January 2025
Fact or Fiction: Domantas Sabonis is The Biggest Snub of the 2025 NBA All-Star Game
The league is as rich with talent as it has ever been. Someone was bound to get snubbed. But one stands out above the rest.
NBA All-Star snubs: Trae Young, Domantas Sabonis, LaMelo Ball miss the cut for 2025
The NBA’s leaders in assists, rebounds and East fan votes missed out on All-Star spots.
MLB free agency: Braves sign Jurickson Profar to 3-year, $42 million deal; Max Scherzer joining Toronto Blue Jays
Stay up to date with the latest from the baseball hot stove.
Gronk dishes on ‘wild’ 2018 offseason, ignoring Belichick’s calls
Rob Gronkowski and Bill Belichick weren’t exactly on the same page following the Patriots’ loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl LII.
MLB free agency: Braves sign Jurickson Profar to 3-year, $42 million deal; Max Scherzer joining Toronto Blue Jays
Stay up to date with the latest from the baseball hot stove.
From awkward to outrageous: 10 memorably infamous coaching press conferences
Liam Coen’s awkward introduction as Jaguars coach joins a list of press conferences remembered for the wrong reasons.
How to Change the Top Speed of and Aventon Pace 500.3
I absolutely love the Aventon Pace 500.3 e-bike. As I noted in my review, it’s a solid all-around bike, powerful enough for experienced riders, but friendly enough for beginners. If this is your first e-bike, there are a few things you should do before you hop onto it and start riding.
While the Aventon Pace 500.3 is ready to hit the road as soon as it is assembled and charged, if you want to get the most out of your new ride, you should take a few minutes to pair your bike with the Aventon app and customize the settings. Changing things like the screen brightness and the measurement units is helpful, but you’ll probably be most interested in setting your ride’s top speed.
Understanding the Aventon Pace 500.3 dashboard
Before I get into the bike and the app’s menus and settings, let’s take a moment to understand the Pace’s dashboard controls. They’re easy to grasp at a glance and comparable to those you’ll see on most e-bikes, but if this is a your first time, there are a couple things worth noting.
Credit: Stephen Johnson
Here’s a breakdown of what each button on the panel on the left handlebar does:
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The + and – keys control the level of pedal assist, from one to five. (A higher number equals more assistance.)
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The left and right arrows control the turn signals.
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The center button is power.
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The switch is the throttle: push it downward to go.
That’s all pretty basic, but there are a couple of less obvious things you can do here too:
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Long press the up arrow to turn on the headlight on and off.
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Hold down the + and – keys at the same time to bring up the settings menu.
How to change settings from the Pace 500.3 dashboard
Credit: Stephen Johnson
There’s not a ton of customization available to you from the handlebars, but if you want your display to read “kilometers” instead of “miles” this is the spot to change it.
For most other changes, you’ll have to pair your bike with Aventon’s app first. Here’s how to do it:
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Choose “connect to app” from the on-bike menu screen
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You should see a QR code. Scan the code, download the app, and make your account.
Once you’ve paired your bike with your app once, they should connect automatically every time. The app is not necessary for riding the bike, and if you don’t use it for a while, the bike should “fill in” the miles and other information from your rides since the last time you synced the two.
How to change the top speed of an Aventon Pace 500.3
To change the top speed of an Aventon 500.3, you need to use the menus in the app. You can set your top speed anywhere between 12 and 28 miles per hour., but before you make a choice, look into e-bike laws in your locality.
There are three basic classifications of e-bikes, and how they work is a little convoluted:
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Class 1 e-bike are pedal assist only and top out at 20 mph.
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Class 2 e-bikes have a throttle and pedal assist and a speed limit of 20 mph.
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Class 3 e-bikes have a top speed of 28 mph, and are technically pedal-assist only, though in practice, many or even most class 3 e-bikes let you use either a throttle or pedal assist up 20 mph, then limit you to pedal assist for the last 8mph.
Most places in the U.S. (but not everywhere) allow class 3 e-bikes to ride wherever analog bikes can legally go..
The Aventon Pace 500.3 is a class 3 e-bike, but it doesn’t come configured that way. Out of the box, the top speed is set at 20 mph, and you need to use the app if you want to raise it to 28—or lower it for that matter.
