Petter Reinholdtsen

På onsdag sendte jeg følgende epost til Utdanningsetaten i Oslo kommune (UDE). Fikk beskjed om at min henvendelse har saksnummer 22/7559-1 i den offentlige postjournalen til UDE. Jeg er spent på hva slags respons jeg får. Mistenker jo de fleste som sprer sine nettsideleseres personopplysninger til utlandet ikke har tenkt så nøye igjennom hva de gjør, og at det er håp om at de tenker seg litt nøyere om hvis de blir klar over problemstillingen. Vet du noen som burde få tilsvarede beskjed og spørsmål? Kanskje du kan sende dem en epost. Hvis alle bidrar blir det kanskje litt bedre.

To: postmottak (at) osloskolen.no
Subject: Digitale utslipp fra osloskolens nettsider

Hei.

Jeg ser at osloskolens nettsider har digitale utslipp av personopplysninger til Google, Facebook og andre, blant annet omtalt på <URL: https://aktuelt.osloskolen.no/personvernerklaring-for-osloskolen/informasjonskapsler/ >.

<URL: https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/ > kan være et nyttig verktøy for å holde øye med utslippsomfanget på ulike sider.

Kanskje det er en ide å gjøre noe med det, jamfør <URL: https://www.digi.no/artikler/debatt-det-enkleste-tiltaket-er-a-skru-av-google-analytics/517378 >?

Et alternativ til Google Analytics kan være en lokalt installert utgave av <URL: https://matomo.org/ >. Den og flere andre alternativer kan finnes via <URL: https://www.digi.no/artikler/sverige-vil-skrote-amerikansk-skytjeneste-her-er-alternativene/516223?key=5QsV0wRG > på bakgrunn av at svenske myndigheter har innsett at dagens praksis nok er både lite lur og ulovlig. Der henger Norge litt etter, men osloskolen har her mulighet til å være litt i forkant. :)

Fint om dere kan gi beskjed hvilket saksnummer denne henvendelsen får i offentlig postjournal når den er mottatt.

Flere og flere innser at slik spredning av personopplysninger er ugreit. Det har pågått i mange år. Ser jeg blogget første gang om Google Analytics i 2013 og analyserte omfanget i 2015, men det er et langt lerret å bleke.

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. Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)

Recently I had a look at a Hargassner wood chip boiler, and what kind of free software can be used to monitor and control it. The boiler can be connected to some cloud service via what the producer call an Internet Gateway, which seem to be a computer connecting to the boiler and passing the information gathered to the cloud. I discovered the boiler controller got an IP address on the local network and listen on TCP port 23 to provide status information as a text line of numbers. It also provide a HTTP server listening on port 80, but I have not yet figured out what it can do beside return an error code.

If I am to believe various free software implementations talking to such boiler, the interpretation of the line of numbers differ between type of boiler and software version on the boiler. By comparing the list of numbers on the front panel of the boiler with the numbers returned via TCP, I have been able to figure out several of the numbers, but there are a lot left to understand. I've located several temperature measurements and hours running values, as well as oxygen measurements and counters.

I decided to write a simple parser in Python for the values I figured out so far, and a simple MQTT injector publishing both the interpreted and the unknown values on a MQTT bus to make collecting and graphing simpler. The end result is available from the hargassner2mqtt project page on gitlab. I very much welcome patches extending the parser to understand more values, boiler types and software versions. I do not really expect very few free software developers got their hands on such unit to experiment, but it would be fun if others too find this project useful.

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

After many months of hard work by the good people involved in LinuxCNC, the system was accepted Sunday into Debian. Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from its popularity-contest numbers that people have been reporting its use since 2012. Its project site might be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting via Tor.

But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering? Perhaps a Wikipedia quote is in place?

"LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen, interactive development)."

It can even control 3D printers. And even though the Wikipedia page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features provided by the Debian kernel. The source code is available from Github. The last few months I've been involved in the translation setup for the program and documentation. Translators are most welcome to join the effort using Weblate.

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