Meet Your New Commuting Companion: The Lightweight Fiido Air Carbon Fiber EbikeIt picks up quickly at lights, and acceleration—especially in Sport mode—is reassuringly quick when it’s time to overtake. I’m delighted by how effortless the overall performance is, and how smoothly the torque kicks in. What’s more, moving it, wheeling it through the house, lifting it onto bike racks, and even just doing basic things like locking it up, is just easier in every way. The motor is quiet, too. While not totally silent, it’s not a distraction.
Impressively, too, the Air can also be ridden reasonably easily without electric assist. A 30-pound single speed bike won’t set any track records, but if power does fail you—or more likely, you misjudge the battery level and forget to charge overnight like I did—it won’t be too much of a workout to get home.
But please don’t confuse this commuter-style electric bike with a powerful mid-drive motor electric bike. With a meagre motor and only one gear (and quite a low one at that) it does not love hills. Steady inclines are easy, but there’s one short, sharp-ish hill close to my office that requires me to stand up and pedal hard to get to the top. I wasn’t as gassed as I would be without any motor assistance, but I definitely wasn’t flying effortlessly up hills.
I’ve also become a convert to the brilliance of belt-drive bikes. They need less maintenance, last longer, and prevent greasy black marks on pant legs. Fiido uses a Gates belt drive here, one of the best systems available, and ideal for urban riding.
Competition and Verdict
WIRED’s current favorite commuter ebike, the Aventon Soltera 3 (8/10), weighs 37 pounds and costs around $500 less than the Air. It’s a superb blend of push bike feel and lightweight electric power and with more power on offer, a faster top speed, and cheaper price, it remains the one to beat. But there’s no denying the appeal of the Fiido Air. It’s a beautiful bike to ride, with stylish looks, nimble acceleration, and push bike practicalities. At 30 pounds, it is impressively light, and easy to live with.
Lightweight electric bikes are starting to appear but competition remains slim. Ribble’s new aluminum Allgrit E AL Sportfit Apex weighs 30.4 pounds and has a hugely practical 12 speed SRAM Apex XPLR AXS gearing. It does cost twice as much, though. Carbon options are limited to a couple of folding designs for now, including the $2,420, 35-pound ADO Air Carbon, and $1,599 Urtopia Carbon Fold Step Thru that weighs just 31 pounds.
So the Fiido Air ticks a lot of boxes, and if you’re looking for a cool pedal-assist electric bike for short, flat urban rides, I highly recommend it. But if there are hills in your life, and you want to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times, the Fiido Air might not be the bike for you.
#Meet #Commuting #Companion #Lightweight #Fiido #Air #Carbon #Fiber #Ebikereviews,review,cycling,outdoors,bicycles
It picks up quickly at lights, and acceleration—especially in Sport mode—is reassuringly quick when it’s time to overtake. I’m delighted by how effortless the overall performance is, and how smoothly the torque kicks in. What’s more, moving it, wheeling it through the house, lifting it onto bike racks, and even just doing basic things like locking it up, is just easier in every way. The motor is quiet, too. While not totally silent, it’s not a distraction.
Impressively, too, the Air can also be ridden reasonably easily without electric assist. A 30-pound single speed bike won’t set any track records, but if power does fail you—or more likely, you misjudge the battery level and forget to charge overnight like I did—it won’t be too much of a workout to get home.
But please don’t confuse this commuter-style electric bike with a powerful mid-drive motor electric bike. With a meagre motor and only one gear (and quite a low one at that) it does not love hills. Steady inclines are easy, but there’s one short, sharp-ish hill close to my office that requires me to stand up and pedal hard to get to the top. I wasn’t as gassed as I would be without any motor assistance, but I definitely wasn’t flying effortlessly up hills.
I’ve also become a convert to the brilliance of belt-drive bikes. They need less maintenance, last longer, and prevent greasy black marks on pant legs. Fiido uses a Gates belt drive here, one of the best systems available, and ideal for urban riding.
Competition and Verdict
WIRED’s current favorite commuter ebike, the Aventon Soltera 3 (8/10), weighs 37 pounds and costs around $500 less than the Air. It’s a superb blend of push bike feel and lightweight electric power and with more power on offer, a faster top speed, and cheaper price, it remains the one to beat. But there’s no denying the appeal of the Fiido Air. It’s a beautiful bike to ride, with stylish looks, nimble acceleration, and push bike practicalities. At 30 pounds, it is impressively light, and easy to live with.
