From The Verge: Spotify’s continued investment in podcasts appears to be paying off, after the company reported that podcast listening has increased by 200 percent year-on-year in its fourth quarter earnings today. The company says it now has over 700,000 podcasts on its platform, and that over 16 percent of its users now listen to podcasts. Spotify says the amount of users paying for its premium tier increased to 124 million.

From PC Mag: Three years ago Google launched a new look for YouTube, but allowed users to opt-out and continue using the classic interface on desktop. However, from March, that option disappears and everyone will be forced to use the "new experience."

Yesterday, a new Google support page appeared detailing how the older version of the YouTube desktop interface is being discontinued. We don't have a specific date, but the old interface is set to disappear in March, meaning if you are still using next month you'll load up YouTube one day to find a very different experience.

From CNET: Google and YouTube have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that has been scraping billions of photos off the internet and using it to help more than 600 police departments identify people within seconds.

That follows a similar action by Twitter, which sent Clearview AI a cease-and-desist letter for its data scraping in January. The letter from Google-owned YouTube was first seen by CBS News. (Note: CBS News and CNET share the same parent company, ViacomCBS.)

From The Verge: Xiaomi spin-off brand Poco has launched its second phone, the Poco X2. It’s another attempt from the company to produce a high-performance, low-cost phone for the extremely competitive Indian market.

From PC Mag: The European Union is looking into the extent of Google's location tracking again, as concerns have been raised over what is being tracked beyond location.

As reported by Bloomberg, the Irish Data Protection Commission said that "the issues raised within the concerns relate to the legality of Google's processing of location data and the transparency surrounding that processing." Those concerns are focused on Google and other companies collecting information on users' shopping and commuting habits, sexual orientation, and political affiliations.

From CNET: Facebook on Tuesday outlined how it has enhanced parental controls on Messenger Kids, its messaging app for children under 13. It comes months after the social network acknowledged a flaw that let thousands of users join group chats that their parents hadn't approved.

The new features allow parents to check their children's recent contacts and chat history, a log of images sent within chats (along with the ability to delete anything inappropriate), a list of contacts the child has blocked and the ability to remotely log their child out of the app.

From The Verge: Apple has started offering a new repair service where one of its authorized service providers will come to your home or office to repair your device. The service, which was first spotted by MacRumors, can be accessed through Apple’s support site, where under certain circumstances you’ll now see an onsite repair option in addition to the existing instore and mail-in services. “In select locations, onsite service may be available,” Apple’s support page reads.

From PC Mag: Back in April last year, Microsoft unveiled its bigger, better Surface Hub 2S. Since then, we've been waiting for the promised upgrade cartridge to appear, but the cartridge has been canceled.

From CNET: Google Photos is looking to expand its print offering for people who want physical copies of their memories. The company is running a trial for an $8-a-month subscription program that'll send you 10 prints that will be "automatically selected from your last 30 days of photos," 9to5Google reports.