The Morning After: Ford made a small hybrid truck that sells for $21,495

Ford said its plans for electrified vehicles were expanding, and the latest example is its new Maverick pickup. Despite hijacking the name of a 70’s car most people under the age of 40 have already forgotten, it’s aimed directly at people who want something more efficient but without the high price and need for a place to plug in.

With destination charge included, the Maverick’s base price is $21,495, which will bring home a front-wheel drive hybrid truck that’s supposed to have an EPA rating for 40 mpg for city driving and up to 500 miles of range on a tank of gas. The Maverick’s bed only measures 4.5-feet long, but a Flexbed tailgate should help move large items even if they stick out a bit. There doesn’t seem to be much risk that this will compete with vehicles like the F-150 Lightning or Mustang Mach-E, but as an alternative to crossovers that’s easier on gas and your budget, it could be a hit.

— Richard Lawler

All part of a global crime sting.

The FBI covertly ran an encrypted communications platform for years, which allowed it to intercept 20 million messages from international criminal organizations. Hundreds of arrests have been made across 18 countries as part of the investigation known as Operation Trojan Shield. Suspects included members of the Italian Mafia. 

The app was born out of the ashes of a popular encrypted phone service, known as Phantom Secure. The FBI were able to peddle a new app, dubbed Anom, to criminal networks, all while having the master key to everything it sent encrypted. Roughly 9,000 Anom devices are currently active in the wild. According to the FBI, it has identified over 300 transnational criminal organizations using the chat platform. The Australian Police, which helped intercept local messages, said the communications included alleged plots to kill, mass drug trafficking and gun distribution.
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CDN provider Fastly was the source of the problem.

On Tuesday, a huge internet outage affected large swaths of the internet, including major sites like Amazon, Reddit, Twitter and Twitch, along with news sites including the New York Times and The Guardian. Other affected sites were Stack Overflow, GitHub, gov.uk, Hulu, HBO Max, Quora, PayPal, Vimeo and Shopify. The source of the problem was the Fastly content delivery network (CDN). The CDN is often responsible for images, meaning the repercussions were more widespread than you might think.

Fastly announced “the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” and the internet returned to normal soon after.
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Yoko Kanno is also writing the adaptation’s soundtrack.

Cowboy Bebop fans won’t have to wait much longer to revisit the world of Spike, Faye, Jet and Edward — and the good news is original series composer, Yoko Kanno, is writing the adaptation’s soundtrack, too. Netflix will release its live-action adaptation of the legendary Sunrise anime this fall. The company added that new episodes of Locke and Key and a new series of Shadow and Bone are both incoming, too.
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Excellent earbuds, awkward fit

Our long-running favorite pick for the best wireless earbuds has received an upgrade. Sony’s WF-1000XM4 are $280 headphones that improve on its predecessor in pretty much every way. That said, they’re a little bit pricier, and the new ear tips might be uncomfortable for some. There are some notable features, though, alongside the great sound quality we’d expect, including support for 360 and high-res audio. Billy Steele gives them a thorough testing.
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But that doesn’t include any Apple AirPods.

Lossless-quality streaming is now available on Apple Music, shortly after it flipped the switch on Dolby Atmos spatial audio earlier this week. Now, you can stream supported tracks in both standard CD-quality lossless or high-res lossless on the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

While Dolby Atmos spatial audio will be limited to certain albums, Apple said yesterday at WWDC that lossless streaming will eventually come to its entire catalog of 75 million tracks. Over 20 million songs should already be available on the service as of today. Once you have the latest OS, you’ll need to switch your preferences from AAC to lossless in the Music app section of the iOS/iPad OS settings. Lossless audio requires a wired connection and thus won’t work on any of Apple’s AirPod wireless audio devices.
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Echo and Ring devices in the US are automatically enrolled.

Amazon is today switching on Sidewalk, a low-bandwidth network that aims to keep compatible devices connected even when they lose their link to your router. Many Echo and Ring products are automatically being used as bridges to extend the range of the network. Sidewalk is effectively a mass mesh network, earmarking a small chunk of your internet bandwidth (up to 500MB of monthly data in total) to share with your neighbors.

If you don’t want to be a part of that, you’ll need to opt out. To do so for Echo devices, we’ve laid out all the steps right here.
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But wait, there’s more…

HBO Max update mostly fixes its broken Apple TV app

Lordstown Motors warns it doesn’t have enough cash to produce electric trucks

AT&T is giving six months of Stadia Pro to 5G and fiber internet subscribers

‘Ron’s Gone Wrong’ trailer stars Zach Galifianakis as a buggy domestic robot

Panic’s Playdate handheld will be available for pre-order in July

A new plant-based tuna is coming to restaurants in 2022

‘Loki’ brings the MCU’s next phase into focus