Ford unveiled Wednesday the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck that is a critical piece of the company's $22 billion investment into electrification. TechCrunch reports: Ford had a challenging gig with the F-150 Lightning. The truck would need everything that has made its gas-powered counterpart the best-selling vehicle in North America as well as new benefits that come from going electric. That means torque, performance, towing capability and the general layout has to meet the needs of its customers, many of whom use it for commercial purposes. The vehicle specs suggest that Ford has delivered on the torque and power, while keeping the same cab and bed dimensions as its gas counterpart. [...] Will it convert or will the F-150 Lightning attract a whole new group of customers? It's a question that won't be answered until it comes to market in spring 2022.

The F-150 Lightning will be offered in four trims, which includes the base, XLT, Lariat and Platinum series, and two battery options. The truck, which has an aluminum alloy body, is powered by two in-board electric motors, comes standard with four-wheel drive, and has an independent rear suspension. Ford is only releasing two prices at the moment. The base version will be priced at $39,974 before any federal or state tax credits, while the mid-series XLT model will start at $52,974. According to the reservations site, a fully loaded Lightning will go for $90,474. All of these prices exclude the destination fees and taxes.

The standard battery range truck delivers a targeted 426 horsepower and 775 pound-feet of torque. The F-150 Lightning equipped with the extended-range battery helps push the horsepower to 563 (or 420 kW) and has the same torque, which Ford says is the most of any F-150 ever. The vehicle's battery has a targeted range of 230 miles in the standard and pops up to 300 miles in the extended version. One question remains: how will the range be affected by towing a boat or trailer? [...] Ford notes that the new frame on the truck uses the strongest steel ever put in an F-150 frame and supports a maximum 2,000-pound payload and up to 10,000-pound towing capacity. Other features include a 15.5-inch infotainment system, support for Ford's hands-free driving feature called Blue Cruise, and 9.6 kW of back up power, which the company says can provide energy to a home during a blackout for up to 10 days.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's urban innovation organization, has announced the launch of Pebble, a vehicle sensor that's designed to help manage parking in cities by providing real-time parking and curb availability data. Here's how it works: Small spherical sensors are stuck to the ground on parking spaces to note the absence or presence of a vehicle. Then solar-powered gateway hardware, which can be strapped easily to street poles, uses IoT to connect the sensor to the cloud through the cellular network. The data is then viewed and analyzed by real estate developers, parking operators or municipal agencies via a dashboard. Pebble doesn't use cameras or collect identifying information about a person or vehicle, and is touting a "privacy preserving" approach.

Between 9% and 56% of traffic, and all the pollution that comes with it, is caused by people who are cruising for parking. Pebble says its real-time parking availability can be integrated into navigation apps, like Google Maps, through an API to help users spend less time circling the block. "Real-time parking information can also alert would-be drivers when spaces are limited before they even leave home, leading them to use alternative travel modes, such as park-and-ride transit or ferries," wrote Sidewalk Labs' senior creative technologist, Nick Jonas, in a blog post announcing the launch. "For example, a smart parking program at a BART park-and-ride station reduced driving by a monthly average of nearly 10 miles per person -- and even shortened commutes."

Staff at the world's largest FOSS IRC network, Freenode, have resigned following a "hostile takeover." "Seeking to take control of the Freenode IRC network after acquiring Freenode Limited as their live conference organization is reported to be Andrew Lee, the founder of VPN service Private Internet Access (PIA)," reports Phoronix. Aaron Jones, a member of the staff since March 2019, details the sequence of events. Another staff member has provided additional details. Slashdot reader rastos1 writes: As it is now known, the Freenode IRC network has been taken over by a "narcissistic Trumpian wannabe korean royalty bitcoins millionaire," [writes (former) staff member Marco d'Itri]. "To make a long story short, the former freenode head of staff secretly 'sold' the network to this person even if it was not hers to sell, and our lawyers have advised us that there is not much that we can do about it without some of us risking financial ruin."

Fuck you Christel, lilo's life work did not deserve this. What you knew as Freenode after 12:00 UTC of May 19 will be managed by different people. Freenode Limited has responded to the backlash, writing: "Given the millions I have injected into freenode thus far, the fact I own it and the fact that I protected the freenode staff with professional legal work and funding when they needed help and they could still lie and slander like this... says a lot about who they are. It saddens me that christel was forced out, and I wish she'd feel safe returning. I'm frustrated that tomaw's hostile takeover seems likely to succeed, in spite of all. I simply want freenode to keep on being a great IRC network, and to support it financially and legally as I have for a long time now."

