An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Spotify's multimillion-dollar bet on podcasting may not be working out, Citi analysts wrote in a note to clients Friday. "The cadence of Premium gross additions (through 3Q20) and app download data (through 4Q20) do not show any material benefit from recent podcast investments (that began in 2019)," the analysts wrote. The firm downgraded the stock to sell from neutral.

Spotify kicked off its venture into podcasting in early 2019, after acquiring podcast companies Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast. Since then, the company has acquired sports and entertainment news company The Ringer, as well as Megaphone, which will bolster its ad tech business. It also spent what's likely millions gaining the exclusive rights to stream celebrity podcasts, including those from Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian West, Michelle Obama and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The idea was that by bringing exclusive content to the app, the company could strengthen its advertising business as well as bring in Premium subscribers. "To date, we have not seen a material positive inflection in app downloads or Premium subscriptions," the Citi analysts wrote.

"If we were to see a material positive inflection in app downloads or Premium subs (from higher gross adds or materially lower churn), we would alter our view," they added. "But, our fear is that if podcasting doesn't provide a way for Spotify to shift away from music label dependence, the Street may reassess the underlying value of the business. And, that would be bad for Spotify's multiple and equity value."

Early last decade, Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, web designers based in Auckland, New Zealand, were seeking a passion project. Their business, a boutique web design studio called Cactuslab, developed apps and websites for various clients, but they wanted a project of their own that their team could plug away at when there wasn't much else to do. From a report: Buchanan had an idea for a social media site about movies. At the time, he reflected, he used Flickr to share photos and Last.fm to share his taste in music. IMDb was a database; it wasn't, in essence, social. That left a gap in the field. The result was an app and social media network called Letterboxd, which its website describes, aptly, as "Goodreads for film." After it was introduced at the web conference Brooklyn Beta in the fall of 2011, Letterboxd steadily developed a modest but passionate following of film fans eager to track their movie-watching habits, create lists of favorites, and write and publish reviews. In 2020, however, the site's growth was explosive. Letterboxd has seen its user base nearly double since the beginning of the pandemic: They now have more than 3 million member accounts, according to the company, up from 1.7 million at this time last year.

The pandemic has ravaged the movie industry, as theaters have remained mostly shuttered and high-profile would-be blockbusters like "Tenet" have drastically underperformed. But for Letterboxd, all that time at home has been a boon. "We love talking about movies," said Gemma Gracewood, Letterboxd's editor in chief. "And we're talking even more about what we love lately because we're all stuck indoors." In the beginning, Letterboxd mainly attracted film obsessives: hard-core cinephiles, stats fanatics and professional critics looking to house their published work under one roof. Mike D'Angelo, a longtime contributor to Entertainment Weekly and Esquire, used Letterboxd to retroactively log every movie he has seen, by date, since January 1992. In addition to uploading his old reviews to the platform, he uses the site as a kind of diary for more off-the-cuff musings.

For all the personal technology introduced and popularized in 2020 -- upscale fitness bikes, at-home Covid tests, game consoles new and old -- the personal computer lands on the list with a bit of a thud. PCs lack the novelty of other gadgets, but they're practical, essential even, in a year when work, school and social life have come to rely heavily upon them. From a report: While modern, ever more efficient computers are selling better than they have in years, vintage computers -- impractical old devices in need of repairs and out-of-production parts -- are also in demand on sites like eBay. Collectors also flock to message boards, subreddits and Discord servers to buy, sell and trade parts. People are buying these PCs not necessarily for daily use, but for the satisfaction they get from rebuilding them. It's a trend one might chalk up to quarantine boredom, though it's been gaining traction for years.

Retrocomputing, the hobby is called, is hardly just a way to pass the time. Instead, as enthusiasts see it, it's a means of communing with the past. "You get into this mind-set of what it must've been like to be somebody in the late '70s, having spent thousands of dollars on this thing that barely does anything more than a calculator," said Clint Basinger, 34, who runs the YouTube channel Lazy Game Reviews. (The devices do allow retrocomputers to make art and music using software unavailable on new computers and to play 8-bit games, but not much else beyond that.) "It's like a time machine to me," Mr. Basinger added. Before the pandemic, there were several vintage computing conventions located around the United States, to which collectors brought their computers to show off. Attendees bought and traded hardware at these events, as well as meet the friends they've made online.

