Chevy isn't the only one electrifying vintage cars to sell you on aftermarket EV motors. Ford has introduced an F-100 Eluminator concept that upgrades the circa-1978 pickup truck with two of the company's new Eluminator electric crate motor kit. The powerplants, taken from the Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition, give the F-100 a total 480HP and 634lb/ft of torque. Ford didn't discuss performance benchmarks or range, but it's safe to presume you could smoke some sports cars with that kind of power.

The truck has more customizations beyond the EV motors, including the vertical center-stack touchscreen from the Mach-E. You'll also see custom aluminum Forgeline wheels, a billet aluminum dash from JJR Fabrication and avocado-tanned leather from MDM Upholstery. This may look like a classic truck, but it's not appointed like one.

You can't buy this concept, as you might have guessed. Instead, Ford would rather you buy the $3,900 Eluminator motor for your project car. The automaker eventually hopes to supply everything you might need for an EV retrofit, including batteries, controllers and traction inverters. You'd only want to buy the motor right now if you have the resources to complete the rest of the puzzle yourself. This does, however, hint at a future where many beloved combustion engine cars can get a second life through an EV transplant.

Ford

Amazon still isn't done announcing Alexa-powered smart home gadgets this year. The company has unveiled a $69 Smart Air Quality Monitor (shown at right) that checks your household for carbon monoxide, dust, humidity, temperature and volatile organic compounds. If the air is unhealthy, Alexa will let you know through either its mobile app or an Echo device. You'll know to open a window or turn on an air purifier without having to check the monitor yourself.

You can ask Alexa about the air quality at any given moment. Display-equipped devices like an Echo Show or your phone will provide a detailed breakdown of the findings.

You'll have to be a bit patient. The Smart Air Quality Monitor is available to pre-order now, but the first orders don't ship until sometime in December. All the same, the wait could be justifiable if you prefer the Alexa ecosystem and worry that your indoor air quality is affecting your health.

Much of Waymo's self-driving vehicle testing has largely focused on warm climates, but it's about to give those machines a harsher trial. Waymo will start driving its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica vans in New York City on November 4th. This and a later wave of Jaguar I-Pace EVs will rely on human drivers to map streets and learn from the environment, but the goal is clearly to achieve full autonomy.

The test will focus on Manhattan below Central Park (aka midtown and lower Manhattan), including the financial district and a portion of New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. All tests will operate during daylight.

The dry run will help Waymo's Driver AI cope with New York City's notoriously heavy traffic, of course, but the company is particularly interested in weather testing. Like many northern cities, NYC has its fair share of ice and snow, both of which remain huge challenges for driverless cars. This test will give Waymo further opportunities to test its navigation in winter conditions, not to mention the heavy rainfall more common in the region.

Waymo said it was "encouraged" by the responses from politicians, regulators, industry and non-profits. With that said, it's easy to see the potential for a backlash. NYC has been highly protective of its taxi business at times, and is heavily dependent on ridesharing. While fully driverless ride hailing services like Waymo One may not arrive for a long time in the city, taxi and rideshare operators alike likely won't be thrilled at the prospect of being replaced by autonomous systems.

Porn fans with Roku players will have to turn to other devices before long. Protocol has learned that Roku will effectively ban channels from Pornhub and other porn services on March 1st, 2022. The company is dropping support for "non-certified" private channels on that day in favor of beta channels that are limited to 20 users. That's potentially better for testers, but a headache for adult content providers who used those channels to get around Roku's restrictions on regular channels.

Roku has been accused of largely ignoring private channels before. That didn't necessarily clash with porn sites, but it did create issues with both rights holders worried about privacy as well as critics concerned Roku was enabling the spread of harmful misinformation and violence. Roku eventually pulled InfoWars' channel and issued warnings that it might remove illegal private channels without warning.

We've asked Roku for comment. Unlike policy decisions (however temporary) at sites like OnlyFans, though this isn't likely the result of anti-porn mindsets from partners. Rather, this may be more about control. Roku doesn't have to worry about channel operators bypassing its official system, particularly those that might get the company in trouble. Whatever the reasoning, this may prompt porn fans to switch to Android TV, Fire TV or browser-equipped platforms that still offer ways to watch racy material.

Meta is further backing away from facial recognition. The company has announced that it's shutting down the Face Recognition system on Facebook in the "coming weeks." You'll no longer be automatically recognized in photos if you opted in to the feature, and the Facebook team will delete over a billion facial recognition templates. Automatic Alt Text's descriptions for the visually impaired will also stop naming people detected in photos.

The company said it made the decision following "growing concerns" about the broader use of facial recognition, including "uncertainty" about regulation of the technology. While Meta believed face recognition could still be helpful in some situations, such as gaining access to a locked account, it felt a "narrower," more privacy-oriented approach was a better fit than the broader outgoing strategy. On-device recognition wouldn't require sharing data with outside servers, for example.

