☕️ Apple launches the iPhone 17e

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

📱 Apple launches the iPhone 17e

📈 Claude hits number 1 on US App Store

👀 OpenAI reveals details of Pentagon partnership

💥 AWS UAE data center hit by objects amid Iran strikes

📡 SpaceX plans 5G-speed Starlink satellites by 2027

⌚ Qualcomm bets big on AI wearables

Plus: 🎁 11 other news you might like, 🧰 5 tools, and 📚 3 papers.

📱 Apple launches the iPhone 17e LINK

Apple has announced the iPhone 17e, its new $599 entry-level smartphone, which runs the same A19 chip as the base iPhone 17 and supports Apple Intelligence AI tools.

The iPhone 17e adds MagSafe charging at Qi2 speeds for 15W wireless charging, plus Apple's C1X cellular modem, which the company says is up to 2x faster than the previous C1.

Pre-orders open March 4 with store availability on March 11, and the base model comes with 256GB of storage, a 6.1-inch display with Ceramic Shield 2, and a new pink color option.

📈 Claude hits number 1 on US App Store LINK

Anthropic's Claude chatbot has climbed from 42nd place to the number one most downloaded app on the US App Store in just two months, beating out ChatGPT and Gemini.

The surge wasn't driven by a new feature but by a week-long public clash between Anthropic and the US government, including President Trump and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth designated Anthropic a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security," while Anthropic pushed back, saying current AI models aren't reliable enough for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

👀 OpenAI reveals details of Pentagon partnership LINK

OpenAI published details of its Pentagon deal after CEO Sam Altman admitted the agreement was "definitely rushed" and came together quickly once negotiations between Anthropic and the Department of Defense collapsed last Friday.

OpenAI's blog post listed three areas where its models cannot be used — mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapon systems, and high-stakes automated decisions — and said it retains full discretion over its safety stack.

Critics like Techdirt's Mike Masnick argued the contract language still allows domestic surveillance through Executive Order 12333, while OpenAI's national security lead countered that cloud API deployment architecture matters more than contract wording.

💥 AWS UAE data center hit by objects amid Iran strikes LINK

Amazon Web Services confirmed that unidentified objects struck one of its data centers in the UAE, causing a fire and power loss during a weekend of Iranian retaliatory strikes across the Middle East.

The fire department shut off power to the facility and its generators, and AWS said it was still waiting for permission to restore power, routing customer requests to a different data center.

AWS neither confirmed nor denied a connection to the Iran strikes when asked by Reuters, and its Service Health page also showed power outage issues at a data center in Bahrain.

📡 SpaceX plans 5G-speed Starlink satellites by 2027 LINK

SpaceX says its next-generation Starlink V2 satellites will deliver full 5G cellular connectivity directly to mobile phones, with the new hardware expected to launch by 2027.

The V2 satellites will provide around 20 times the throughput of first-generation models, powered by custom SpaceX-designed silicon and phased array antennas supporting thousands of spatial beams.

Now rebranded from Direct-to-Cell to Starlink Mobile, the service already operates roughly 650 satellites across more than 32 countries through partnerships with mobile network operators.

⌚ Qualcomm bets big on AI wearables LINK

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon Wear Elite, a 3nm chip designed not just for smartwatches but for a broader range of AI wearables like pins, pendants, and other form factors.

The chip includes a Hexagon NPU plus an extra eNPU AI accelerator and can run a 2 billion parameter AI model on device, though cloud connections remain necessary for AI vision tasks.

Past AI wearables like the Humane Ai Pin and Friend have flopped, and while companies including Apple and OpenAI are reportedly working on new devices, none has shown a clear use case yet.

Other news you might like

• Apple updates the iPad Air with an M4 chipLINK

• South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password OnlineLINK

• Polymarket saw $529M traded on bets tied to bombing of IranLINK

• How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell ApartLINK

• Apple replacing Core ML with modernized Core AI framework for iOS 27 at WWDCLINK

• Some Apple AI servers are reportedly sitting unused on warehouse shelves, due to low Apple Intelligence usageLINK

• Lenovo's Framework-like Modular AI PC concept lets you put a screen just about anywhere — detachable keyboard and ports make the machine customizableLINK

• Microsoft gets heavy-handed on Copilot Discord server, reportedly blocking 'Microslop' posts and heading down a dangerous pathLINK

🧰 Trending tools

GojiberryAI: identifies high-intent B2B leads through real-time signals like LinkedIn activity and job changes, then automates personalized outreach to improve response rates.LINK

Kimi Claw: a multi-modal AI assistant that searches 100+ websites, analyzes up to 50 files simultaneously, and generates slides, websites, and code efficiently.LINK

NothingHere: a macOS panic button that instantly hides all windows, mutes audio, and opens a decoy document with one hotkey for quick screen switching.LINK

Clean Clode: removes formatting artifacts from Claude Code and OpenAI Codex terminal output while preserving content structure, running entirely in your browser without tracking.LINK

Expressive Mode for ElevenAgents: adds natural-sounding voice interactions to AI agents using Eleven v3 Conversational, with improved turn-taking to reduce interruptions during conversations.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Medical AI reasoning verification method: doctors can check if vision language models used correct logic to reach diagnoses, not just whether answers seem right.LINK

Personality Subnetworks in Language Models: researchers found specific neuron groups inside language models that control personality traits, which can be edited to change how the AI responds without full retraining.LINK

Von Neumann's quantum measurement theory applied to consciousness: the paper examines whether quantum mechanics requires conscious observers to collapse wave functions, a debated interpretation since the 1930s.LINK

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