Google developers are confident they can build a commercial-grade quantum computer by 2029. Engadget reports: Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the plan during today's I/O stream, and in a blog post, quantum AI lead engineer Erik Lucero further outlined the company's goal to "build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer" within the decade. Executives also revealed Google's new campus in Santa Barbara, California, which is dedicated to quantum AI. The campus has Google's first quantum data center, hardware research laboratories, and the company's very own quantum processor chip fabrication facilities.

"As we look 10 years into the future, many of the greatest global challenges, from climate change to handling the next pandemic, demand a new kind of computing," Lucero said. "To build better batteries (to lighten the load on the power grid), or to create fertilizer to feed the world without creating 2 percent of global carbon emissions (as nitrogen fixation does today), or to create more targeted medicines (to stop the next pandemic before it starts), we need to understand and design molecules better. That means simulating nature accurately. But you can't simulate molecules very well using classical computers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and several states filed a lawsuit against Frontier Communications on Wednesday, accusing them of lying about internet speeds, in one of the first cases the regulator has overseen since net neutrality rules were repealed. In the complaint, the agency and state attorneys general said Frontier advertised internet via a digital subscriber line (DSL) at certain speeds to consumers but then failed to deliver.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The FTC was joined on the lawsuit by attorneys general from Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. District attorneys' offices from two California counties also joined the complaint to represent California. The complaint said Frontier has more than 3 million U.S. internet service subscribers, offering internet via DSL to some 1.3 million consumers in 25 states, many in rural areas. Frontier has advertised different tiers of speeds to consumers, including an August 2018 mailer that offered download speeds of 12 megabits per second for $12, the complaint said. But, the complaint said, since 2015, Frontier has "in numerous instances" promised certain speeds for its DSL internet access but did not deliver. "Indeed, network limits imposed by Frontier prevent numerous consumers from receiving DSL Internet service at speeds corresponding to the tiers of service they pay for," the complaint said. A spokesperson for Frontier, which is emerging from bankruptcy protection, said that the lawsuit was "without merit." "Frontier's DSL Internet speeds have been clearly and accurately articulated, defined and described in the company's marketing materials and disclosures," the spokesperson said.

Chrome, at least in its experimental Canary version on Android (and only for users in the U.S.), is getting an interesting update in the coming weeks that brings back RSS, the once-popular format for getting updates from all the sites you love in Google Reader and similar services. From a report: In Chrome, users will soon see a 'Follow' feature for sites that support RSS and the browser's New Tab page will get what is essentially a (very) basic RSS reader -- I guess you could almost call it a "Google Reader." Now we're not talking about a full-blown RSS reader here. The New Tab page will show you updates from the sites you follow in chronological order, but it doesn't look like you can easily switch between feeds, for example. It's a start, though.

"Today, people have many ways to keep up with their favorite websites, including subscribing to mailing lists, notifications and RSS. It's a lot for any one person to manage, so we're exploring how to simplify the experience of getting the latest and greatest from your favorite sites directly in Chrome, building on the open RSS web standard," Janice Wong, Product Manager, Google Chrome, writes in today's update. "Our vision is to help people build a direct connection with their favorite publishers and creators on the web." A Google spokesperson told me that the way the company has implemented this is to have Google crawl RSS feeds "more frequently to ensure Chrome will be able to deliver the latest and greatest content to users in the Following section on the New Tab page."

After IFA became one of an extremely small number of in-person trade shows in 2020, the Consumer & Home Electronics GmbH is pulling the plug on this year's event. Initially planned for September 3-7 at the Messe in Berlin, the large-scale consumer electronics trade show is going on hiatus. From a report: Among other concerns, organizer are citing the emergency of Covid-19 variants and concerns around the speed and consistency with which vaccines have been rolled out globally. "Ultimately, several key global health metrics did not move as fast in the right direction as had been hoped for -- from the rapid emergence of new COVID-19 variants, for example in South Asia, to continued uncertainties about the speed of the rollout of vaccination programmes around the world," the organization said in a press release.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman [Cathy McMorris Rodgers] from Washington confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai with a list of statistics: From 2011 to 2018, rates of teen depression increased by more than 60%, and from 2009 to 2015, emergency room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls tripled. "It's a battle for their development. It's a battle for their mental health -- and ultimately a battle for their safety," McMorris Rodgers told the tech leaders. But when she pointed a question specifically to Zuckerberg, about whether he acknowledged a connection between children's declining mental health and social media platforms, he demurred. "I don't think that the research is conclusive on that," replied Zuckerberg.