Not a single one of Google's iOS apps have been updated in almost a month -- an unusually long period for a tech behemoth not to release, at the very least, even a minor bug fix or stability update for one of its dozens of insanely popular iPhone and iPad apps. From a report: And after reviewing the latest release dates for all of Google's iOS apps, one reason for this lack of updates seems more likely than others: It could be related to Apple's new App Store privacy labels. The last time any Google iOS app was updated was on December 7. This includes updates to major Google apps like Google Drive, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Sheets, YouTube Music, Google Duo, Google Authenticator, and Gboard. Why is December 7 a significant date? Because starting on December 8, Apple mandated that any new apps or app updates submitted to the App Store would require the developer to fill out the privacy label information for the app it was submitting. This privacy label reveals exactly what data the app is collecting about the user and how that user data is being used. The label can then be viewed on an app's App Store listing page. The feature is part of Apple's push to make developers be more transparent in the ways they collect and use user data, so users can make more informed choices about the apps they choose to download.

It might have taken more than 20 years, but a game intended for the original PlayStation has at last made its way into the world. Engadget reports: A group of Japanese developers worked on Magic Castle for eight months in the late '90s. They used Sony's Net Yaroze, a system with which hobbyists could make games for the console. The team sent the RPG to several publishers, but most didn't bite. Sony showed interest, but it wanted the developers to ditch their game and move to a different project. The team rejected the offer and later disbanded. And so the unfinished Magic Castle stayed on the shelf for over 20 years. Until now.

One of the developers, who goes by PIROWO, rediscovered the Magic Castle source code a while back. They decided to finish and release it, four console generations later. Magic Castle has some interesting tricks up its sleeve, as EuroGamer notes. It features dynamic music and you can customize the position of the user interface. There are four character classes to choose from and 20 floors with randomized elements to make your way through. You can download the game from the Internet Archive and play it with an emulator.

An anonymous reader writes: So on New Year's Eve, the "jam" rock band Phish re-broadcast their legendary 1995 performance on New Year's Eve -- while playing a game of chess against the audience. (Just as they'd done in 1995 -- although during that tour they'd made two just moves during each show.) In a video promoting this year's event, a chess "historian" remembers "No single band in the '90s was playing better chess against their audience" and shares an alleged conspiracy theory that they were being coached by Garry Kasparov. And yet, "Midway through the second of two nights at Madison Square Garden, the audience takes Phish's queen" -- and the band resigned.

This had left their ongoing audience-versus-band match with a score (one game apiece). So 25 years later, for New Year's Eve, Phish finally staged the great re-match.

"However, just as it was time to begin the game (and as the show kicked off with opener "Punch You In The Eye"), Chess.com, the popular chess site hosting the online game, crashed," reports JamBands.com.
Thinking quickly, the band announced on Twitter that "We're making a quick pivot, 2020 style, to live chess mode. We will be using a moderator from Chess.com who will take feedback on the move within the chat and then complete the audience move."

JamBands.com explains how the long-awaited match finally culminated: In between sets, the broadcast cut to a live zoom call between all four band members, during which they discussed their next moves in the game and chatted. At various points, Gordon and Anastasio picked up guitars, and Gordon had a surreal projection of a chess board floating behind him at times. During the first break, McConnell referenced the technical difficulties. "I'm sorry this didn't work out to plan, but nothing this year did," he said with a laugh.

During the break between the second and third sets, the shenanigans increased, with drummer Jon Fishman following through on an off-hand promise to shave his head. (At first, the other three band members didn't even notice.) Ultimately, the band defeated the audience... Down to just their king, queen and a few pawns, the audience resigned as the band was up a pawn and still had a rook and queen on the board...

Phish raised funds for a charity during the broadcast. "For this final webcast of the year, our beneficiary will be none other than The WaterWheel Foundation itself," the band wrote prior to the stream. "Since 1997, the band and their fans have collaborated on a nationwide charitable endeavor by raising funds and donating the proceeds across the country. This year alone, collectively we have raised and donated nearly $750,000 to 27 different nonprofits during the Dinner And A Movie series. Join us in continuing to support those in need...."
You can watch the entire four-and-a-half-hour webcast on YouTube.

A few hours ago and after years of preparation, amendments to Japan's copyright law came into effect, aiming to criminalize those who download unlicensed manga, magazines, and academic texts from the Internet. From a report: While uploading pirated content has always been illegal, the new law is quite specific in that it criminalizes the downloading of unlicensed content. While that could take place in a simultaneous upload environment such as BitTorrent, it seems most likely that people will obtain content from websites instead. That presents some roadblocks to enforcement so we asked Ina how, from a technical perspective, will the authorities track, obtain evidence, and prosecute people who simply download content (comics, movies, music etc) to their machines but don't distribute? "The authorities shall use digital forensic technologies to track suspects' activities and collect evidence. The details of such technologies have not been publicly available," Masaharu Ina from Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA explained. "There are certain special units specialized in cyber crimes in each prefecture. For example, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own Cyber Crime Control Unit. But the police do not investigate unless the person commits the crime repeatedly, intentionally and maliciously, i.e. innocent light downloaders shall not be prosecuted."

