Android Leftovers

• Razer Phone 2 review: Still fun, still niche

• Asus ROG Phone review:

• Google Home Hub review: A smarter smart display

• Nokia 7.1 review: The best Android One device out right now [Video]

• First OnePlus 6T camera sample appears via CEO: Is it a low-light champ?

• Lenovo S5 Pro camera looks outrageous for a sub-$200 phone

• Some Pixel 3 XL owners are complaining of buzzing/distorted speakers

• Google Pixel 3 supports secure transactions via Android Protected Confirmation API

• Ksmartech Expands Trustonic Partnership to Secure Authentication for iOS and Android Apps

• Google will charge up to $40 per phone for Android apps to placate EU

• The most exciting Android phone of the year won't be available in the US

• Android: a 10-year visual history

Tiny NanoPi Duo2 SBC offers camera connector

FriendlyElec has launched a tiny, under $20 “NanoPi Duo2” board that updates the original Duo with an Allwinner H3, Bluetooth, a camera connector, and an optional 2G carrier board. FriendlyElec has spun out a modest upgrade to last year’s $13 (previously $8) NanoPi Duo. Like the Duo, the COM-like, $19.50 NanoPi Duo2 includes two 16-pin GPIO headers with breadboard pins in a dual-in-line layout.

today's leftovers

• OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux to Exhibit Software-Defined Storage Solutions at All Things Open

• Warning: 'Soul Calibur 6' Is Causing A Serious Problem For Linux Gamers

  The good news: right out of the box, Soul Calibur VI seems to offer decent performance on Linux via Steam Play and Proton. The bad news? The game fails to detect an online network, and then when gamers switch over to play on Windows they're finding themselves completely blocked from playing the fighter online.

• Latte Dock, new painting is coming...

  In the video you can see the upcoming coloring mechanism of Latte's next version. Even though I am using plasma 5.14 and I love it, it is also the reason I am already expecting impatiently plasma 5.15 this January!! :) This functionality can be supported only with plasma 5.15 .

• BGP LLGR: robust and reactive BGP sessions

  On a BGP-routed network with multiple redundant paths, we seek to achieve two goals concerning reliability: A failure on a path should quickly bring down the related BGP sessions. A common expectation is to recover in less than a second by diverting the traffic to the remaining paths. As long as a path is operational, the related BGP sessions should stay up, even under duress.

• Measuring the speaker frequency response using the AUDMES free software GUI - nice free software

  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.

• Arm Offers Lower Cost Cortex-A5 License

  Arm is now offer a low-cost route to developing Cortex-A5 based Linux-capable ASICs for embedded Internet of Things (IoT) devices featuring advanced edge processing, with a new one-year license fee of $75,000. This fee provides access to the CPU IP and one year of design support, through Arm's DesignStart program.

• Arm DesignStart program expands to accelerate Linux-based embedded design

  While the breadth of IoT provides endless possibilities for advanced software development, it also holds challenges for designers. In a rapidly changing and competitive market, designers need to differentiate their products and deliver enhanced designs at the lowest cost in the fastest time possible. One avenue for differentiation is “rich embedded processing”, which we define at Arm as providing an advanced level of performance and sophistication. Sometimes that includes an interactive user interface, but on the whole, it is about offering advanced capability. These products use a comprehensive set of software stacks and benefit from the breadth of ready-to-run middleware and applications available on fully featured operating systems such as Linux. Companies developing rich embedded IoT designs are now turning toward application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to meet their specific needs.

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