Spotify is introducing its audio service in 80 markets across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean in coming days, expanding the company's potential market by some 1 billion people. From a report: The steps announced Monday will nearly double Spotify's geographic footprint and add regions where streaming music is in its infancy. The company already operates in 93 countries or territories. Spotify is seeking to build on its head start as the leading audio service in the West to become the dominant player globally. While the company already has more than 345 million users, fewer than 20% come from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where most of the world's people live. The Stockholm-based company has been slower to expand globally than Netflix or Google's YouTube, partly because of the complexity of securing music rights. But its timing coincides with growing potential in markets across Africa and Asia. Where the music industry was once U.S.-centric, many of the most popular acts in the world right now hail from India, Nigeria, South Korea and Latin America.

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The SpaceX mission will make Hayley Arceneaux the first person with a prosthesis to visit space.

Microsoft is planning to add text predictions to Word in March. From a report: The new feature will work similarly to Google Docs' Smart Compose option, using machine learning to predict what words an author will need to speed up document creation. Microsoft originally announced a beta of text predictions last year, but it's now on the Microsoft 365 roadmap to reach all Word users on Windows next month. Word will highlight grayed-out predictions when users are writing a document, and the suggestions can be accepted using the Tab key or rejected by hitting Escape. Text predictions can also be completely disabled by Word users.

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New video from NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars. From a report: From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover's intense ride to Mars' Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover's touchdown in the crater. A microphone attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the commercial off-the-shelf device survived the highly dynamic descent to the surface and obtained sounds from Jezero Crater on Feb. 20. About 10 seconds into the 60-second recording, a Martian breeze is audible for a few seconds, as are mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface. "For those who wonder how you land on Mars -- or why it is so difficult -- or how cool it would be to do so -- you need look no further," said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. "Perseverance is just getting started, and already has provided some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history. It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet."

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A week after popular audio chatroom app Clubhouse said it was taking steps to ensure user data couldn't be stolen by malicious hackers or spies, at least one attacker has proven the platform's live audio can be siphoned. From a report: An unidentified user was able to stream Clubhouse audio feeds this weekend from "multiple rooms" into their own third-party website, said Reema Bahnasy, a spokeswoman for Clubhouse. While the company says it's "permanently banned" that particular user and installed new "safeguards" to prevent a repeat, researchers contend the platform may not be in a position to make such promises. Users of the invitation-only iOS app should assume all conversations are being recorded, the Stanford Internet Observatory, which was first to publicly raise security concerns on Feb. 13, said late Sunday. "Clubhouse cannot provide any privacy promises for conversations held anywhere around the world," said Alex Stamos, director of the SIO and Facebook's former security chief. Stamos and his team were also able to confirm that Clubhouse relies on a Shanghai-based startup called Agora to handle much of its back-end operations. While Clubhouse is responsible for its user experience, like adding new friends and finding rooms, the platform relies on the Chinese company to process its data traffic and audio production, he said.

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I keep sharing this idea with my friends at Radio Open Source, but I don't think they get it. It's the same advice I'd give to any professional news org. Build more community around your podcast. If you do a weekly show, say on a Thursday, compile a set of emails from listeners and publish it on Tuesday, via email, as a newsletter. That way you get to know who's listening, and we get to know each other. Chris's podcast no doubt has some very interesting listeners, who are they and what do they think, what do they know? They've set up, imho, a too-narrow pipe, necessitated by the technology we used to use for radio. Today's tech makes so much more possible. You just have to want to do it. I don't doubt they could find volunteers to read and curate the emails, so only the really interesting stuff goes out. What made me think of this was last week's show, with a famous English prof, going through how short stories work. It was just a tiny sliver of a scratch of the surface. I want to know much more about this. Also glad to get away at least for a moment of end-of-the-world stories, which tend to dominate the podcast-o-sphere these days.

Lizzie Vann, a famous entrepreneur, did something bold, she bought and renovated Bearsville, a town-like entity that's next to and part of Woodstock, NY. The theater, studio and restaurants at the center of Bearsville were built by Albert Grossman in the 60s and 70s as a place for the musicians he worked with to gather. He died in 1986, eventually Bearsville was abandoned. But now, it's beautiful again, an up to date and very attractive venue, what a great gathering place, as it once was, esp for people who produce audio (eg podcasters). Watch this video to get an idea. A beautiful place. Lovely in summer. An idea, as we come out of the pandemic of course.