It's a position that he and his company, which is working on expanding its offerings to even younger children, have held for years. But mental health researchers whom NPR spoke with disagree. They describe an increasingly clear correlation between poor mental health outcomes and social media use, and they worry that Facebook (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp) in particular may be muddying the waters on that connection to protect its public image. "The correlational evidence showing that there is a link between social media use and depression is pretty definitive at this point," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University. "The largest and most well-conducted studies that we have all show that teens who spend more time on social media are more likely to be depressed or unhappy."

Correlation is not causation, and one area of further study is whether greater social media usage leads to poor mental health outcomes or whether those who are depressed and unhappy are drawn to spend more time on social media. But researchers also worry that not enough government funding is going toward getting objective data to answer these sorts of questions. Facebook also almost certainly knows more than it has publicly revealed about how its products affect people. Zuckerberg told McMorris Rodgers that the company has specifically researched the mental health effects Facebook has on children, but when McMorris Rodgers' staff followed up the company declined to share any of its research.

"I believe that they have done the research. They're not being transparent," McMorris Rodgers told NPR in an interview. "They seem to be more concerned about their current business model, and they have become very wealthy under their current business model. But the fact of the matter is we're seeing more and more evidence ... that their current business model is harming our kids."

The same technology that powers Google Duplex to call businesses and make appointments for you is being used to help you automatically change your password to a website that's been compromised in a security breach. TechCrunch reports: This new feature will start to roll out slowly to Chrome users on Android in the U.S. soon (with other countries following later), assuming they use Chrome's password-syncing feature. It's worth noting that this won't work for every site just yet. As a Google spokesperson told us, "the feature will initially work on a small number of apps and websites, including Twitter, but will expand to additional sites in the future."

Today, Google and Samsung announced that they are merging Wear OS and Tizen in an effort to better compete against Apple's watchOS. "The resulting platform is currently being referred to simply as 'Wear,' though that might not be the final name," notes The Verge. From the report: Benefits of the joint effort include significant improvements to battery life, 30 percent faster loading times for apps, and smoother animations. It also simplifies life for developers and will create one central smartwatch OS for the Android platform. Google is also promising a greater selection of apps and watch faces than ever before. "All device makers will be able to add a customized user experience on top of the platform, and developers will be able to use the Android tools they already know and love to build for one platform and ecosystem," Google's Bjorn Kilburn wrote in a blog post.

Wired has more details on what's to come, including the tidbit that Samsung will stick with its popular rotating bezel on future devices -- but it's finished making Tizen-only smartwatches. There will also be a version of Google Maps that works standalone (meaning without your phone nearby) and a YouTube Music app that supports offline downloads. Oh, and Spotify will support offline downloads on Wear smartwatches, as well. Samsung confirmed that its next Galaxy Watch will run on this unified platform. And future "premium" Fitbit devices will also run the software.

An anonymous reader writes: NBN Co has been forced to replace 10,000 faulty broadband devices in homes across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney after residents reported the technology was frequently struck by lightning and in one instance led to blue sparks flying out of a modem in a family's home. About 20,000 of the more than 32,000 homes in the Blue Mountains and Emu Plains have been connected to the national broadband network via fibre-to-the-curb (FttC) technology, which was set up under the Coalition government's multi-technology mixed model. That means fibre runs all the way to the edge of the property and connects to the home via the existing copper wire lead-ins from the curb.

Electrical storms in the Blue Mountains have wreaked havoc on the boxes that link the fibre to the copper. When lightning strikes the distribution boxes outside the house, sparks are sent flying up the copper lines, in turn frying the modems in people's homes. Guardian Australia understands the company has replaced 10,000 -- or half -- of devices inside the home that the company has identified as being prone to be affected by lightning. A spokesman for NBN Co confirmed that the company had found issues with the devices in areas of hard ground like sandstone. Sandstone is more resistant to electrical conduction than other soft earths. He said the devices fail in a safe way but the company nevertheless is issuing replacement devices people can install themselves. "We are now deploying a strengthened [device] that is much less likely to fail in these conditions.

