☕️ Meta paid contractors to pose as teens attacking rival AI

Amazon takes on Starlink, Meta's teen AI trick, and more.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Read online Monday 06 July 2026 | Join Free | Upgrade Together with Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso. In today's newsletter: 🛰️ Amazon's Starlink rival launches internet service this year 🕵️ Meta paid contractors to pose as teens attacking rival AI 💼 Microsoft is laying off 4,800 employees ☄️ SpaceX burned up 260 Starlink satellites in six months 🤖 First AI-run ransomware attack executes entirely on its own Plus: 🎁 15 other news you might like, 🧰 5 tools, and 📚 4 papers. FROM OUR PARTNER Most delays don’t happen in code They show up between tools, teams and stages. IBM Bob coordinates planning, coding and validation across the SDLC with governance built in. The impact can show up across the workflow: Get to know Bob 🛰️ Amazon's Starlink rival launches internet service this year LINK Amazon Leo, the company's answer to Starlink, will start offering limited satellite internet service to US customers later this year, though pricing and coverage details have not yet been decided. Amazon launched 29 more satellites into low-Earth orbit on Thursday, raising its total to 396, still far behind Starlink's roughly 10,000 satellites that already reach more than 150 countries. Leo aims to have 7,727 satellites up by 2035 through nearly 100 scheduled launches costing $82 billion, and it has contracts with JetBlue in 2027 and Delta in 2028. 🕵️ Meta paid contractors to pose as teens attacking rival AI LINK Meta ran a secret program called "Cannes" that hired hundreds of contractors to pose as teenagers and flood rival AI models from OpenAI, Google, and Character.AI with disturbing prompts, according to a Wired report. Using throwaway under-18 accounts, the contractors sent nearly 3,800 prompts in one round, with hundreds about suicide and self-harm, hundreds more on eating disorders, and at least 239 involving sex or romance, plus images of pills and nooses. Meta called the effort "industry-standard" safety benchmarking, but the AI companies had no idea it happened, and expert Rumman Chowdhury warned that keeping it secret creates a "governance gray zone" for anticompetitive practices. 💼 Microsoft is laying off 4,800 employees LINK Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs, or 2.1% of its workforce, in the company's latest move to reduce costs during the rise of artificial intelligence. The Xbox division is losing about 20% of its staff, with 3,200 people leaving through fiscal year 2027, including 1,600 roles cut on Monday, according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Microsoft has been the worst performer among megacap tech stocks in 2026, falling 19%, as its own AI models lag and Windows, Surface, and Xbox revenue keeps shrinking. ☄️ SpaceX burned up 260 Starlink satellites in six months LINK SpaceX brought 260 Starlink satellites out of orbit to burn up in the atmosphere between December 2025 and May 2026, according to new filings the company submitted to the FCC earlier this month. Of the 260 satellites that were deorbited, 176 came from the first generation and the rest from the newer generation, while another 349 satellites were decommissioned and are set for disposal soon. Starlink satellites last about five years, then use their leftover fuel to lower their orbit and re-enter, since recovering the units, which weigh between 573 and 2,756 pounds, would be difficult and costly. 🤖 First AI-run ransomware attack executes entirely on its own LINK Cloud security firm Sysdig says it found the first ransomware attack run entirely by an AI agent, which it named JADEPUFFER, that broke in, stole credentials, and destroyed databases with no human at the controls. The agent entered through a known Langflow flaw (CVE-2025-3248) patched back in April 2025, then hit a MySQL production server, encrypting 1,342 configuration entries and demanding Bitcoin sent to a Proton Mail address. Sysdig points to one moment as proof no person was typing: after a failed login, the agent diagnosed the error, deleted the broken account, and built a working admin account in just 31 seconds. FROM OUR PARTNER Stop Abuse Without Slowing Down Users hCaptcha protects signups, logins, checkouts, and more with advanced bot and fraud detection. Trusted by enterprises worldwide, hCaptcha integrates natively with thousands of applications, frameworks, and platforms. Reduce account fraud and credential stuffing Protect revenue and customer accounts Deploy quickly with native integrations See how hCaptcha fits into your stack → Other news & articles you might like South Korea's SK Hynix to launch $28 billion US listing to ride global AI wave LINK Report: iPhone Ultra to have incredibly limited availability at launch, may ship slightly later LINK Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk LINK Etzioni on AI: Elon Musk promised humanoid robots, but China delivered LINK ByteDance and Alibaba kill custom AI companions as China’s new rules bite LINK Meta’s woes deepen in India as child abuse ads on Instagram draw government ire LINK Judge grants Alibaba a reprieve from the lobbying ban tied to the Pentagon’s blacklist LINK Sergey Brin and 11 other billionaires and tech elite lined up against California's proposed billionaire tax LINK Claude Code and Fable 5 ported the 2003 PC game Command & Conquer to native iOS in "a few hours" LINK Mistral CEO Mensch says proprietary AI models give labs a front-row seat to your business processes LINK How Meta’s Threads Became as Popular as X LINK Better Models: Worse Tools LINK Nvidia's next-gen AI rack system delayed to 2028 on manufacturing snags, SemiAnalysis says LINK Apple & Broadcom renew partnership through 2031 LINK Trump Pocketed $630M While Memecoin Investors Lost $3.81 Billion LINK 🧰 Trending tools K:AI marketing agent: Our agent reads your website and builds on-brand campaigns ready for you to approve and launch.Enter your website to see it in action. AnySearch: lets AI agents query multiple trusted sources simultaneously, returning filtered, de-duplicated, structured data for more reliable, accurate outputs. LINK Typeahead 2.0: a Mac writing assistant that delivers inline autocomplete suggestions across all text fields using a local, offline AI model. LINK Sunrise: a Google Tasks-powered planner adding a Today view, overdue tracking, weekly overview, and kanban board to your existing task lists. LINK Edgee Claude Code Compressor V2: compresses tokens sent to LLMs like Claude and GPT, cutting costs up to 50% while adding automatic failover and team usage tracking. LINK AirKaren: automates airline compensation claims by citing regulations, filing paperwork, and contacting support on your behalf at no cost. LINK You can check the previous tools here, or add your tool here 📚 Trending papers & reports > Reach 600,000+ tech professionals: If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. > Code cleanliness doesn't help AI coding tools finish tasks more often, but cleaner code cuts their token usage by 7 to 8% and reduces repeated file visits by 34%. LINK > Smart home surveillance puts domestic workers at unique risk, a study of 18 UK workers finds, as AI features and opaque employment agencies limit their privacy both at work and at home. LINK > Building autonomous AI agents now has a single end-to-end practitioner's guide, covering everything from core model training to multi-agent coordination, memory systems, and shipping real products. LINK > Taxing tech companies for the harms their tools cause, from environmental damage to job displacement, is examined as a real policy option, but requires careful design to match each specific harm. LINK 🎓 Want to master the AI tools we cover every day? Techpresso's AI Academy has 330+ step-by-step tutorials on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and every tool that matters. No fluff — just practical workflows you can use at work. Try it free for 7 days. On this day in 2016, pokémon go launched, becoming a global augmented-reality phenomenon. 💬 How did you find today's edition? We read every reply — just reply to this email and let us know how we can improve! ★★★★★  Nailed it ★★★  Average ★  Fail Not subscribed to ☕️ Techpresso yet?Subscribe for free Advertise Feedback Read Online   Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 ☕️ Techpresso 228 Park Ave S, #29976, New York, New York 10003, United States Terms of Service