan%   15    nan     60
+       Bitstamp BTCUSD   6561.1400   6565.6200   0.1%    0      2      1
+       Coinbase BTCUSD   6504.0600   6635.9700   2.0%   14    nan    117
+         Gemini BTCUSD   6567.1300   6573.0700   0.1%   16     89    nan
+         Hitbtc+BTCUSD   6592.6200   6594.2100   0.0%    0      0      0
+         Kraken BTCUSD   6565.2000   6570.9000   0.1%   15     17     58
+  Exchangerates EURNOK      9.4665      9.4665   0.0%   16 107789    nan
+     Norgesbank EURNOK      9.4665      9.4665   0.0%   16 107789    nan
+       Bitstamp EURUSD      1.1537      1.1593   0.5%    4      5      1
+  Exchangerates EURUSD      1.1576      1.1576   0.0%   16 107789    nan
+ BitcoinsNorway LTCEUR      1.0000     49.0000  98.0%   16    nan    nan
+ BitcoinsNorway LTCNOK    492.4800    503.7500   2.2%   16    nan     60
+ BitcoinsNorway LTCUSD      1.0221     49.0000  97.9%   15    nan    nan
+     Norgesbank USDNOK      8.1777      8.1777   0.0%   16 107789    nan
+

+ +

The code for this client is too complex for a simple blog post, so +you will have to check out the git repository to figure out how it +work. What I can tell is how the three last numbers on each line +should be interpreted. The first is how many seconds ago information +was received from the service. The second is how long ago, according +to the service, the provided information was updated. The last is an +estimate on how often the buy/sell values change.

+ +

If you find this library useful, or would like to improve it, I +would love to hear from you. Note that for some of the services I've +implemented a trading API. It might be the topic of a future blog +post.

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -367,29 +635,47 @@ support?

- -
4th May 2016
-
A friend of mine made me aware of -The Pyra, a -handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I -would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)

- -

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" -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.

- -

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?

+ +
24th September 2018
+

Back in February, I got curious to see +if +VLC now supported Bittorrent streaming. It did not, despite the +fact that the idea and code to handle such streaming had been floating +around for years. I did however find +a standalone plugin +for VLC to do it, and half a year later I decided to wrap up the +plugin and get it into Debian. I uploaded it to NEW a few days ago, +and am very happy to report that it +entered +Debian a few hours ago, and should be available in Debian/Unstable +tomorrow, and Debian/Testing in a few days.

+ +

With the vlc-plugin-bittorrent package installed you should be able +to stream videos using a simple call to

+ +

+vlc https://archive.org/download/TheGoat/TheGoat_archive.torrent
+

+ +

It can handle magnet links too. Now if only native vlc had +bittorrent support. Then a lot more would be helping each other to +share public domain and creative commons movies. The plugin need some +stability work with seeking and picking the right file in a torrent +with many files, but is already usable. Please note that the plugin +is not removing downloaded files when vlc is stopped, so it can fill +up your disk if you are not careful. Have fun. :)

+ +

I would love to get help maintaining this package. Get in touch if +you are interested.

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

- Tags: debian, english. + Tags: english, verkidetfri, video.
@@ -397,28 +683,35 @@ first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?

- -
18th April 2016
-

It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of -the Norwegian Unix User group, a -member association for those of us believing in free software, open -standards and unix-like operating systems. NUUG announced today it -will -try -to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as -unlawful, to stand up for the principle that writing about a -controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web -pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the -police. The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority -for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime -a month ago. I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give -the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far -as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.

+ +
2nd September 2018
+

I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to +tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to +insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard. After searching the +web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed +to find a recipe that worked. If you got a kodi instance with its API +available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to +have check out a nice cover band.

+ +

curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
+  --data-binary '{ "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
+  "params": {"item": { "file":
+  "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
+  http://projector.local/jsonrpc

+ +

I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its +first argument. It can now handle direct video links, youtube links +and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi. It is almost like a +Chromecast. :)

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

@@ -426,50 +719,19 @@ as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.

- -
15th April 2016
-

I dag tok jeg mot til meg og pakket sammen en ny versjon av den -frie norske stavekontrollen, ca. tre og et halvt år etter forrige -gang. Resultatet kan lastes ned fra -no.speling.org-prosjeksiden, både -som kildekodepakke og som "pack"-fil som kanskje fortsatt kan brukes -av OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice. Byggesystemet trenger oppussing, men i -denne omgang hadde jeg bare tid til å fikse byggefeil forårsaket av -endringer i GNU grep. De øvrige endringene var gjort tidligere i -påvente av en ny utgave.

- -

Her er det som er nytt (fra NEWS-fila i -kildekodepakken):

- -

Release 2.2 (2016-04-15)

- -
    - -
  • Rewrite how scripts/speling2words handle tripple consonants, to - avoid importing duplicate words from no.speling.org, and getting - rid of the existing duplicates in norsk.words.
  • -
  • Remove duplicate entries with tripple consonants from norsk.words.
  • -
  • Update frequency for entries in norsk.words based on - (ran 'make - freq-update').
  • -
  • Correct nn ispell build, avoid crash in munchlist causing lots of - words to fall out of the database.
  • -
  • Use grep -a to convince grep it is working on text files, to work - with newer grep versions.
  • - -
  • Remove some words disputed in the no.speling.org review process: -
      -
    • apparent (nb)
    • -
    • likke (nb)
    • -
    • ugjest, ugjesten, ugjestens (nb)
    • -
  • - -
+ +
30th August 2018
+

It might seem obvious that software created using tax money should +be available for everyone to use and improve. Free Software +Foundation Europe recentlystarted a campaign to help get more people +to understand this, and I just signed the petition on +Public Money, Public Code to help +them. I hope you too will do the same.

@@ -484,6 +746,58 @@ kildekodepakken):

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