A leaker with a fair but short track record, claims that Apple has suspended work on the expected AirPods with cameras.

Back in February 2026, leaker Kosutami claimed that AirPods with cameras were coming, and that they would stay the same price as current models. Now the same leaker is back saying that Apple has suspended the whole idea.

That’s literally all this routinely brief leaker says. Reposting a previous claim about the device from June 2026 that said just “case concluded,” Kosutami has now responded with the single word “Suspended.”

It follows a late June 2026 report from Bloomberg that said the device was in the advanced stages of testing. It was said that Apple might not release AirPods with cameras in 2026, but that they were close.

The idea as first described in 2004 by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, is that AirPods, or more likely AirPods Pro, would feature miniature cameras in the stems. So when worn in the ear, the camera would face forward.

Then if a user asked Siri for information about something in front of them, the cameras could take a still image, or record video footage. That could then be analyzed by Visual Intelligence.

With no further information at all, there can only be speculation over why Apple would suspend the device. If it has, perhaps it’s a consequence of the global chip shortage and Apple prioritizing other devices.

Or perhaps it’s to do with the still unanswered question over privacy. Apple would be expected to put some kind of indicator light on the AirPods to show that images were being recorded, but there’s no confirmation of that.

Kosutami is better known as a collector of prototype Apple devices, though they have also shared inaccurate leaks about the Apple Watch.

Judge Linda Kullberg stated that the ruling is ‘without a doubt the largest claim that has been ordered in a Swedish competition case’.

In a legal dispute regarding an abuse of power in the market for comparison shopping services, search-engine giant Google has been ordered by a Swedish court to pay almost $2bn in damages to PriceRunner, the price comparison business owned by payment platform Klarna.

On Wednesday (1 July), the Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, through judge Linda Kullberg, awarded compensation for lost revenue caused by Google’s perceived preferential treatment of its own comparison shopping service over competing services. 

Kullberg did, however, dismiss further claims wherein PriceRunner asked for an additional $8.2bn. Despite this, Kullberg said the decision still represents “without a doubt the largest claim that has been ordered in a Swedish competition case”. 

Google is in a position to appeal the ruling and stated that it is not in agreement with the court’s findings. 

A spokesperson for the organisation said, “We are reviewing and will consider our legal options. The changes we made to shopping ads back in 2017 are working successfully, generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services who operate more than 1,500 websites across Europe.” 

This is in reference to a decision that was reached in 2017 by the European Commission, in which Google was ordered to pay a €2.4bn penalty for abusing its dominance online as a means of giving its own service an advantage, a result which at the time Google also expressed dismay at and appealed. 

Commenting on the outcome of the latest case, Dan Greaves, Klarna’s head of communications and policy, said, “When markets work well, everyone benefits. Consumers get higher quality at lower cost, companies stay focused on serving customers rather than defending position, and society is better off for it.”

Separately, Google has also lost a long-running dispute over a €4.1bn anti-trust fine imposed by the European Union for a case in which it was determined that Google unfairly leveraged a dominant position in the context of its Android operating system. The decision is legally binding and is a major win for the Brussels-based regulator, as the argument has been in full flow since the case was first ruled upon in 2018. 

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Watching [sprite_tm]’s build of a handheld 486-based gaming computer, we got to thinking about retro computers and the eternal questions of how much of the computer needs to be actually “old” for it it be retro. Where is the soul of a retro computer? The CPU? The old yellowing plastic case? Maybe it depends on what you’re trying to get out of the hobby.

There is of course a spectrum of people playing around with old computers. For some people, let’s call them “vintage computer enthusiasts”, half of the fun is in keeping the actual old hardware running. This group tends to know what teletype lubricant smells like, and how to tell which capacitors need replacing.

For others, “team retro”, the joy is in using the machine itself, whether that be teaching the old dogs new tricks, or simply loading up nostalgic video games. Team retro is more content with emulations or emulations that are wrapped up neatly in hardware workalikes. They know which registers need POKEing, and whether or not Commander Keen is running at the right framerate.

I think [sprite_tm]’s project falls in with yet another camp, the retro-reengineers. Here, the idea is to step through the engineering lessons of the past by re-designing something from a bygone era. So when [sprite_tm] went with a period 486 CPU backed up by a modern FPGA, perhaps ironically borrowing code from the modern MiSTer project, it makes sense for his goals. Retro-reengineers know the bus architecture and the memory timings, and they are reinventing the wheel as a learning experience. Or in the case of [Voja Antonic]’s imaginary four-bit machine, it’s a teaching experience.

How you work often reflects what you’d like to get out of the project, and at Hackaday, of course, we love all of the above! We’ve identified at least three broad schools of fooling around with old computers. Are we missing any?

A politician on the European Parliament’s PEGA Committee—created to investigate spyware abuses, including of the notorious Pegasus malware—was targeted with Pegasus himself, according to new research findings released this week. Meanwhile, top Google security staff warned this week that the pro-competition rule proposals in the EU could make Google Search and Android systems vulnerable to hacking and other abuse.

A WIRED investigation revealed this week that Meta contractors posed as kids and teens to see how chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT responded to prompts about high-risk subjects, including suicide, sex and drugs.

