Android News of Interest
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-22 10:42:59 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-22 10:44:19 UTC
Summary: Stories about Android, accumulated in the past couple of days
Embedded
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A line should be drawn between true embedded Linux distros and Android's solitary distro adapted for embedded consumer functions, said Suse's Matthias Eckermann. He does not see Android going into enterprise areas involving integrated systems. "With flexibility, Android is one stack and one purpose. That is not the case with a full-fledged embedded Linux used for multiple purposes."
KitKat
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Google has released the official statistics regarding the usage of the various versions of Android. Continuing the trend spotted in the previous month's report, those devices that are running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and Android 4.4 KitKat are on the rise. Like the last report, most Android devices are running a version of Jelly Bean. Beginning April 2013, the distribution data charts are now based on the data collected from each device when the user visits the Google Play store. Google also stopped including Android 1.6 Donut and Android 2.1 Eclair in the data, as it is gathered from the new version of Google Play store app, which supports Android 2.2 and above.
Cyanogen
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The beauty of Android is that it is open source. Well in theory anyway. Google develops and maintains Android and it publishes the source code via the Android Open Source Project. From there smaller manufacturers and custom firmware makers can take the code and build their own Android ROMs. One of the most popular custom Android firmwares is Cyanogenmod. Based on Google’s AOSP code the Cyanogenmod team add a range of new features that aren’t found in vanilla Android. Back in September 2013 Steve Kondik, Koushik Dutta, and a small group of CyanogenMod developers established their own company – Cyanogen, Inc.
Desktop
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You must love Google Now on your Android devices, you can have it on your desktop too. Google Now has been integrated with alpha version Chrome browser (Canary). It will provide you with notification cards, based on location, time, weather and other context specific information right on your desktop.
Games
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Amazon won’t say if it will be making an Android-based gaming device beyond its Kindle tablets. But it is certainly pushing hard to create tools for game developers so that they can be successful on the company’s various app platforms.
Apps
Recent Techrights' Posts
- "systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
- Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
- Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
- Links for the day
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- Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
- "Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
- Inaction Helps Your Enemies
- Without freedom, there's nothing else left
- Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
- Windows fell by a lot
- Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
- For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
- The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
- Is IBM another Enron?
- "IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
- continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
- For those who have not followed our story
- Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
- They know what's coming, they just don't know when
- Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
- many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
- Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
- Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
- ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
- If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
- Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
- Links for the day
- "AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
- gets paid to do this
- People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
- As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
- Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
- Links for the day
- The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
- Lots more to come
- What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
- Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
- IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
- This is IBM policy
- IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
- Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
- In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
- In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
- IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
- For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
- Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
- the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
- A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
- Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
- Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
- Links for the day
- IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
- Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
- Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
- Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
- New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
- Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
- Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
- RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
- Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
- coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
- Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
- Links for the day
- Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
- There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
- Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
- his reputation is poor in the United States
- systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
- Cannot allow choice
- What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
- Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
- IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
- We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
- Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
- Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
- UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
- What is happening to Europe???
- EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
- The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
- Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
- Links for the day
- A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
- Not going to work all month long
- EPO Staff Demonstration Today
- The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
- Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
- Links for the day
- LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
- It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026