During a visit to Ford's Rouge factory in Dearborn, Michigan on Tuesday, President Joe Biden got a chance to test drive Ford's all-electric new Lightning pickup truck. CNET reports: What was the presidential verdict after taking the Lightning for a spin? "This sucker's quick!" he exclaimed, adding that he'd buy one. A reporter asked how quick it was, and Biden said it did 0-60 mph in 4.3 or 4.4 seconds, looking to a Ford employee for clarification, who quickly declined to comment. The president then did a hard launch from a stop right in front of the press pool, accelerating to 80 mph. The Ford F-150 Lightning is officially set to debut on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. PT (9:30 p.m. ET).

At Google I/O 2021 today, Google confirmed that Android 12 is getting a huge new design. Ars Technica reports: Google calls the new design "Material You," and just like in the leaks, it's a UI that changes colors like a chameleon. For now, this design will only show up in Google Pixels, but Google says it will roll out across the ecosystem to the web, Chrome OS, smart displays, cars, watches, tablets, and every other Google form factor. The new interface is powered by a "color extraction" API that can pull the colors out of your wallpaper and apply them to the UI. This sounds exactly like the Palette API that was introduced in Android 5.0 (along with the original introduction of Material Design), but it's apparently a second swing at the color extraction idea, and Google is heavily using it in the UI now. The demo interfaces featured customized highlight colors, clock faces, widget backgrounds, and more, all matching the color of your wallpaper. Besides new colors, there are also tons of layout changes to the quick settings and notification panel. The first public beta of Android is now available. Google Pixel smartphones as far back as the Pixel 3 are eligible, as well as several devices from device-maker partners, including ASUS and OnePlus.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: DarkSide, the hacker group behind the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, received a total of $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments before shutting down last week, according to new research. Colonial Pipeline was hit with a devastating cyberattack earlier this month that forced the company to shut down approximately 5,500 miles of pipeline in the United States, crippling gas delivery systems in Southeastern states. The FBI blamed the attack on DarkSide, a cybercriminal gang believed to be based in Eastern Europe, and Colonial reportedly paid a $5 million ransom to the group.

On Friday, London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said it had identified the bitcoin wallet used by DarkSide to collect ransom payments from its victims. The same day, security researchers Intel 471 said DarkSide had closed down after losing access to its servers and as its cryptocurrency wallets were emptied. DarkSide also blamed "pressure from the U.S.," according to a note obtained by Intel 471. In a blog post Tuesday, Elliptic said DarkSide and its affiliates bagged at least $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments over the past nine months from 47 victims. The average payment from organizations was likely $1.9 million, Elliptic said. "To our knowledge, this analysis includes all payments made to DarkSide, however further transactions may yet be uncovered, and the figures here should be considered a lower bound," said Tom Robinson Elliptic's co-founder and chief scientist.

According to Elliptic, $15.5 million of the $90 million total haul went to DarkSide's developer while $74.7 million went to its affiliates. The majority of the funds are being sent to crypto exchanges, where they can be converted into fiat money, Elliptic added.

Ever wish you could delete the last thing you searched for on Google? Now Google will let you. From a report: Google announced the new feature Tuesday during its I/O software conference, part of a package of privacy controls the Alphabet company is pushing out to appease consumers and regulators. Users now can tap on a tab inside their Google accounts to remove the last fifteen minutes of search history. The company has offered a feature to clear search histories, but people have found that data useful for tools like Maps or been unaware of the ability to delete it. The new ways to give people more privacy controls come after years of scrutiny on the search giant's behavior. "We never sell your personal information to anyone," Jen Fitzpatrick, a Google senior vice president, said at the virtual event. "It's simply off limits."

Microsoft today acknowledged that the company isn't going to release its Windows 10X operating system variant, as reported more than a week ago. Mary Jo Foley, writing at ZDNet: Don't be surprised if you missed the acknowledgement, as Microsoft buried it in its blog post about the rollout of the Windows 10 21H1 feature update -- which it published at the start of the Google I/O keynote. Toward the end of the post, under the "Our customer first focus" subheading, officials said Windows 10X wouldn't be coming to market in 2021, after all. Instead, Microsoft will be integrating some of the 10X "foundational" technologies into other parts of Windows and other products. Windows 10X was supposed to be Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS -- a simpler Windows 10 variant that was slated to debut first on PCs for education and the first line-worker market.