And a researcher realized that he could use Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 to break into the website of Front Gate and issue tickets to almost any United States music festival, including Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo.

But wait, there’s more! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Back in 2021, Apple launched its Hide My Email tool, which as the name suggests, allows people to sign-up for online services using an email address that isn’t linked directly to them. The privacy feature generates “unique, random email addresses” that will forward incoming messages to a user’s personal email address—reducing the amount of information you need to hand over to companies.

Reporting from 404 Media this week revealed that a vulnerability in the system has made it possible, for at least a year, for people’s real email addresses to be uncovered when they are using Apple’s privacy service. “Apple Hide My Email is leaking email addresses that are supposed to be hidden,” security researcher Tyler Murphy, who discovered the flaw in June 2025, told the publication. “In our limited tests with volunteers, 100% of Hide My Email addresses were exploitable,” he said.

The exact details of the vulnerability and how it works have not been revealed as the problem hasn’t been fixed. In tests conducted by 404 Media and Murphy, it was possible for a newly created Hide My Email address, which uses the @icloud.com domain, to be linked back to the real email address of its creator. Murphy said he originally reported the problem to Apple last summer and was told it had been “addressed” by March this year. However, when the researcher continued testing the issue, it remained exploitable, with Apple telling Murphy a couple of months ago that it was still investigating the issue. Apple did not respond to requests for comment from the publication.

A nineteen-year-old has been arrested and extradited to the United States to face charges over their alleged involvement in the notorious Scattered Spider hacking group, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced this week. Peter Stokes, an Estonian-US dual citizen, was arrested in Finland in April and has been charged with computer intrusion, conspiracy and fraud, linked to the criminal gang.

It is alleged that Stokes, along with other members of the loose hacking collective, hacked into an unnamed “luxury jewelry retailer” and demanded a $8 million cryptocurrency ransom in May 2025. The company did not pay but still spent $2 million on the incident, according to a DoJ press release. In recent years, the Scattered Spider group, which is largely believed to be composed of young, English-speaking teenagers, has caused havoc around the world by hacking into and disrupting dozens of businesses. The arrest of Stokes follows two British Scattered Spider members, Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers, recently pleading guilty to hacking Transport for London in 2024 and causing millions in damages.

Following a move by encrypted messaging app Signal last year, WhatsApp has announced it will soon roll out usernames to billions of people. The option means it is possible for people to connect and message each other without having to share phone numbers, increasing privacy protections. However, officials in India, one of WhatsApp’s biggest markets, who have previously tried to unfurl encryption protections on the Meta-owned app, have opposed the introduction of usernames. A letter from the Indian government, seen by Reuters, asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of usernames in the country. The letter claimed the move could increase fraud and cybercrime, citing concerns around allowing online anonymity. The letter was followed by separate messages to Signal and Telegram about their use of usernames.

Thousands of automatic license plate reader cameras, known as ALPRs, have appeared across the United States over the last few years. The cameras, which can be deployed by cops, cities, and businesses, photograph passing cars and record details about their movements. As well as license plate numbers, the systems can log the time and location of the photos, make and model of a vehicle, as well as bumper stickers. Billions of images and details of car movements have been captured in vast ALPR databases.

However, an increasing body of evidence shows that when the camera systems make mistakes, innocent people can be detained by law enforcement officials and accused of crimes. A review of court records and media reports, which are likely the tip of the iceberg, by the nonprofit the Institute for Justice this week found at least 24 cases of misidentification over the last eight years. These reportedly include a couple with a baby in their car being detained at gunpoint; a camera misreading an “O” as a “0”, leading to grandparents being detained; and someone being pulled over after their license plate was not removed from a wanted list. The findings add to a growing list of errors from the AI-enabled cameras.

A leaker with a reasonable track record, except regarding the Apple Watch, claims that the Apple Watch Series 12 will feature a new health sensor, but only in its fluoroelastomer band.

Apple Watch already tracks a huge number of different health metrics, but Apple has regularly been rumored to add even more sensors via a watch band. According to leaker Kosutami, the company is finally going to do it, although with one significant catch.

The leaker says nothing about what the band’s sensor could measure, but says it will solely be in the silicone band. That is presumably the basic fluoroelastomer band that Apple provides if a customer does not also order a specific band.

If correct, this could mean that the Apple Watch’s latest health sensor could only be available on the lowest-cost band. It’s more likely, though, that Apple will sell this version of the fluoroelastomer band separately.

As for what it could measure, Apple has previously been reported to be working on multiple options for external sensors. They include a hydration sensor, or one based around muscle movement sensing.

Apple is known to be working on non-invasive blood sugar monitoring as well. To date, there has been no suggestion that this will be on a band-mounted sensor, and instead integrated into the optical array underneath the watch body. It’s not clear when this feature will ship.

Kosutami has had a fair track record with Apple leaks, and most recently claimed that the company has suspended work on its project to add cameras to AirPods. But they have been significantly wrong before, such as with a 2023 claim that Apple was going to change how bands connect to the Apple Watch.

Separately, that persistent rumor has recently resurfaced. If it’s accurate this time, perhaps it’s because a new sensor band requires a different connector.