☕️ Ex-Google engineers charged with stealing secrets for Iran

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In today's Techpresso:

💥 Ex-Google engineers charged with stealing secrets for Iran

🤖 AWS AI coding tool caused two major outages in December

🛡️ Google blocked 1.75 million risky apps in 2025

📱 Meta's metaverse is going mobile-first

💰 Nvidia nears $30 billion investment in OpenAI

💬 Meta is shutting down Messenger's website

Plus: 🎁 19 other news you might like, 🧰 4 tools, and 📚 2 papers.

💥 Ex-Google engineers charged with stealing secrets for Iran LINK

Federal prosecutors charged three former Silicon Valley engineers with stealing chip security trade secrets from Google and other companies and sending confidential files to unauthorized locations, including Iran.

Samaneh Ghandali allegedly transferred hundreds of Google files to a third-party platform, photographed trade secret information the night before traveling to Iran, and later signed a false affidavit denying it.

Google's internal security systems detected suspicious activity in August 2023, and all three defendants now face conspiracy, theft of trade secrets, and obstruction of justice charges carrying up to 20 years.

🤖 AWS AI coding tool caused two major outages in December LINK

Amazon's cloud division AWS suffered at least two outages in recent months where its own AI coding tools, including Kiro and Amazon Q Developer, played a role, though Amazon blames user error instead.

In mid-December, a 13-hour interruption hit a customer-facing system after engineers let the Kiro AI coding tool carry out changes, and the agentic tool decided to delete and recreate the environment.

The AI tools were given operator-level permissions with no peer review required, and AWS only introduced safeguards like mandatory peer review and staff training after the December incident occurred.

🛡️ Google blocked 1.75 million risky apps in 2025 LINK

Google says it blocked 1.75 million policy-violating apps from Google Play in 2025, a drop from 2.36 million in 2024, which the company credits to AI-powered defenses and stricter developer requirements discouraging bad actors.

The company banned over 80,000 developer accounts in 2025, down from 158,000 the year before, while also running more than 10,000 safety checks on every app before and after publication.

Google Play Protect identified over 27 million new malicious apps outside the Play Store, up from 13 million in 2024, suggesting bad actors are increasingly targeting users through non-Play Store channels instead.

📱 Meta's metaverse is going mobile-first LINK

Meta announced that Horizon Worlds will become "almost exclusively mobile" going forward, shifting the platform away from its original VR-first approach on the Meta Quest headset.

Reality Labs VP Samantha Ryan said the company is "explicitly separating" its Quest VR platform from Worlds, going "all-in on mobile" to compete with Roblox, which earned $4.9 billion in 2025.

The move follows Reality Labs losing an estimated $80 billion since 2020, cutting 15% of staff, and closing first-party game studios Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru, and Armature Studio.

💰 Nvidia nears $30 billion investment in OpenAI LINK

Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI as part of a funding round that would value the AI startup at a $730 billion pre-money valuation, according to CNBC.

This investment is separate from the $100 billion infrastructure agreement the two companies announced in September, and the $30 billion is not tied to any deployment milestones.

The deal is not final and details could still change, while questions about the status of the earlier $100 billion infrastructure agreement have been growing since January reports said it was "on ice."

💬 Meta is shutting down Messenger's website LINK

Meta is shutting down the standalone Messenger website, messenger.com, starting in April 2026, redirecting users to facebook.com/messages or the Messenger mobile app to continue their conversations.

People without a Facebook account will only be able to keep using Messenger through the mobile app, and they can restore chat history on any platform with their backup PIN.

The shutdown follows Meta closing Messenger's desktop apps for Windows and Mac a few months ago, as the company has been merging Messenger back into Facebook since 2023.

Other news you might like

• As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity featuresLINK

• West Virginia sues Apple for alleged child sexual abuse material failuresLINK

• FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cashLINK

• NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as "Type A" mishap, says agency made mistakesLINK

• PromptSpy is the first Android malware to use generative AI at runtimeLINK

• New York hits the brakes on robotaxi expansion planLINK

• Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shoppingLINK

• Who's laughing now? China’s humanoid robots go from viral stumbles to kung fu flips in one yearLINK

• SpaceX’s Starbase city is getting its own courtLINK

• YouTube’s latest experiment brings its conversational AI tool to TVsLINK

• Amazon can be sued over sales linked to suicides, court saysLINK

• How a 16-year-old intern helped Netgear shut down a global scam networkLINK

• Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter booksLINK

• OpenAI says 18 to 24-year-olds account for nearly 50% of ChatGPT usage in IndiaLINK

• The U.S. and China Are Pursuing Different AI FuturesLINK

• Toyota hires seven Agility humanoid robots for Canadian factoryLINK

• At a critical moment, Snap loses a top Specs execLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Google Pomelli 2.0: generates customized product photography from a single image or text description, eliminating the need for expensive photo shoots and design work.LINK

Architect by Lyzr: a visual workflow builder for creating multi-agent AI systems with transparent decision flows and integrations, combining no-code design with full visibility before deployment.LINK

Claudebin: exports Claude Code terminal sessions into shareable URLs with structured viewers for reviewing conversation threads, file changes, and command history.LINK

Dreamer: a platform for building and deploying custom AI agents that automate tasks and integrate with your existing services through configurable tools.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Fast KV Compaction via Attention Matching: compresses AI memory during text generation by keeping only tokens the model actually pays attention to, reducing storage by up to 90% without losing accuracy.LINK

Masking Updates in Adaptive Optimizers: randomly skipping 90% of weight updates during training produces models that perform just as well while using far less computation.LINK

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