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Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Games

Catan Stories: Legend of the Sea Robbers

Android Police coverage: Asmodee Digital's Catan Stories: Legend of the Sea Robbers has landed on the Play Store

Catan Stories: Legend of the Sea Robbers isn't a board game as you might think but a text-based visual novel that takes advantage of the story surrounding the latest expansion for the Catan physical board game.

30 new and notable Android games from the last week (11/8/17 - 11/14/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Amazon and Google's relationship over the past few years has been nothing short of an epic love-war popcorn-worthy chess battle. Amazon removes Chromecasts from its store, Google disables YouTube on Echo Shows, Amazon removes the Prime Video app from the Play Store then for some reason returns it. Now in one surprisingly nice move, Amazon has added Chromecast support to its Music app, maybe finally realizing that locking users out of certain functions or devices doesn't do it any good.

Amazon Music app adds Chromecast support was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

A month ago, version 7.14 of the Google app included the first references to Google Assistant for tablets. That functionality is likely nearing a launch as the latest beta of the Google app now lists Assistant as available for the category of larger devices.

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Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Featured Product

Nekteck: Type C USB Cables

Today's roundup is presented by Nekteck.

18 new and notable Android apps from the last week (11/7/17 - 11/13/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

A truck driver in Vietnam parked his vehicle too close to the train tracks. The person who shot the video made this remark on YouTube: "When walking my dog on the street, I saw a train coming up to the truck parked by the trail. However, the truck driver sitting on the pavement opposite to the trail didn't do anything when hearing the horn from the train. As a result, the truck was destroyed by the train."

Good thing he wasn't in it!

Monday is hard to Monday.

I've only had 2 cats I've ever liked. Both of them were Maine Coons.

Dillinger and I were brought together when I saw a beautiful litter of cats for sale at a pet shop mere steps away from a friends apartment. I was supposed to be helping that friend move, but his apartment was filthy and he never cleaned up after his birds. I decided to buy a kitten and go home. Dillinger was a Maine Coon. He thought he was a dog. I had lucked into the best cat ever.

I do not know what happened to Dillinger. Years later, Willie, a cat my then-wife had brought into our combined home was torturing pobrecito Dill and creating an untenable situation. No one would take our mean cat, but my then-wife had no problem finding a home for such a beautiful cat as Dillinger. I hope he made out well. I will always feel bad about that but we didn't want to kill .

I never wanted another cat! I still do not. At a time I was looking for a new dog, my daughter insisted on a WHITE FLUFFY CAT TO CUDDLE IN HER SLEEP. Always the sucker, I called Maine Coon Adoptions in Oakland, CA. They found us a loveable, suped-up hepcat from the Oaktown. Only problem was my daughter failed to mention she NEEEDED a girl cat and a boy could not be named PRINCESS. She named him Heart, cause that is masculine enough. Heart is one hepcat. It is I who gets cuddles in their sleep, tho I think he's checking to see if it is time to eat my corpse.

Needed some cute this AM.

A sleeping baby in a blue sweatsuit sculpted by Duane Hanson is concerning New Yorkers while it’s being displayed in an auction house’s storefront window.

Passersby believe the work “Baby in a Carriage, 1983” is a real baby being left unattended, according to Reuters. Heritage Auctions tells Reuters people stop for a moment and question if it’s real all day long. Some even enter the building and notify the staff.

What they don’t realize is that they can actually bid on it it until Nov. 30. The estimated price of the polyvinyl baby ranges from $80,000 to $120,000.

Hanson, who died in 1996, was known for sculpting hyperrealistic people engaged in everyday life. This particular piece is said be sculpted after his son.

The price seems a little steep for a synthetic baby, but considering the costs of hospital bills and raising a child till adulthood, it may be the safer financial investment.

They appear to be having more fun than most of us.

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Sometimes the world just needs puppies.

All the feels on this one. There's not much info on this video but it seems this dog was separated from its human companion for three long years. Once they were brought together, you'll see that the dog was shy to engage at first but once it got a whiff and a look, it was a joyful reunion!