Lightweight electric bikes are starting to appear but competition remains slim. Ribble’s new aluminum Allgrit E AL Sportfit Apex weighs 30.4 pounds and has a hugely practical 12 speed SRAM Apex XPLR AXS gearing. It does cost twice as much, though. Carbon options are limited to a couple of folding designs for now, including the $2,420, 35-pound ADO Air Carbon, and $1,599 Urtopia Carbon Fold Step Thru that weighs just 31 pounds.
So the Fiido Air ticks a lot of boxes, and if you’re looking for a cool pedal-assist electric bike for short, flat urban rides, I highly recommend it. But if there are hills in your life, and you want to keep both hands on the handlebars at all times, the Fiido Air might not be the bike for you.
![Politician who investigated spyware abuses had his phone hacked with Pegasus spyware | TechCrunch
Security researchers have confirmed that a European politician had his phone hacked with the Pegasus spyware while serving on an investigatory committee probing abuses of the notorious surveillance tool. This has reigniting fresh controversy over governments abusing spyware to collect information about their critics.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say the confirmed phone hacking of Greek journalist and former politician Stelios Kouloglou during 2022 and 2023 marks the first time that a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, tasked with investigating phone spyware attacks by European governments, has been publicly identified as a victim of spyware.
Kouloglou told TechCrunch in a phone call that the deliberate compromise of his phone was “reckless.” One serving European lawmaker described the hacking of Kouloglou’s phone as a “direct attack on the rule of law,” and called on the European Commission to take concrete action by imposing strict limits on the use of spyware across the 27 member-state bloc.
While spyware attacks on lawmakers are rare, the timing and targeting of a committee investigator by way of the very spyware under his investigation suggests an intense focus on the committee’s inner workings ahead of a widely anticipated report detailing its findings. The hacks open fresh questions about how governments use spyware ostensibly needed for identifying serious crime, but then caught spying on the communications of journalists, lawmakers, and critics.
Citizen Lab’s researchers did not attribute the phone hacking to a specific country, but said that the government customer used the same Pegasus-loaded email address that was used in a previous campaign that hacked into the phones of journalists across Europe. The customer’s identity is not known, but the reuse of the same attacking email address implies that the customer had NSO Group’s authorization to use its Pegasus spyware to snoop on phones across multiple countries in Europe.
A spokesperson for the European Commission did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. NSO Group also did not respond to a request for comment about the Citizen Lab report prior to publication.
In its report out Friday, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou was hacked in October 2022 and at least twice during March 2023 using an exploit that compromised a security vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone software. This vulnerability had been patched but the fix was not yet installed on Kouloglou’s phone. The exploit was a “zero-click” bug, meaning the spyware broke in and stole his data without needing any interaction on his part.
The bug abused a previously discovered flaw in Apple’s smart home software used in iPhones. It allowed the spyware to grab private data from Kouloglou’s phone without his knowledge, such as his text messages and other correspondence, location data, and photos.
The timing of the October 2022 hack coincides with intense discussions over email and text message throughout October and November 2022, ahead of the delivery of a first draft describing spyware abuses focusing in Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Spain.
The hack also lines up at the exact time that Kouloglou was in the hospital at the time for a pre-scheduled surgery, which may have allowed the spyware operators to listen in to ambient audio discussing his healthcare or other conversations he had with visitors at the time.
Months later on March 6 and 7, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked again by the same Pegasus operator while Kouloglou traveled from Athens to Brussels, during a period of committee hearings and months prior to the committee finalizing and adopting their written draft report.
In a call, Kouloglou told TechCrunch that he didn’t know why he was specifically targeted but that he believes it was due to his work on the European Parliament’s committee investigating Pegasus abuses.
He described anger when he learned that his phone had been hacked.
“You realize that all of your personal data [was taken] — not all the professional exchanges or messages with ministers — but also the very private things, like the happy moments and the sad moments,” he told TechCrunch.
Kouloglou said he plans to sue NSO Group, the Israeli-headquartered spyware maker. NSO remains largely banned from use in the United States following a Biden-era executive order that outlawed the government’s use of spyware that could violate people’s human rights.
Last year, the spyware maker confirmed an unnamed American investment group funneled tens of millions of dollars into the company, likely as part of an effort to rehabilitate NSO’s beleaguered brand associated with enabling human rights abuses.
