Android 17 desktop mode has a very simple pitch. Plug your phone into a monitor, add a keyboard and mouse, and watch the slab in your pocket pretend to be a computer. I wanted to give that pitch a fair shot, so I tried using it for an actual workday instead of a cute demo.

The goal was boring on purpose: write an article, edit it, build the page in WordPress, upload whatever needed uploading, and publish the thing without running back to my laptop like a coward.

For a little while, the illusion held together. That’s where the trouble starts.

When almost starts to look convincing

The first hour wasn’t a disaster, which somehow made the whole thing more suspicious. With a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and USB-C hub attached, Android desktop mode looked close enough to the real thing. I had browser tabs open. I could type in a document. I could jump into messaging apps.

For a few minutes, I could even accept the clean little fantasy people have been promising since phones became more powerful than the laptops many of us used in college.

The catch is that desktop mode only feels convenient after you’ve rebuilt half a desk around it. My phone needed a hub so the monitor, charger, keyboard, mouse, and HDMI connection could all behave like members of the same household. Bluetooth can cut down the cable mess, but then you’re juggling pairing, batteries, and the quiet uncertainty of whether everything will reconnect before your patience files a complaint.

When portable stops meaning portable

The portability argument is where things started falling apart. In theory, I could use a hotel TV as a monitor and turn my phone into a tiny newsroom. In practice, that means carrying a small nest of accessories and pretending that still counts as traveling light. Desktop mode solves the problem of not having a laptop by asking me to recreate everything around a laptop except the laptop.

At that point, the obvious question becomes hard to dodge. Why didn’t I just bring the machine with the screen, keyboard, trackpad, ports, battery management, and operating system already built around this exact job?

The annoying answer is that Android desktop mode can still get the job done. I was able to write. I was able to build the page in WordPress. I was able to move through the web tools that make up too much of modern work now. That’s partly because everything is browser-based anyway, so the phone mostly needs to render a pile of web services without giving up.

That sounds like a win until you actually sit with it. WordPress loaded, but page building came with a patience tax. Moving between tabs, managing images, waiting for menus, and treating the browser as my main workspace made every small task feel slightly more deliberate than it should.

The setup didn’t collapse. It just kept reminding me that I was using a workaround with a monitor attached.

When the dream beats the desk

That’s probably the most confusing part of Android desktop mode. It’s capable enough to make the dream feel reasonable, then rough enough to make the current version feel faintly absurd. Phones are already powerful. They’re already everywhere.

The sci-fi version of this is easy to imagine: drop the phone onto a little dock like a wireless charger, watch a full desktop environment wake up, then pretend the holograms aren’t deeply unnecessary but emotionally important.

That future still sounds great to me. I’d love a world where the phone becomes the computer, not a compromised laptop impersonator surrounded by dongles. Android desktop mode feels like a step toward that, but a step isn’t the destination, no matter how many cables are involved.

So yes, I wrote and built an article from my phone. I could even do it again, which may be the most annoying admission here. The harder question is why I would, unless something had already gone wrong.

If the most honest use case is still some version of “I guess, in an emergency,” who is Android desktop mode actually for?

Today’s Argentina vs Scotland live stream in the 2026 Nations Championship sees two perennial dark horses go head-to-head at the Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes in Cordoba for both sides’ opening game of the tournament.

It’s a replay of one of the most exciting matches of the last 12 months. The Scots led 21-0 at halftime when these sides met at Murrayfield in November, before the Pumas roared back to win 33-24. In doing so, the South Americans nudged their way to a one-win advantage in the overall head-to-head between these sides and into the top five of the world rankings. Santiago Carreras starts at full-back, with the evergreen Julian Montoya captaining the side at hooker.

Northwestern University chemists have built a material that begins as an ordinary yellow liquid and rearranges itself into a black gel whenever it absorbs energy. The change locks electrons inside a new structure that can hold them for months when sealed away from air. Open the container later and oxygen triggers the release, powering chemical reactions even in complete darkness.

There’s no need for permanent electrodes or sophisticated battery packs because the material can handle capture, storage, and release on its own simply modifying its structure. Samuel Stupp and his team’s recent research, published in the journal Chem, demonstrates how this works. Tyler Jaynes and Luka Dordevic were the study’s co-first authors, and they carried out some very amazing lab experiments. The design is essentially a duplicate of the cytoskeleton, a dynamic protein network that exists within every cell and is constantly formed and deconstructed to allow the cell to move and expand. All they’ve done is exchange biological fuel for electrons.

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In their resting state, the custom molecules form independent tiny clusters. Now, push one section of each molecule with light, electricity, X-rays, or chemical fuels, and it will transfer electrons to its partner segment. That causes the charged molecules to stack up because they tend to adhere together in neat little rows, and these rows turn into long, ribbon-like strands that begin to tangle and catch some water, transforming the entire thing into a soft, black gel.

Inside that assembled mess, the electrons are as safe as houses. Northwestern researchers believe that a single gram can store enough electrons to power a smartwatch for several months. To get those electrons out, all you have to do is give the gel some oxygen, which causes the formation of some nasty reactive oxygen species. These reactive compounds can degrade contaminants or initiate other chemical reactions that do not require light to occur. Once the gel has completed its function, it simply begins to degrade and returns to the original yellow liquid from which it originated.

This is a working example of dark photocatalysis, in which energy is stored during the day using sunlight or another input and then used to drive chemical reactions afterward. The substance itself serves as a sort of intermediary, bridging the gap between energy arriving and energy used. The researchers also demonstrated that light can form transitory conductive patterns within the gel, employing masks to ensure that the patterns appear in the first place. These conductive patterns only remain for as long as the gel is created, making them ideal for soft, programmable electronics that appear and disappear as needed.

Traditional batteries simply keep on trucking, storing ions or electrons in their unchangeable circuitry. Solar panels either convert light immediately or fail to do so at all. This technology, on the other hand, allows the material to alter shape and manage energy over time. Then step back once it’s finished, and everything runs in water, because the only thing required to reset the material is ordinary air. It also avoids the metals and plastics that are so prevalent in modern electronics.

This technique could be used to clean up the environment by on-demand oxidation, or to create sterilization systems that employ chemical energy. It could also be used as a power source for soft robotic components that only require a little amount of juice at times. They’re still in the early stages here, and thus far, researchers have only looked at small lab samples under fairly controlled conditions. They still need to figure out how to scale this up so that it works in the real world, enhance the energy density per gram of material, and then convert all of that stored chemical energy into a direct electrical output rather than releasing it as chemical reactions.
[Source]

The incident is also being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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.