(Digg)

Battery life is always the weak link in our smartphone-centric world, and you often find yourself baffled by the reasons why your battery drains way too fast one day and then seems to last forever the second day. Android has been trying to remedy that for many and many versions, and the latest Android 8.1 Developer Preview adds one more weapon to your arsenal in the fight against battery drainage. It won't help you win the war, but it will more easily answer the question of which app has been misbehaving and how.

Android 8.1 feature spotlight: Android will highlight battery draining apps and what they're doing was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

From a nature show on BBC 2, here's the story of a Honey Badger who cannot be confined! He’s smarter than Houdini.

Words With Friends 2 - Word Game was recently launched on the Play Store as the follow-up sequel to Zynga's popular Scrabble clone Words With Friends. It is something of an odd release as it is more an expansion of the original gameplay than a true sequel. This luckily means that you can carry over your account and any game you are currently playing in the original to this new release without a hitch.

Zynga launches 'Words With Friends 2' with new social features, a solo play mode, and 50,000 new words was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

In recent versions, Chrome has implmented various measures to increase security and ensure a good user experience, like preventing content from autoplaying. The latest defends against malicious redirect behavior and will be rolling out in the coming months.

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In 1914, Canadian Army veterinarian Harry Colebourn was traveling to the Western Front when he met an orphaned bear cub in an Ontario railway station. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the adventures of Winnie the bear, including her fateful meeting with A.A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin.

We'll also marvel at some impressive finger counting and puzzle over an impassable bridge.

Show notes

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Facebook Messenger users in the United States have been able to send money to each other from within the app for quite some time, and that same functionality is now finally making its way to other territories. If you're lucky enough to live in the UK or France, the Send Money feature should be available to you soon, rolling out over the next few weeks.

It's unclear why it's taken the Facebook Messenger team more than two years to launch these P2P payments outside the US, but at least they're here now.

Facebook Messenger payments are now available in the UK and France was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Textile artist Victoria Villasana breathes new life into black and white photos by sewing vividly-colored yarns and threads onto them. Amy Winehouse, Nina Simone, and legal tender all get the treatment. (more…)

Manitoba YouTuber samuraiguitarist, aka Steve-san Onotera, brings us this unusual cover of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Keep it in your back pocket for when you need to rickroll someone in the most "Spaghetti Western" way possible.

(reddit)

Samsung seems to be angling towards a different type of ad campaign: one that makes fun of competitors' devices. We first saw this (indirectly) with Samsung's 'Screen Reviews' commercial, but this latest 'Growing Up' takes the roasts to a whole other level. Several generations of the iPhone are highlighted here, and it's really very well done.

The video follows a young man from the iPhone 3G's launch in 2007 all the way to the iPhone X's launch ten years later.

Samsung's latest ad makes direct jabs at multiple generations of the iPhone, and it's pretty funny was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Chef Anthony Bourdain hosts this interesting documentary on the massive amount of wasted food in our current supply chain, and how it could be diverted from landfills to feed humans, animals, and plants. (more…)

More Than Just Parks is a wonderful channel that showcases the incredible natural beauty of America's national parks. Their latest video celebrates Rocky Mountain National Park. (more…)

The original Monument Valley won our hearts in 2014 with its clever puzzles and beautiful low-poly design. Now, the sequel has launched on Android as promised. The game can be yours for $4.99—no in-app purchases, ads, or timers.

Like the original, Monument Valley 2 uses clever level design with interactive elements that change how objects are connected. Many of the puzzles are based on Escher-esque forced perspective, so if two things appear to be connected, they are connected.

Monument Valley 2 is available on Android today for $4.99 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL launched with a very neat offline music recognition feature, with Google noting at the October 4th event that general recognition features would be coming soon to Assistant on other devices. Today, that feature is beginning to rollout.

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A fantastic behind-the-scenes clip from Blue Planet II:

The Blue Planet II team dive to over 700 meters to see what happens to a whale carcass on the seabed. Whilst filming sharks as they feast, the sharks start to take a worrying interest in the submarine!

It’s not unusual for private medical services to offer the option of a video consultation with a doctor – for a fee. But Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is piloting a scheme which lets 3.5 million patients get access to video consultations at no cost …

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