An anonymous reader share a report: Spotify is going hi-fi. Well, "HiFi." It's taken longer than competitors like Tidal and Amazon Music, but today, the leading subscription music service announced a new lossless streaming tier that will allow listeners to get the most from their digital music library. The news came at the company's Spotify "Stream On" virtual event. Spotify HiFi will be available later this year and "will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers, which means fans will be able to experience more depth and clarity while enjoying their favorite tracks." Spotify has done small tests of higher-quality streaming in the past, but now it's going to launch the feature more widely -- with the caveat that it'll be available only "in select markets." Pricing is yet to be announced. Higher-quality streaming has apparently been among the top requests from its customers; as it stands today, Spotify tops out at 320kbps audio.

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I love English Muffins, but are they really muffins?

Apple is going to make one of the most powerful types of attacks on iPhones much harder to pull off in an upcoming update of iOS. From a report: The company quietly made a new change in the way it secures the code running in its mobile operating system. The change is in the beta version of the next iOS version, 14.5, meaning it is currently slated to be added to the final release. Several security researchers who specialize in finding vulnerabilities in and crafting exploits for iOS believe this new mitigation will make it much harder for hackers to take control of an iPhone with a technique known as a zero-click (or 0-click) exploit, which allows a hacker to take over an iPhone with no interaction from the target. Apple also told Motherboard it believes the changes will impact 0-click attacks. "It will definitely make 0-clicks harder. Sandbox escapes too. Significantly harder," a source who develops exploits for government customers told Motherboard, referring to "sandboxes" which isolate applications from each other in an attempt to stop code from one program interacting with the wider operating system. Motherboard granted multiple exploit developers anonymity to speak more candidly about sensitive industry issues. Like the name suggests, zero-click attacks allow hackers to break into a target without needing the victim to interact with anything, such as a malicious phishing link. This means that the attack is generally harder for the targeted user to detect. These are generally very sophisticated attacks. These attacks may now become much rarer, according to several security researchers who look for vulnerabilities in iOS.

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There should be a way to opt out of Fox on cable. I realized recently that I've been paying them as much as the most MAGA person in the world, for decades. I want to stop paying them. I want my money back too. Let's organize this. Fox is something that truly needs to be cancelled.

WhatsApp users who do not accept its updated terms and conditions by the 15 May deadline will be unable to receive or send messages until they do so. From a report: Their account will be listed as "inactive". And inactive accounts can be deleted after 120 days. Calls and notifications will still function for "a short while" but, TechCrunch reported, probably only a "few weeks". WhatsApp announced the update in January. And there was a backlash among many users who thought it meant the company was planning to change the amount of data it shared with its parent company, Facebook. It later clarified this was not the case. And the update was aimed at enabling payments to be made to businesses.

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The US space agency has movies its Perseverance robot shot in the approach to last week's touchdown.

Two avalanche warnings have been issued for parts of Washington and Oregon as heavier-than-usual rainfall and snowfall is expected to hit part of the West Coast through Monday. From a report: One of the warnings, a Level 4 on a scale of 5, said there was a high avalanche danger for parts of North Cascades National Park by the Canadian border, extending south through Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and into parts of Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which is about 140 miles southeast of Seattle. The warning was in effect until Monday evening and also covered part of Mount Hood National Forest, which is about 70 miles east of Portland, Ore. A separate, Level 5 warning, indicating extreme danger, also covered smaller parts of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, about 80 miles west of Moses Lake, Wash. That warning, which said heavy snow, strong winds and warming temperatures could create avalanche conditions, was also in effect until Monday evening. The warnings were issued by the Northwest Avalanche Center, which said at least 30 people in the United States had been killed in avalanches so far this season. That's the highest number of fatalities since the 2015-16 season, according to the center. The warnings came as parts of the Pacific Northwest braced for heavier-than-usual precipitation as a result of an "atmospheric river," the National Weather Service said on Twitter. That type of weather event -- "a long river of moisture" that can hover over concentrated areas for a period of time -- is expected to lead to very heavy rainfall or, in higher elevations, intense snowfall, said meteorologists at the Weather Service in Seattle. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described such events as "rivers in the sky." This one extends about 3,000 miles, from the coast of British Columbia to the coast of Hawaii, said Dustin Guy, a Weather Service meteorologist. Though Seattle may see only about half an inch of rain, coastal areas and mountain regions can expect up to three inches, said another Weather Service meteorologist, Matthew Cullen. In high-elevation places, like the Cascade Mountains, one to two feet of snow may fall in elevations above 4,000 feet, he said.

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