Once you know what’s legal, here’s how to change the top speed on your Aventon Pace.
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Sign onto the app.
Credit: Stephen Johnson
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Click “settings” underneath the front wheel to bring up this menu:
Credit: Stephen Johnson
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Click “Speed Limit and Metric” and you can set your bike’s speed from anywhere between 12 mph and 28 mph.
That’s about it when it comes to changing settings on the Aventon Pace 500.3
If you’re into tinkering around with your e-bike, the Pace 500.3 might disappoint you. While some other brands allow users to get more granular and change things like the size of the wheel or the torque level of the throttle, altering those settings isn’t possible for users of the Pace 500.3.
Grading the new Champions League format, Luis Echegaray chats ‘Messi Mania’ & Neymar heads back to Santos
Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros break down the conclusion of the new Champions League format and whether it’s proven better or worse than before. Christian and Alexis then chat with Luis Miguel Echegaray about his new book, “Messi Mania”. Later, Christian and Alexis bring back Rápido Reactions and discuss some more moves in this transfer window including Neymar’s return home and John Duran’s shock move to Al Nassr.
Watch Out for This ‘Chrome Update’ Scam
Software updates are important and inevitable. To expand features and patch existing security issues, you need to update your apps and machines. If you avoid updating, you might find certain programs, functions, or even websites stop working as they should.
However, if you visit a website, and you see a prompt to update Chrome in order to proceed, run away. In all likelihood, you just encountered a scam. Don’t fall for it.
WordPress sites are getting hacked
The scam in question is targeting WordPress websites—10,000 of them, in fact. That’s according to c/side, a web security company, whose research uncovered the current attacks.
Here’s what’s going on: Hackers are hijacking sites that are running outdated versions of WordPress and plugins. (c/side hypothesizes attackers are exploiting a vulnerability in a particular WordPress plugin to execute their schemes.) Attackers are using two types of “popular” malware variants: AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer), which goes after Apple devices, and SocGholish, which is designed for Windows devices.
When you visit one of these affected websites, hackers override the actual content of the site with a new, fake page. This manipulated content purports to be an alert that you need to update your browser in order to visit this site, as the page uses “the new chromium engine.” The hackers sprinkle in a few different elements on this page to sell the scam, including two different update options, a check box to sign up or automatic usage stats and crash reports, and links to Google’s, Chrome’s, and ChromeOS’ Terms of Service. You’ll also see a Chrome logo, different menu options, and a rendering of a Chrome window.
Credit: c/side
These hackers are more clever than most. To an untrained eye, this alert page might look quite real. There are some red flags, of course: The hackers don’t have the best grip on grammar, and haven’t capitalized “Chromium,” or the first word in “by downloading Chrome.” You also wouldn’t expect to see Google use a comma between “The site uses the new chromium engine, to continue it needs to be updated.”
But if you’re trying to access a site and you see this message pop up, a quick glance might not be enough to distinguish this from a typical Google Chrome update alert. However, if you click one of the update options, that’s where the trouble starts. The hackers’ goal is to get you to download a malicious file onto your machine. Whether you have a Mac or a PC, this malware is designed to steal your password and other important information. AMOS malware, for example, steals data from Macs like usernames, passwords, cookies, and crypto wallets.
Obviously, this type of hacking is dangerous. Imagine you inadvertently download this “update” onto your computer, and the malware gets to work scraping your usernames and passwords. It can then report back to the hackers, who take that information and break into your accounts—particularly your financial accounts.
c/side hasn’t disclosed a full list of the affected websites, but says that some of the internet’s most popular websites are affected.
Where to go from here
If you run a WordPress site, c/side recommends updating your WordPress installation and plugins and remove any you no longer use. You should also look for any of the scripts the researchers identified and look for any signs of malicious activity.
For the rest of us, if you believe you downloaded any malicious files from these websites, you should clear out your machine as soon as possible. You could try to identify the compromised files and remove them, but you may want to try a program that can scan your machine for you, such as Malwarebytes or Bitdefender. (c/side offers a similar service as well, which it promotes in its findings.)