Kouloglou said he was going public with his story “for democracy, human rights, and the fight against corruption.”
“Corruption concerns everybody,” he said.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Politician #investigated #spyware #abuses #phone #hacked #Pegasus #spyware #TechCrunchSpyware,Pegasus,cybersecurity,NSO Group](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/stelios-1243041618.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "Politician who investigated spyware abuses had his phone hacked with Pegasus spyware | TechCrunch
Security researchers have confirmed that a European politician had his phone hacked with the Pegasus spyware while serving on an investigatory committee probing abuses of the notorious surveillance tool. This has reigniting fresh controversy over governments abusing spyware to collect information about their critics.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s digital rights unit The Citizen Lab say the confirmed phone hacking of Greek journalist and former politician Stelios Kouloglou during 2022 and 2023 marks the first time that a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, tasked with investigating phone spyware attacks by European governments, has been publicly identified as a victim of spyware.
Kouloglou told TechCrunch in a phone call that the deliberate compromise of his phone was “reckless.” One serving European lawmaker described the hacking of Kouloglou’s phone as a “direct attack on the rule of law,” and called on the European Commission to take concrete action by imposing strict limits on the use of spyware across the 27 member-state bloc.
While spyware attacks on lawmakers are rare, the timing and targeting of a committee investigator by way of the very spyware under his investigation suggests an intense focus on the committee’s inner workings ahead of a widely anticipated report detailing its findings. The hacks open fresh questions about how governments use spyware ostensibly needed for identifying serious crime, but then caught spying on the communications of journalists, lawmakers, and critics.
Citizen Lab’s researchers did not attribute the phone hacking to a specific country, but said that the government customer used the same Pegasus-loaded email address that was used in a previous campaign that hacked into the phones of journalists across Europe. The customer’s identity is not known, but the reuse of the same attacking email address implies that the customer had NSO Group’s authorization to use its Pegasus spyware to snoop on phones across multiple countries in Europe.
A spokesperson for the European Commission did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. NSO Group also did not respond to a request for comment about the Citizen Lab report prior to publication.
In its report out Friday, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou was hacked in October 2022 and at least twice during March 2023 using an exploit that compromised a security vulnerability in Apple’s iPhone software. This vulnerability had been patched but the fix was not yet installed on Kouloglou’s phone. The exploit was a “zero-click” bug, meaning the spyware broke in and stole his data without needing any interaction on his part.
The bug abused a previously discovered flaw in Apple’s smart home software used in iPhones. It allowed the spyware to grab private data from Kouloglou’s phone without his knowledge, such as his text messages and other correspondence, location data, and photos.
The timing of the October 2022 hack coincides with intense discussions over email and text message throughout October and November 2022, ahead of the delivery of a first draft describing spyware abuses focusing in Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Spain.
The hack also lines up at the exact time that Kouloglou was in the hospital at the time for a pre-scheduled surgery, which may have allowed the spyware operators to listen in to ambient audio discussing his healthcare or other conversations he had with visitors at the time.
Months later on March 6 and 7, Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked again by the same Pegasus operator while Kouloglou traveled from Athens to Brussels, during a period of committee hearings and months prior to the committee finalizing and adopting their written draft report.
In a call, Kouloglou told TechCrunch that he didn’t know why he was specifically targeted but that he believes it was due to his work on the European Parliament’s committee investigating Pegasus abuses.
He described anger when he learned that his phone had been hacked.
“You realize that all of your personal data [was taken] — not all the professional exchanges or messages with ministers — but also the very private things, like the happy moments and the sad moments,” he told TechCrunch.
Kouloglou said he plans to sue NSO Group, the Israeli-headquartered spyware maker. NSO remains largely banned from use in the United States following a Biden-era executive order that outlawed the government’s use of spyware that could violate people’s human rights.
Last year, the spyware maker confirmed an unnamed American investment group funneled tens of millions of dollars into the company, likely as part of an effort to rehabilitate NSO’s beleaguered brand associated with enabling human rights abuses.
Kouloglou said he was going public with his story “for democracy, human rights, and the fight against corruption.”
“Corruption concerns everybody,” he said.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Politician #investigated #spyware #abuses #phone #hacked #Pegasus #spyware #TechCrunchSpyware,Pegasus,cybersecurity,NSO Group")
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