Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Got a solar panel for my west window

September 12th, 2017

The graphic above is credited to come from [http://www.renewable-energy-concepts.com/solarenergy/solar-basics/orientation-azimuth-angle.html]. Basically I can expect 65% of peak (100 Watt panel) which will give me close to 5 Amps for the 12V panel. I'm very excited by this and got to try it out. I'm hoping for 3 hours of sunlight in Winter (got to wait until the solstice) and thus 15 Ah (ampere hours). This should give me enough power to power a 5 Watt Freifunk Router which is on a battery hopefully 24/7. If it cannot sustain this I'll have to place it on a timer. The time for solar experimentation has begun for me. Although I once made a solar cooker which didn't work due to abberation because I made it from a half circle and not a parabola (oops). But back then it was a good try anyhow.

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Schweinfurt public transport got more expensive

September 11th, 2017

I used to anonymously buy a 8 ride ticket with the bus driver and it cost 10 EUR. Per ride that was 1.25 EUR. Since August 1st they introduced an eTicket which is not anonymous but allows you to have a flexicard plan at 1.10 EUR a ride. At the end of month they will charge your bank account for the rides you took. But it's not anonymous. An anonymous ride will cost 1.50 EUR one time fee. I think I'll keep doing that. This means I pay 0.25 EUR more per ride which adds up. I do about 6-7 rides per month at current.

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My hypothetical blueprint for an Information Age

September 9th, 2017

The problem
Recently I read an article that talks about schools not having wlan.

I was curious what people had to say and some voiced their frustrations:

German teachers being re-purposed for making a computer network
clued computer persons not being able to touch the network in fear that something gets broken.
students having viruses on their equipment.

I think we have to approach the early stages of the Information age with structure, method and most of all a mandate to commit into an Information age.

I. Recognizing Dangers

Closed systems are unfortunately not trustable in my opinion. These include systems from computer service corporations. Google comes to mind for example even though it should be said that their primary purpose is they are an advertising company. Their services to the human are at a second place after the intend to brand the human first, for profit.

II. Open Source

In my opinion we should work with Open systems, systems that follow the student from grade 1 through their graduation foremost. That leaves us with Open Source. In university (higher learning) institutions Open Source has already been at the forefront for many decades (2 decades).

III. Pillars

In terms of human resources it must be done right. People require job security, and be part of something bigger than just a job. They become "Computer" teachers but should become a pillar for many decades. What these people should teach is the basic and the advanced of computer sciences. They should not be a marketing puppet for Microsoft and Google.

IV. Knowledge

Computing science isn't shallow knowledge. There is method, and to think like a computer hacker is what's required for every person in the Information age. Many people listen to the advertising giants such as Microsoft and don't listen to the people who have a pure knowledge of what they talk about.

Conclusion

We have to teach "the way" and stay clear of dangers. Only with method can every human learn how to deal with a computer. Will our political structures pave the way for this? I am pessimistic, but perhaps we can work ourselves out of the rut we're in now.

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The EU Panopticon

September 7th, 2017

Here it is revealed that the EU is definitely working towards a militarisation of surveillance on its citizens through research and contracts. This is not new to me. I recently had to filter a particular university in Germany which is paid by federal Germany (the government) for its research. I have strong suspicions that this university is spying on me, and when I confronted them per email they did not reply. So it's not just the BND, MAD, NSA, Echelon, Five Eyes and cohorts that one has to be careful of. It's universities doing public spying as well. This university was gaining statistical data on me via DNS, which is akin to spying regularily. If they wanted to look somethign up it's a query once in a blue moon, but they regularily came back to gather the same information over and over. I noticed them by their sort of queries, they were very interested whether I had a SIP phone service running or wether I had a Jabber service available. This was queried with the SRV DNS Resoure Record. I won't stand for it. Take your spying elsewhere. While people are sleepwalking into the next election, these things aren't even known and not on the table. The closest thing we had was that the FDP a party in Germany wants to consolidate all databases into a federal system for crime prevention. One has to wonder, will my data from this university make it into this database as well?

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When will we get a manned space program for Germany/Europe?

September 5th, 2017

The Russians have a new Soyus, the model 5. Why is the european continent not interested in manned space flight? We need it in order to secure high tech jobs and be able to compete globally.