Google on Tuesday unveiled a prototype machine for face-to-face meetings named Project Starline. From a report: The phrase "video booth" really is the simplest way to describe Starline in its current form: It's a large booth, like the kind you'd find in a diner, just way more technologically complex. I had the chance to test-drive it in early May. After an initial conversation with Bavor outside of Google's campus in Mountain View, California, I was led inside the almost empty building and escorted to a private office. There was the Starline booth, part wood-paneled and partly encased in gray fabric, with a built-in bench on one side and a 65-inch display on the other. I was instructed to sit opposite the display. There were lights, cameras, and not a whole lot of action until a product manager sat down across from me. From a very specific angle, he looked as though he was sitting across from me. But he was on a different floor of the building, piping into our meeting through Starline.

This is Google's idea for the future of videoconferencing, a giddy vision that only a small group of Googlers have had access to, and one that has apparently gotten a thumbs-up from chief executive Sundar Pichai. You couldn't be blamed for thinking that Starline must have been developed during the pandemic, while desk workers were umm-ing and muting and unmuting their way through an endless stream of Meets and Zooms. But Clay Bavor, Googler who heads up the company's augmented- and virtual-reality efforts, says there wasn't really any aha moment that led to Project Starline. In fact, it's been in the works for over five years. [...] The imagery is remarkable, and the visuals are complemented by spatial audio. What I'm actually looking at is a 65-inch light field display. The Project Starline booths are equipped with more than a dozen different depth sensors and cameras. (Google is cagey when I ask for specifics on the equipment.) These sensors capture photorealistic, three-dimensional imagery; the system then compresses and transmits the data to each light field display, on both ends of the video conversation, with seemingly little latency. Google applies some of its own special effects, adjusting lighting and shadows. The result is hyper-real representations of your colleagues on video calls.

There are over 3 billion active Android devices in the wild now. Sameer Samat, VP of product management at Google, announced the news at Google I/O 2021 today. From a report: Google added over 500 million active Android devices since its last developer's conference in 2019 and 1 billion devices since 2017. (That was when it hit the 2 billion mark.) The number is taken from the Google Play Store, which doesn't take into account devices based on Android but that use alternative stores, including Amazon Fire devices and the myriad of Chinese Android-based devices that avoid using Google's apps altogether. That means the number of active Android devices is likely much higher than what Samat announced on the live stream.

Google announced a new feature for its Chrome browser today that alerts you when one of your passwords has been compromised and then helps you automatically change your password with the help of... wait for it ... Google's Duplex technology. From a report: This new feature will start to roll out slowly to Chrome users on Android in the U.S. soon (with other countries following later), assuming they use Chrome's password-syncing feature. It's worth noting that this won't work for every site just yet. As a Google spokesperson told us, "the feature will initially work on a small number of apps and websites, including Twitter, but will expand to additional sites in the future."

Now you may remember Duplex as the somewhat controversial service that can call businesses for you to make hairdresser appointments or check opening times. Google introduced Duplex at its 2018 I/O developer conference and launched it to a wider audience in 2019. Since then, the team has chipped away at bringing Duplex to more tasks and brought it the web, too. Now it's coming to Chrome to change your compromised passwords for you.

Parler, a social media app popular with U.S. conservatives, returned to Apple's App Store on Monday, after the iPhone maker dropped it following the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. From a report: Parler also named George Farmer, the company's chief operating officer since March, as its new chief executive and said interim CEO Mark Meckler would be leaving. Apple said last month it would readmit Parler into its iOS App Store, after Parler proposed updates to its app and content moderation policies. read more "The entire Parler team has worked hard to address Apple's concerns without compromising our core mission," said Meckler in an emailed statement.

"Anything allowed on the Parler network but not in the iOS app will remain accessible through our web-based and Android versions. This is a win-win for Parler, its users, and free speech." The Washington Post said Parler's Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff likened the iOS version of the app to a "Parler Lite or Parler PG." Parler is still pushing Apple to allow users to see hate speech behind a warning label, the newspaper reported. Several tech companies cut ties with Parler after the Capitol riot, accusing the app backed by prominent Republican Party donor Rebekah Mercer of failing to police violent content on its service.