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an average year, Spotify Wrapped is a sharing-optimized novelty hinging on nostalgia for a time that's barely passed. But in 2020, this data mirror instead presented many users with unexpected empirical evidence of their pandemic coping mechanisms: a strange hit parade of ambient music, background noise and calming sound effects that soothed them through an unusually anxious and sleepless time. While thousands of users posted in disbelief about their stress-inflected results, the situation made sense to Liz Pelly, a cultural critic who has written extensively about how Spotify and its competitors work to shape our listening habits. "It says a lot about the ways that corporate streaming services have ingrained themselves into our lives and facilitated music listening becoming more of a background experience," she said.

[...] The findings of some forthcoming research about pandemic coping mechanisms suggest ambient listening may be part of a larger pattern. Pablo Ripolles, a professor at New York University who studies music and the brain, was part of an international team of researchers that surveyed lockdown habits in Italy, Spain and the United States. Of 43 activities mentioned in a survey the team conducted, like cooking, prayer, exercise and sex, listening to or playing music had one of the biggest increases in engagement during lockdown, as well as the highest number of respondents who said it was the activity that helped them the most.

Spotify has joined the ranks of streaming services like SoundCloud and YouTube as a hub for bootlegs of popular songs. From a report: With obscured titles like "Jocelyn Flores but you're in the bathroom at a party" by eraylandin, a new take on XXXTentacion's popular "Jocelyn Flores," and "Dead To Me -- Kali Uchis (slowed + bass boosted)" by user Unreal sounds, a rework of Uchis' popular track from her 2018 album "Isolation," these underground remixers have chosen to upload their creations as podcast episodes, hoping to circumvent copyright infringement detection by the platform. Using simple keywords and terms like "chopped and screwed," "slowed and reverbed," "remix," and "mashup" in Spotify's search bar, users can track down bootlegged reworks of songs by many top artists which live on Spotify's podcast hub. Late rapper Juice WRLD, who still commands a cult following, has a full 'podcast series' dedicated to revealing his unreleased songs, like user No Si's podcast titled, "Instagram @xricardol.tx." The podcast contains 'episodes' like "Sugarfish (Leaked)," a song Juice WRLD wrote with The Chainsmokers that was never officially released, despite online rumors that the collaboration would become available in December 2019. These podcasts, like "Instagram @xricardol.tx," only contain the audio of specific songs and almost always list the tracks as individual episodes. There is nothing that resembles the typical characteristics of a podcast.

Amazon announced Wednesday that it's acquiring podcasting company Wondery, expanding its catalog of original audio content. From a report: As part of the deal, Wondery will join Amazon Music, the e-commerce giant's music streaming business. Amazon Music in September added podcasts to its platform, looking to carve out a share of the increasingly competitive podcasting market, in which Spotify, Apple and others have gained ground. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Wondery, founded in 2016, has produced some of the most popular podcasts in recent years, including true crime series like "Dirty John," "Dr. Death" and "Over My Dead Body." The podcast producer and network says it counts more than 10 million unique listeners each month. WSJ reported earlier this month that Amazon was valuing Wondery at over $300 million in advanced stages of talks before the acquisition.

Engadget reports: Electrek notes that Tesla has released its promised holiday update, and the centerpiece appears to be a Boombox mode that pumps media outside as long as you have a recent-enough EV with a pedestrian speaker system, like later Model 3 production runs...

Other updates include a smarter Scheduled Departure that preconditions the battery and cabin without plugging in, larger driving visualizations (helpful for Autopilot) and at-a-glance views of the number of open stalls at Superchargers.
Electrek's report highlights some additional features: Earlier this week, we reported that it included 3 new in-car video games, but we now have the full release notes with all the details... "You can also customize the sound that your car makes when you press the horn, drive the car or when your car is moving with Summon. Select an option from the dropdown menu or insert your own USB device and save up to five custom sounds."

Since 1955 the U.S./Canadian operation that monitors North American airspace with radars and satellite to maintain air sovereignty has also, at Christmas time, been tracking Santa.

And this year their trackers received additional support from the U.S. Space Command, a joint-military command drawing its units from five military service branches (including the U.S. Space Force). That command "launched a new reindeer tracker to pinpoint the exact location of Santa's sleigh at any given time during the night," according to NPR's Morning Edition, with General James Dickinson telling them the equipment's official name: Rudolph Infrared Tracking System. "We made some upgrades this year."

