Android Leftovers

• Luna Launcher turns your Android phone into a kid-friendly device

  On the fence about whether your child is old enough for their own smartphone? A new app called Luna Launcher can help you warm to the idea, by offering a simple way to limit access to select apps and actions, including who they can call or text – a list you can restrict to family members, for example. Of course, because of the way it needs to interact with your phone’s operating system in order to restrict access, Luna Launcher is only available on Android.

• Google delays launch of Android Wear 2.0 to next year

  Google’s next-generation smartwatch platform, Android Wear 2.0, will not be seeing the light of day this year. The company announced today that it is delaying the launch of the update, which was originally scheduled for this fall, to sometime in early 2017. Instead of launching the final version this fall, Google is extending the developer preview program for Android Wear 2.0, and today it’s releasing the third preview of the platform for developers. The company says that it is using the extra time to fine tune the software via feedback from developers, and it will have another preview build released before the end of the year. Today’s version adds a number of new features, most notable of which is the Play Store for smartwatches.

• Moto Z series and G4 Plus getting Android 7.0 Nougat update in Q4

• Android Wear watches aren’t connecting to the iPhone 7

• Many Android Wear watches aren’t working with the iPhone 7

• Google Maps gains new voice commands on Android

• OnePlus 3 Android 7.0 Nougat update is in the works

• Huawei will introduce its next flagship on November 3

• This is Google Cloud and G Suite

Leftovers: Software

• OVS 2.6 and The First Release of OVN

  In January of 2015, the Open vSwitch team announced that they planned to start a new project within OVS called OVN (Open Virtual Network). The timing could not have been better for me as I was looking around for a new project. I dove in with a goal of figuring out whether OVN could be a promising next generation of Open vSwitch integration for OpenStack and have been contributing to it ever since. OVS 2.6.0 has now been released which includes the first non-experimental version of OVN. As a community we have also built integration with OpenStack, Docker, and Kubernetes.

• RcppCNPy 0.2.6

• Markoshiki

• gcbd 0.2.6

  A pure maintenance release 0.2.6 of the gcbd package is now on CRAN. The gcbd proposes a benchmarking framework for LAPACK and BLAS operations (as the library can exchanged in a plug-and-play sense on suitable OSs) and records result in local database. Recent / upcoming changes to DBMI and RSQLite let me to update the package; there are no actual functionality changes in this release.

• Udisks Indicator Makes Monitoring and Mounting Drives Easy on Ubuntu

  Want to get quick, at-a-glance details about your connected drives while on Ubuntu? A new indicator applet aims to help. UDisks-Indicator is a small panel-based applet that shows disk usage information about mounted partitions.

• Skype for Linux Alpha 1.9 released with dark theme support and more

  Microsoft today released a new update of Skype for Linux users. Skype for Linux Alpha 1.9 comes with dark theme support, the ability to mute notifications and more. Read the full change log below.

• Open source tool uses PowerShell to enable vSphere infrastructure as code [Ed: Microsoft ‘open’ code already being used to promote proprietary software with back doors]

PostgreSQL 9.6 Released

• PostgreSQL 9.6 released

  PostgreSQL 9.6, the latest version of the world's leading open source database, was released today by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. This release will allow users to both scale up and scale out high performance database workloads. New features include parallel query, synchronous replication improvements, phrase search, and improvements to performance and usability, as well as many more features.

• PostgreSQL 9.6 Officially Released With Parallel Query Support

How I Use Android: Android Central Editor Emeritus Phil Nickinson

In the meantime, I was able to convince Phil to step out of his metaphorical kitchen for a few minutes to chat about how he uses Android in his day-to-day life. This is a man who has seen and used practically every Android device over the past several years, after all -- and a fair number of apps and customization tools, to boot. So what devices does someone with so much knowledge carry around in his own trousers, and how does he make the most of what they have to offer? Enough with the suspense already. In his own words, this is how Phil Nickinson uses Android.