Petter Reinholdtsen

Surprising as it might sound, there are still computers using the traditional Sys V init system, and there probably will be until systemd start working on Hurd and FreeBSD. The upstream project still exist, though, and up until today, the upstream source was available from Savannah via subversion. I am happy to report that this just changed.

The upstream source is now in Git, and consist of three repositories:

• sysvinit
• insserv
• startpar

I do not really spend much time on the project these days, and I has mostly retired, but found it best to migrate the source to a good version control system to help those willing to move it forward.

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

A few days ago, a new major version of VLC was announced, and I decided to check out if it now supported streaming over bittorrent and webtorrent. Bittorrent is one of the most efficient ways to distribute large files on the Internet, and Webtorrent is a variant of Bittorrent using WebRTC as its transport channel, allowing web pages to stream and share files using the same technique. The network protocols are similar but not identical, so a client supporting one of them can not talk to a client supporting the other. I was a bit surprised with what I discovered when I started to look. Looking at the release notes did not help answering this question, so I started searching the web. I found several news articles from 2013, most of them tracing the news from Torrentfreak ("Open Source Giant VLC Mulls BitTorrent Streaming Support"), about a initiative to pay someone to create a VLC patch for bittorrent support. To figure out what happend with this initiative, I headed over to the #videolan IRC channel and asked if there were some bug or feature request tickets tracking such feature. I got an answer from lead developer Jean-Babtiste Kempf, telling me that there was a patch but neither he nor anyone else knew where it was. So I searched a bit more, and came across an independent VLC plugin to add bittorrent support, created by Johan Gunnarsson in 2016/2017. Again according to Jean-Babtiste, this is not the patch he was talking about.

Anyway, to test the plugin, I made a working Debian package from the git repository, with some modifications. After installing this package, I could stream videos from The Internet Archive using VLC commands like this:

vlc https://archive.org/download/LoveNest/LoveNest_archive.torrent

The plugin is supposed to handle magnet links too, but since The Internet Archive do not have magnet links and I did not want to spend time tracking down another source, I have not tested it. It can take quite a while before the video start playing without any indication of what is going on from VLC. It took 10-20 seconds when I measured it. Some times the plugin seem unable to find the correct video file to play, and show the metadata XML file name in the VLC status line. I have no idea why.

I have created a request for a new package in Debian (RFP) and asked if the upstream author is willing to help make this happen. Now we wait to see what come out of this. I do not want to maintain a package that is not maintained upstream, nor do I really have time to maintain more packages myself, so I might leave it at this. But I really hope someone step up to do the packaging, and hope upstream is still maintaining the source. If you want to help, please update the RFP request or the upstream issue.

I have not found any traces of webtorrent support for VLC.

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

A new version of the 3D printer slicer software Cura, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid). I hope you find it useful. It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will enter testing tomorrow. See the release notes for the list of bug fixes and new features. Version 3.2 was announced 6 days ago. We will try to get it into Debian as well.

More information related to 3D printing is available on the 3D printing and 3D printer wiki pages in Debian.

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

Jeg lar meg fascinere av en artikkel i Dagbladet om Kinas håndtering av Xinjiang, spesielt følgende utsnitt:

«I den sørvestlige byen Kashgar nærmere grensa til Sentral-Asia meldes det nå at 120.000 uigurer er internert i såkalte omskoleringsleirer. Samtidig er det innført et omfattende helsesjekk-program med innsamling og lagring av DNA-prøver fra absolutt alle innbyggerne. De mest avanserte overvåkingsmetodene testes ut her. Programmer for å gjenkjenne ansikter og stemmer er på plass i regionen. Der har de lokale myndighetene begynt å installere GPS-systemer i alle kjøretøy og egne sporingsapper i mobiltelefoner.

Politimetodene griper så dypt inn i folks dagligliv at motstanden mot Beijing-regimet øker.»

Beskrivelsen avviker jo desverre ikke så veldig mye fra tilstanden her i Norge.

I Norge har jo situasjonen rundt Folkehelseinstituttets lagring av DNA-informasjon på vegne av politiet, der de nektet å slette informasjon politiet ikke hadde lov til å ta vare på, gjort det klart at DNA tar vare på ganske lenge. I tillegg finnes det utallige biobanker som lagres til evig tid, og det er planer om å innføre evig lagring av DNA-materiale fra alle spebarn som fødes (med mulighet for å be om sletting).

I Norge er det system på plass for ansiktsgjenkjenning, som en NRK-artikkel fra 2015 forteller er aktiv på Gardermoen, samt brukes til å analysere bilder innsamlet av myndighetene. Brukes det også flere plasser? Det er tett med overvåkningskamera kontrollert av politi og andre myndigheter i for eksempel Oslo sentrum.

Jeg er ikke kjent med at Norge har noe system for identifisering av personer ved hjelp av stemmegjenkjenning.

Posisjons-sporing av mobiltelefoner er ruinemessig tilgjengelig for blant annet politi, NAV og Finanstilsynet, i tråd med krav i telefonselskapenes konsesjon. I tillegg rapporterer smarttelefoner sin posisjon til utviklerne av utallige mobil-apper, der myndigheter og andre kan hente ut informasjon ved behov. Det er intet behov for noen egen app for dette.

Posisjons-sporing av biler er rutinemessig tilgjengelig via et tett nett av målepunkter på veiene (automatiske bomstasjoner, køfribrikke-registrering, automatiske fartsmålere og andre veikamera). Det er i tillegg vedtatt at alle nye biler skal selges med utstyr for GPS-sporing (eCall).

Det er jammen godt vi lever i et liberalt demokrati, og ikke en overvåkningsstat, eller?

Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner til min adresse 15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

We write 2018, and it is 30 years since Unicode was introduced. Most of us in Norway have come to expect the use of our alphabet to just work with any computer system. But it is apparently beyond reach of the computers printing recites at a restaurant. Recently I visited a Peppes pizza resturant, and noticed a few details on the recite. Notice how 'ø' and 'å' are replaced with strange symbols in 'Servitør', 'Å BETALE', 'Beløp pr. gjest', 'Takk for besøket.' and 'Vi gleder oss til å se deg igjen'.

I would say that this state is passed sad and over in embarrassing.

I removed personal and private information to be nice.

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