And that was just the beginning, reports The Hill: Santa knows astronauts need presents, too, and made his first known visit to the International Space Station to deliver them this year.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa's Christmas Eve journey every year, depicted in a tweet Santa arriving at the International Space Station on Christmas Eve...

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared Santa for the flight to space on Wednesday, providing him "for the first time ever" with a special commercial space license.
The astronauts aboard the ISS recorded a special Christmas video this year. (And a new article in Business Insider expores how astronauts on the space station have celebrated Christmas over the years.)

And NORAD is even maintaining a special web site at NORADSanta.org which not only let visitors track Santa, but through December 31st will also offer an arcade with Christmas-themed videogames, a selection of music by the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, and even a gift shop where you can buy "Santa and NORAD gear," including NORAD hoodies and tote bags.

Though a pop-up window warns visitors that "Clicking through to this next website does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Defense or NORAD of any product or service."

Ananda Sharma, founder of the app Gyroscope, describes to a local TV station the monolith he discovered during a Christmas-morning jog under a candy-cane red sunrise.

"I think I smelled it before I saw it..."

He spotted a double rainbow and wanted to peek at that too. At first, he thought the monolith was "a big post," but as he got closer, he smelled the gingerbread scent wafting toward him. The monolith is standing in panels separated by icing...

"It made me smile.
SFGate spoke to another eye-witness: Alexis Gallagher also happened upon the sweet monolith at about 8:25 a.m. Friday morning, confirming it was made of gingerbread, frosting and gumdrops... "I had a closer look and it looks like there's a plywood skeleton underneath, but I try not to dwell on such mundane realities."

Gallagher added that he had to "stop my dog from nibbling on it..."
When reached for an official comment, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department General Manager told the TV news reporter that the gingerbread monolith "Looks like a great spot to get baked."

Then he added more sternly that "we will leave it up until the cookie crumbles."

But their article notes it raises several questions for Bay Area residents: Did Christmas-happy aliens beam it down from above? Did some rogue artificial intelligence escape a nearby Google campus, and, driven mad by our plethora of Christmas music...design an art piece to brighten our days? And just how expensive is it to rent a highrise apartment within its crumbly, ginger-pungent walls...?
SFGate's report ends with Ananda Sharma noting that it began raining in San Francisco at 11:30 a.m., adding, "not sure what happens to gingerbread in the rain but it probably isn't good."

Square, the digital-payment company run by Jack Dorsey, has held talks to acquire the music-streaming service Tidal as part of a push to diversify, according to a person familiar with the situation. From a report: Dorsey has discussed a potential deal with Jay-Z, the rapper and music mogul who acquired Tidal for $56 million in early 2015, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The negotiations may not result in a transaction.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden's inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world's most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House counsel's office has had documents related to Ulbricht's case under review, and Trump was recently made aware of the situation and the pleas of the Silk Road founder's allies. Two of these sources say the president has at times privately expressed some sympathy for Ulbricht's situation and has been considering his name, among others, for his next round of commutations and pardons before the Jan. 20 inauguration of his 2020 Democratic opponent.

It is unclear if Trump has arrived at a final decision yet, but Ulbricht has gained some influential backers in the president's political and social orbit. Behind the scenes, he has the support of some presidential advisers, as well as criminal justice reform advocates with close ties to the administration and Trump family, including Alice Johnson, according to people with knowledge of the matter. "I've had documents forwarded to my contacts in the White House as early as February," activist Weldon Angelos, a former music producer and ex-federal inmate, said in a brief interview on Tuesday evening. "In the beginning of the year, [Ulbricht's] family had reached out to us for our support, and my organization and I have endorsed his full commutation, and I am hopeful that President Trump will commute his sentence in its entirety. This case has perhaps more support than I've seen in any case of this kind."

Todd Haselton from CNBC reviews Apple Fitness+, with some thoughts on how it compares with Peloton's similar app. Here's an excerpt from his report: Apple's subscription fitness app, Fitness+, launches Monday. I've been using it for the past several days and I think it offers a nice variety of workouts that people will like. You need an Apple Watch to take the prerecorded exercise classes, which are available on iPhones, iPads and the Apple TV. It's a smart way for Apple to make the Apple Watch even stickier. If people get really into the fitness classes, like I have, it will be yet another way Apple keeps people locked in to its ecosystem of products. Why buy another phone, tablet or watch if you really like Fitness+? It also comes at a great time, when people aren't in gyms and are at home looking for ways to exercise.