There was already significant pressure to shut down the system. Meta (then Facebook) settled a privacy lawsuit over facial recognition for $650 million in 2020, and it likely isn't eager to grapple with similar cases. Governments ranging from Massachusetts to the European Union have either passed or are strongly considering at least partial bans on facial recognition use. Facebook's opt-in system may not have explicitly run afoul of those laws, but the message is clear — wide-ranging facial recognition systems aren't welcome.

Developing...

Microsoft's metaverse ambitions extend well beyond a handful of Teams features. The Vergereports chief executive Satya Nadella told Bloomberg the company is "absolutely" planning on creating a gaming metaverse with "full 3D" worlds. The claim was about as vague as can be, and didn't include a timeline or software, but it's (eventually) in the works.

The question, of course, is just what those metaverse experiences will look like. Nadella wasn't exactly clear on the definition of a metaverse and believed that games like Halo, Minecraft and even Flight Simulator were simpler "2D" metaverses. Sorry, Nadella, but they're not — merely having a multiplayer space doesn't create a metaverse, especially not with match-oriented games like Halo.

The potential is there, though. Microsoft has dabbled in metaverse-like projects such as Minecraft on HoloLens and the defunct Minecraft Earth. The software creator could easily translate lessons learned from that software to a shared virtual environment, even it looks nothing like any of the company's best-known franchises.

Spotify isn't the only one banking on podcast transcripts to reel you in. Amazon Music is rolling out synchronized podcast transcripts in the US for both original shows and popular third-party series like Modern Love and This American Life. Listen on Android or iOS and you can read what's being said, much as you would song lyrics.

This helps with search, too. You can scroll through the transcript and tap on a line to jump to that point in the podcast. You can read what you missed, or get a preview of what's coming up.

Transcripts are available today. Amazon hasn't said when it might expand the feature to other countries. This is clearly a move to draw you away from rival podcast services. Still, it could be more than a little helpful to follow along when loud noises drown out your podcast — or to skip to the most interesting segment when you're pressed for time.

Microsoft is boosting Office with some (arguably overdue) media creation tools. As part of a sweeping set of updates, the company is adding Clipchamp video editing to the Office suite. The recently acquired web-based tool helps you make "professional-looking" clips regardless of your skills. You can produce videos for your other Office projects, of course, but Microsoft also sees Clipchamp as a straightforward editing tool for personal footage.

It will also be much easier to add that professional sheen to your PowerPoint presentations. Microsoft is adding a "recording studio" to PowerPoint that lets you capture audio for those moments when you can't (or just don't want to) present live. You can annotate slides, customize the background and pick the view that will best help you record. When you're done, you can preview the presentation and re-record as much as necessary. Be patient for this feature, though, as Microsoft only expects it to become "generally available" in early 2022.

Other updates are subtler, but could be just as helpful in the right circumstances. Microsoft is trotting out Context IQ, a set of AI "experiences" for Microsoft 365 that will initially make situationally-aware recommendations in Editor. It will suggest relevant contacts when you want to tag people, for instance, or recommend meeting times when everyone is available.

Developers will also have a better reason to try Excel. Microsoft is introducing a JavaScript framework in the spreadsheet app that lets you create custom data types and functions using the web-based language. JavaScript will be available later in November in preview form. Many (if not most) Excel users won't have much need for this, but it could be valuable if your job revolves around data.

Tesla has issued its second recall in as many weeks, although this may be more strategic than it is urgent. As the APnoted, The new recall covers 11,704 Tesla EVs from 2017 or newer (including the Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X) that were prone to "false-positive braking" after a buggy Full Self-Driving beta update from October 23rd led to a communications breakdown between two chips. The company fixed the issue on October 25th. The day before, it also cancelled the flawed update and disabled emergency braking on cars still using that beta release.

There were no reports of crashes or injuries, Tesla said. The automaker decided to issue a recall on October 26th.

The recall may have been meant to prevent conflicts with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency sent a letter to Tesla on October 12th asking why it didn't issue a recall when it fixed an Autopilot software issue that reportedly led to collisions with emergency vehicles. Tesla knows car manufacturers are required to issue recalls for any safety issues, the NHTSA said. It's not clear how Tesla responded to that inquiry before a November 1st deadline, but the company might now be in the habit of issuing recalls for software-related safety problems.

The notice highlights the changing nature of recalls. While recalls for hardware-only flaws haven't changed much (just ask Chevy and LG), software-related issues are another matter. Now that more and more cars accept over-the-air updates, it's possible for companies like Tesla to issue recalls for bugs they've already fixed. Brands may have to make it particularly clear when a recall demands real-world service, as that might not always be clear going forward.

Roblox is finally returning to normal after a nearly three-day outage. The gaming platform's developer said it was "incrementally" bringing regions back to service after having pinpointed the cause roughly three hours earlier. The company had a possible candidate on October 30th, but didn't narrow it down until a day later.

The company didn't detail the cause, but had previously ruled out particular "experiences or partnerships." Some had blame the outage on a Chipotle promo that launched half an hour before the failure took place on the evening of October 28th.

Whatever the reason for the outage, it may have had a lasting effect. Roblox has over 40 million daily users, and has been home to major concerts in recent months. That could leave more than a few frustrated kids, not to mention parents and creators wondering about the long-term reliability of the platform.