If I were chancellor we'd have a german manned space program in the next 10 years. But dials to the controls in the rockets would likely be in English, not German. This is because English is a language that all german kids learn from grade five and higher. It represents a certain maturity. Also I gave it a little thought the only destinations that the rockets would steer to is the moon, and any lagrange orbits to or from there. This means we could launch rockets due north from a north sea platform or even the northern coastal mainland in a polar orbit, This gives one opportunity to reach the moon every 14 days because as a rocket orbits earth in a polar orbit, it will after one or two orbits gun the engines to reach the moon insertion orbit.

A repurposed Ariane 5 or 6 would do to start in order to keep costs low in designing the manned rocket.

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ARD #5kampf politics round

September 4th, 2017

I watched the ARD #5kampf TV interview and noticed that the parties were lined up from left to right in terms of extremes with the respective side. So Die Linke was far left, AfD far right and CSU in the middle. I felt the CSU was sorta in the wrong spot since Angela Merkel talked for them yesterday in the ARD TV Duell. So in the end I felt of all the parties the left focused parties were placed well in their responses to questions and in their questions to others.

I'd have a question for Herr Hermann of the CSU though. He made it sound like there is no more coal powerplants left in Bavaria and that we're well placed as a solar power producing region. So my question is this. Bud, why is it that my night electricity is at 14 cents/KWh and my day electricity is at 23 cents/KWh or thereabouts. With Bavaria producing so much solar doesn't it make more sense to make the day cheaper than the night. Because I use up to 11,000 KWh's per year which is three to four times the national average. The lions share of this electricity (along 9000 KWh's) is used up by my winter heating units that run at night at the 14 cents/KWh in order to conserve on my electricity bill. The times have changed. Daytime electricity is cheaper! My heating units should charge during the day when solar can be utilized. This is a very complex question, but the solution is very simple. It would just mean reprogramming the heating units timer and flip the day and night rates for electricity.

Overall I found the #5kampf interview OK, nothign exravagant was said that I didn't already know. And I'll continue to put my pledge to Die Linke.

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Wrote a patch for babel routing daemon

September 3rd, 2017

We noticed in freifunk franken that sometimes there is receive buffer overruns. I wrote a patch for babel that the size of the receive buffer is dynamic to the highest attainable value (within 2^x)..

--- kernel_netlink.c.orig	2017-09-03 10:45:54.000000000 +0200
+++ kernel_netlink.c	2017-09-03 11:02:55.000000000 +0200
@@ -232,11 +232,25 @@
 netlink_socket(struct netlink *nl, uint32_t groups)
 {
     int rc;
-    int rcvsize = 512 * 1024;
+    int rcvsize = 512;
+    int i;
 
     nl->sock = socket(PF_NETLINK, SOCK_RAW, NETLINK_ROUTE);
+		
     if(nl->sock < 0)
-        return -1;
+	return -1;
+
+    /* get the highest attainable RCVBUF up to 1 << 30 */
+    for (i = rcvsize; i < (1 << 30); i <<= 1) {
+        rc = setsockopt(nl->sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVBUF,
+                        &i, sizeof(i));
+	
+	if (rc < 0) 
+		break;
+
+	rcvsize = i;
+    }
+    fprintf(stderr, "rcvsize set to %d\n", rcvsize);
 
     memset(&nl->sockaddr, 0, sizeof(nl->sockaddr));
     nl->sockaddr.nl_family = AF_NETLINK;

Hopefully its correct, I didn't test it.

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Cancelled supercluster for September 17, 2017

September 2nd, 2017

I have cancelled supercluster.virgostar.net for September 17th, 2017. After moving everything off it, it will be cancelled 2 weeks earlier than planned. That's just the billing cycle though. It's been a fun three years!

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The last leg of Summer 2017

September 1st, 2017

We have about 3 more weeks of summer left (officially). Last year I turned up the heat around October 4th, 2016. So I'm hoping to be doing that this year as well. Of course if it gets cold earlier I'll have to turn the heat up earlier. In about three weeks Germany has a federal election. So politics are gonna make the people crazy the next few weeks. Have a safe and happy September everybody!

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