☕️ Apple nears production of AirPods with cameras

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

🎧 Apple nears production of AirPods with cameras

☁️ Cloudflare cuts 1,100 jobs citing AI

🎙️ OpenAI launches 3 new voice models

⌚ Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air

🎮 Nintendo raises Switch 2 prices amid memory shortage

🎓 Hackers claim data theft from 9,000 schools

Plus: 🎁 16 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.

🎧 Apple nears production of AirPods with cameras LINK

Apple is getting close to early mass production of AirPods with built-in cameras, with prototypes now in the design validation test stage, one step before production validation, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

The cameras aren't made to take photos or video but instead capture visual information in low resolution that users can ask Siri about, such as meal ideas based on ingredients, or turn-by-turn directions.

The new AirPods will resemble the AirPods Pro 3 but with longer stems and a small LED light showing when visual data is sent to the cloud, possibly launching alongside the upgraded Siri in September.

☁️ Cloudflare cuts 1,100 jobs citing AI LINK

Cloudflare is laying off more than 1,100 workers, about 20% of its staff, saying that agentic artificial intelligence has "fundamentally changed" how the company operates and reshaped which roles it needs going forward.

The cloud company beat analysts' expectations in its first-quarter earnings reported Thursday, but shares still dropped 18% in extended trading after the workforce reduction was disclosed alongside the results.

CEO Matthew Prince called the cuts the "right decision" on the earnings call, and Cloudflare said its own use of AI has jumped more than 600% over the past three months under an "agentic AI-first operating model."

🎙️ OpenAI launches 3 new voice models LINK

OpenAI has released three new voice models — GPT-Realtime-2, GPT-Realtime-Translate, and GPT-Realtime-Whisper — designed to reason, translate across languages, and transcribe speech in real time through the company's Realtime API and Playground.

GPT-Realtime-2 brings reasoning on par with GPT-5, expands the context window from 32,000 to 128,000 tokens, calls multiple tools in parallel, and uses preambles like "one moment" instead of going silent during delays.

GPT-Realtime-Translate covers more than 70 input languages and 13 output languages at $0.034 per minute, while GPT-Realtime-Whisper handles streaming transcription for live captions at $0.017 per minute, with Deutsche Telekom already testing voice-to-voice support.

⌚ Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air LINK

Google has launched the Fitbit Air, a $100 screenless wearable in the style of Whoop that tracks heart rate, AFib, blood oxygen, sleep stages, and heart rate variability around the clock.

The band weighs 12 grams, runs for up to a week on a charge with five-minute fast charging for a full day, is water-resistant to 50 meters, and pairs with the Pixel Watch.

Google also rebranded the Fitbit App as the Google Health app and opened up Google Health Coach, its Gemini-powered trainer and sleep advisor, to Google Health Premium subscribers, with the Fitbit Air shipping May 26.

🎮 Nintendo raises Switch 2 prices amid memory shortage LINK

Nintendo is raising the price of the Switch 2 by $50 in the U.S., pushing it from $449.99 to $499.99 starting September 1, with similar hikes coming to Japan, Canada, and Europe.

The company expects to sell 16.5 million Switch 2 units in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027, down from the 19.86 million units sold in the fiscal year that just ended.

Nintendo blamed the price hike on the memory chip crunch, with costs soaring due to the global AI data center buildout, following Sony's move in March to raise PlayStation 5 prices by up to $150.

🎓 Hackers claim data theft from 9,000 schools LINK

ShinyHunters, the extortion group behind a breach at education tech company Instructure, says it stole 280 million records from teachers, students and staff across 8,809 schools that run Canvas for coursework and grading.

TechCrunch saw defaced login portals at three schools warning that stolen data will be leaked on May 12 unless Instructure negotiates a settlement, and ShinyHunters said those defacements came from a second, separate breach.

Instructure confirmed the breach exposed names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages between users, but said passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers and financial information were not taken, and shut Canvas down on May 7.

Other news you might like

• ChatGPT’s ‘Trusted Contact’ will alert loved ones of safety concernsLINK

• Sony wants TSMC's help to make image sensorsLINK

• Mozilla says 271 vulnerabilities found by Mythos have "almost no false positives"LINK

• AI free-trial abuse is becoming a costly problem for startups, Stripe saysLINK

• Disney looking to make a unified ‘super app,’ report saysLINK

• GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen Banned From eBay After Flexing His Meme-Stock MuscleLINK

• 60% of MD5 password hashes are crackable in under an hourLINK

• AI data center bans are rapidly multiplying across the US — 69 jurisdictions block new builds, with four moves noted as permanentLINK

• Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall offLINK

• Elon Musk faces criminal probe in France as prosecutors escalate X's AI InvestigationLINK

• A hacker ran me over with a robot lawn mowerLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Cardamom: an AI-powered phone ordering system for takeout restaurants that answers every call and captures orders without charging platform fees.LINK

Minions: a task board for running multiple Hermes Agent tasks in parallel, with automatic check-ins, retries, and smart escalation when agents get stuck.LINK

Kuku: open source: a local-first macOS markdown editor with wikilinks, backlinks, and an AI agent that edits files with reviewable diffs, no cloud required.LINK

Contral: context-aware coding assistant that teaches you through your actual work, providing real-time explanations without switching tools or environments.LINK

MarkUp: a visual collaboration tool that lets teams pin comments directly onto live or staged web pages, streamlining design and development feedback.LINK

Espa: an AI executive assistant you text or voice-message to schedule meetings, manage email replies, and track tasks without sharing your personal data.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Large language models show a surprising bias toward Japanese culture in their outputs, revealing that training data and design choices shape which cultures AI systems favor or ignore.LINK

Agentic AI in finance is reshaping how financial tasks are automated, as AI systems now act independently to make decisions, execute trades, and manage risk with minimal human oversight.LINK

Finite functional programming explores a style of coding where all computations are guaranteed to finish, removing the possibility of programs running forever and making software easier to verify and reason about.LINK

AI hallucinations undermine user trust in large language models, and teaching these systems to accurately assess their own confidence, called metacognition, is a key path toward fixing this problem.LINK

AI slide design can now arrange content more visually and aesthetically by training language models using verifiable layout rewards, producing presentations that look better without requiring human feedback for every decision.LINK

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