Space data on Brazil’s rainforests; Adele commands, Spotify says ‘anything for you’; plus, Sateesh Andra on investing in deep tech

Brazil has seen an alarming acceleration in the destruction of its Amazon rain forests, fresh data from the country’s National Institute for Space Research shows, Deutsche Welle reports. The data shows a rapid reversal in the slowdown in the rate of deforestation—increasing by 22 percent in just the last year—in the south American nation, ever since president Jair Bolsonaro came to office in 2019, according to the report. America lags China and Russia in hypersonic missile technology and it has some “catching up to do very quickly,” according to a top US Space Force official, Politico reports. The US is “not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” General David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, said during his appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Politico reports. Both China and Russia have recently tested hypersonic missiles that fly at least five times the speed of sound and can glide and navigate to targets in a way that makes current radar technology powerless in detecting them. Microsoft is adding shopping and security features to its Edge browser ahead of the holiday shopping season in the US and Europe, the company said in a recent blog post. Shopping related features include the ability to keep track of price changes—and get alerts—on products that users have browsed recently. And Microsoft is piloting ‘easy update’ a feature that lets you update your passwords quickly. Adele Adkins, the British singer-songwriter of hits such as ‘Someone Like You’ and ‘When We Were Young’, has coaxed Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming service, to drop the shuffle option that used to be the default when you tapped on its play button, BBC reports. People should listen to her songs in the order that she intended, Adele tweeted, after Spotify pushed the shuffle feature inside a menu, making playing songs in order the default. ‘Anything for you’, Spotify tweeted back. (2:40) Interview: Sateesh Andra, managing director at Endiya Partners, talks about his hopes for India’s nascent deep tech sector Sateesh Andra is an entrepreneur-turned-investor with extensive experience across multiple funds, backing tech ventures at storied firms like DFJ, and now at his own VC firm Endiya Partners, where he is a managing director. In today’s tech conversation, the onus is on the investors to back deep-tech founders in India, and on the entrepreneurs to build those playbooks, Sateesh says.