GNU Radio 3.9.0.0 released

Dear SDR community most likely to travel in time to save the present,

The future is not set, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves. In this
very spirit, GNU Radio 3.9 packs a whole bunch of power when it comes to
transforming the way GNU Radio and its ecosytem can be developed in the future.

You'll find the release tags and signed tarballs now on github, and later on
https://www.gnuradio.org/releases/gnuradio/ .

Not only did we have great progressions from old dependencies that proved to be
all too problematic (SWIG, Python2), but also did we see an incredibly influx of
people actively working on how maintainable this code base is. This will nurture
the project for years to come.

All in all, the main breaking change for pure GRC users will consist in a few
changed blocks – an incredible feat, considering the amount of shift under the
hood. Mentioning large shifts, the work that went into the PyBind binding, the
CMake modernization, the C++ cleanup, the bug-fixing and the CI infrastructure
is worthy of explicit call out; I especially thank

* Josh Morman
* Thomas Habets
* Jacob Gilbert
* Andrej Rode
* Ryan Volz

here.

For developers of OOTs, I'm sure PyBind11 will pose a surprise. If you're used
to SWIG, yes, that's more code to write yourself. But in effect, it's less code
that breaks, and when it breaks, it breaks in much more understandable ways.
Josh has put a lot of effort into automating as much of that as possible.
There's certainly no shortage of demand for that! The ecosystem (remember GNU
Radio's tagline?) is in a steady upwind. We've seen more, and more stable,
contributions from OOT maintainers. That's great!

For in-tree development, newer dependencies and removal of anachronisms will
make sure things move much smoother. Our CI is getting – lately literally every
day – better, which means we not only catch bugs earlier, but also allow for
much quicker review cycles.

One central change:

If you're contributing code upstream, we no longer need you to submit a CLA;
instead, we ask you to just certify, yourself, that you're allowed to contribute
that code (and not, e.g. misappropriating someone else's code).

That's what the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin) is: Just a quick, "hey,
this code is actually for me to contribute under the project's license"; nothing
more.

Android Leftovers

• Google bans 164 Android apps from its Play Store, now you must remove them from your phone

• Google may require AV1 codec support on all new Android TV devices: Report

• Google app experimenting with new in-app browser on Android

• Nokia C3 gets a new Android 10 Build with December Security update 2020

• Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite is now receiving Android 11

• Many Android 11 users are having trouble getting games to recognize their controllers

• TCL 10L mid-ranger starts receiving promised upgrade to Android 11

• Android 11 begins rolling out for Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5

• 5 Best Ways to Make Memes on Your Phone for Free (Android and iOS)

• Best new mobile games on iOS and Android - January 2021 round-up

• Android not sending pictures to iPhone? Know how to fix the issue

• How to Make Signal Your Default SMS Messaging App on Android

• You're using your Android and Mac's fingerprint reader all wrong

• First details emerge of Android's upcoming app hibernation feature

• Android's upcoming Hibernation feature will reduce the size of apps you are not using

ncmpcpp – featureful ncurses based MPD client inspired by ncmpc

Linux offers a huge array of open source music players. And many of them are high quality. I’ve reviewed the vast majority for LinuxLinks, but I’m endeavoring to explore every free music player in case there’s an undiscovered gem. MPD is a powerful server-side application for playing music. In a home environment, you can connect an MPD server to a Hi-Fi system, and control the server using a notebook or smartphone. You can, of course, play audio files on remote clients. MPD can be started system-wide or on a per-user basis. I’ve covered a fair few MPD clients over the past year or so including Cantata, Ymuse, mpdevil, ympd, myMPD, ampd, ncmpy, and ncmpc. My favorite of them is Cantata although Ymuse is a simple alternative. There’s lots of differences between these front-ends. For example, Cantata uses the Qt widget set, whereas Ymuse and mpdevil offer a GTK front-end. ympd, myMPD and ampd are web-based clients. And ncmpy and ncmpc are terminal-based clients. So there’s something for everyone. ncmpcpp is a terminal-based MPD client with a user interface that seeks inspiration from ncmpc and shares a lot of similarities. But it adds some useful features. Let’s check it out. Before doing so, here’s the obligatory installation section.