Like other fitness apps, including Peloton's, which starts at $12.99 a month for classes that don't need the company's connected spin bike, you don't need anything to use it. But, you'll get more out of it if you have any indoor cycle, treadmill, rowing machine or free weights, since some of the classes require equipment. But you don't need anything special. I've been riding a hand-me-down exercise bike, for example. Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. It's also part of the Premier Apple One plan, which costs $29.95 per month, and includes other Apple products like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and extra iCloud storage bundled together at a discount.

Amazon today rolled out Live Translation, a new Alexa feature that aims to assist with conversations between people who speak two different languages by leveraging speech recognition and machine translation technology. Amazon says that Live Translation can interpret between a number of dialects in real time, including English and French, Spanish, Hindi, Brazilian Portuguese, German, or Italian. From a report: The pandemic appears to have supercharged voice app usage, which was already on an upswing. According to a study by NPR and Edison Research, the percentage of voice-enabled device owners who use commands at least once a day rose between the beginning of 2020 and the start of April. Just over a third of smart speaker owners say they listen to more music, entertainment, and news from their devices than they did before, and owners report requesting an average of 10.8 tasks per week from their assistant this year compared with 9.4 different tasks in 2019. And according to a new report from Juniper Research, consumers will interact with voice assistants on 8.4 billion devices by 2024. Launching Live Translation requires asking Alexa on an Amazon Echo device to translate one of the supported languages. The command "Alexa, translate French" will translate between English and French, for example, while "Alexa, stop" will end the translation session. The Echo will beep during the session to indicate when to speak in the other language, and Echo devices with a screen like the Echo Show will display a transcription of the conversation. Users can take pauses between sentences, and Alexa will automatically detect the language in which they're speaking and translate each side of the conversation.

"Don a headset which places a sensor on the back of your head, and it'll detect your brainwaves which can then be translated into digital actions," writes Engadget.

VentureBeat reports that NextMind "has started shipping its real-time brain computer interface Dev Kit for $399." The device translates brain signals into digital commands, allowing you to control computers, AR/VR headsets, and IoT devices (lights, TVs, music, games, and so on) with your visual attention.

Paris-based NextMind is part of a growing number of startups building neural interfaces that rely on machine learning algorithms. There are invasive devices like the one from Elon Musk's Neuralink, which in August revealed a prototype showing readings from a pig's brain using a coin-shaped device implanted under the skull. There are also noninvasive devices like the electromyography wristband that translates neuromuscular signals into machine-interpretable commands from Ctrl-labs, which Facebook acquired in September 2019. NextMind is developing a noninvasive device — an electroencephalogram (EEG) worn on the back of your head, where your brain's visual cortex is located.

When we spoke with NextMind CEO Sid Kouider last year, he promised the kits would begin shipping in Q2 2020. Then the pandemic hit. "We had about three, four months of delays due to COVID-19, but not more than that in terms of production," Kouider told VentureBeat. The company shipped "hundreds" of Dev Kits in November after producing its first thousand units. Another thousand units are set to be produced next month.

Jerry Rivers shares a report from TechCrunch, adding: "...and it took the music service seven months to notice." From the report: In a data breach notification filed with the California attorney general's office, the music streaming giant said the data exposed "may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify." The company did not name the business partners, but added that Spotify "did not make this information publicly accessible." The company says the vulnerability existed as far back as April 9 but wasn't discovered until November 12. It didn't say what the vulnerability was or how user account data became exposed.

"We have conducted an internal investigation and have contacted all of our business partners that may have had access to your account information to ensure that any personal information that may have been inadvertently disclosed to them has been deleted," the letter read.

Republican senator Thom Tillis has introduced a proposal to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence. It's currently being included in a must-pass spending bill. Kotaku reports: Currently, such violations, no matter how severe, are considered misdemeanors rather than felonies, because the law regards streaming as a public performance. With Twitch currently in the crosshairs of the music industry, such a change would turn up the heat on streamers and Twitch even higher -- perhaps to an untenable degree. Other platforms, like YouTube, would almost certainly suffer as well. According to [Politico offshoot Protocol], House and Senate Judiciary Committees have agreed to package the streaming felony proposal with other controversial provisions that include the CASE act, which would establish a new court-like entity within the U.S. Copyright Office to resolve copyright disputes, and the Trademark Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more flexibility to crack down on illegitimate claims from foreign countries.

It's not difficult to see why Tillis would push a proposal that benefits big companies in the entertainment industry to the detriment of regular people; The American Prospect points out that in the past couple years, Tillis' campaign committee and leadership received donations totaling out to well over $100,000 from PACs with ties to the Motion Picture Association, Sony Pictures, Universal Music Group, Comcast & NBC Universal, The Internet and Television Association, Salem Media Group, and Warner Music, among many others.