Amazon founder Jeff Bezos believes that artificial intelligence is going to lead to unprecedented productivity gains which could result in cheaper food, housing, and two income households deciding that they no longer need two incomes. Internally, Amazon employees mock the company’s AI tools, refer to its output as “slop,” and joke about the company’s failed attempt to motivate employees to use AI tools effectively. 

The memes are yet another example of the contrast between what AI companies say in public about its potential power and benefit versus the reality of how the people who help create these AI tools use and criticize them internally. Amazon employees told me about these memes after they saw my story last week about Google employees also internally sharing memes critical of Google’s AI tools. 

“Now I have everything I need,” says the text over an image of a jet taking off in one meme posted by an Amazon employee. The jet is edited to carry the purple ghost logo for Kiro, Amazon’s AI-powered coding tool. “Narrator: He did not have everything he needed,” says the text over an image of a bunch of people left behind on the tarmac. I've recreated all the memes rather than share screenshots from the Slack channel in order to protect sources.

“Kiro: ‘Confirmed I have the full picture,’” says the text over an image of an iceberg that appears small above water but is hiding a huge mass underwater in another meme posted by an Amazon employee. 

One meme just showed Kiro’s logo, as well as an image of a bee and a lion implying that Kiro be lyin’.

Another meme just shows Cillian Murphy’s face as Robert Oppenheimer in the movie Oppenheimer, surrounded by logos of AI coding tools like Amazon’s Kiro, Anthropic’s Claude Code, and an AI agent called Meshclaw. The text on the image simply reads “Sloppenheimer.” The meme apparently refers to the fact that Amazon employees have been encouraged to use all of these tools at some point. 

For this story, I talked to multiple Amazon employees who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press. They said that this discussion is mostly taking place on a company Slack channel called #actual-aws-memes. While most of the memes I saw were critical of AI, one Amazon employee told me that there’s a “spectrum” of opinions shared in the channel. 

“Actual-aws-memes is a place to blow off steam so it skews negative, but I'd say the genres of most are ‘Oh boy, we get to use Claude Code now instead of Kiro,’ ‘Earnest Kiro user complaining about its limitations,’ and some genuine frustration with corporate policy,” The Amazon employee told me. “I'm an AI hater, so I prefer to think they agree with me, but there's more of a spectrum than that.”

Another Amazon employee told me that the anti-AI memes started around the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, “when [AI] adoption started to get really forced by leadership.”

"I think people meme about anything they're around a lot, and obviously AI is a common topic," Another Amazon employee told me. "Of course it doesn't help that leadership is definitely pushing AI so there's probably some element of backlash."

A few of the recent memes shared in the channel directly reference the fact that Amazon had just shut down an internal leaderboard which tracked how much Amazon employees were using Kiro. In an official internal statement and in comment to 404 Media, Amazon said it had shut down the leaderboard because it had achieved its goal of motivating and teaching people to use AI tools. However, Amazon employees told 404 Media that management decided to shut down the leaderboard because people were cheating by tasking Kiro with completing unnecessary tasks and because it was resulting in wasteful, expensive AI use. 

“When they shut down the leaderboard, there was a lot of [discussion in the slack channel] ‘Well, yeah, what did you think was going to happen when you incentivized people to drive up usage,’” the Amazon employee told me. 

One Amazon employee shared an image of the “stonks” going down meme and said “AI usage after the PTI incentives goes away.”

One Amazon employee shared a fake certificate for a “participation award” to AWS and Goodhart’s Law for “cheesing a leaderboard we probably should have known you would cheese.” Goodhart’s law is the adage that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure,” which is what some Amazon employees thought was the effect of the leaderboard. Amazon measured and rewarded AI use, so employees used a lot of AI, but not in a way that produced any value. 

Another meme referencing the leaderboard and several Amazon AI products like Ask Rufus, Amazon Q, and Amazon Nova asked “What do you mean by ‘value?’ AI itself is the purpose for everything, no?”

One Amazon employee told me that he saw Amazon employees in the chat discussing how to cheat the leaderboard. 

“I saw some of that, mostly the occasional ‘you know, it'd be really easy to set up a shell script to do this’ or ‘my cron job that calls Kiro every hour or so.’ Hard to tell if it was actual planning or just engineers noticing how easy it would be to cheat the system,” another Amazon employee told me. 

In an email, Amazon told me that the negative AI comments on Slack are just from a few individuals and don't represent the perspective of the company or the vast majority of employees.

"We’re always looking to understand our teams’ experiences with various tools – that’s how we learn what works for them and what doesn’t – and while this handful of comments doesn't reflect what we hear from most Kiro users, we still appreciate the chance to learn from the feedback," Amazon said. "In general, we’re seeing incredible improvements in efficiency and delivery from Kiro, which more than 80% of our software developers use. Kiro offers differentiated capabilities that other tools don't provide, particularly in spec-driven development and property-based testing. These aren't just incremental improvements—they represent a fundamentally different approach to AI-assisted development that prioritizes production readiness and correctness.”

‘Caffè’ in Italian. ‘Kaffe’ in Swedish. Across seemingly contrasting cultures, the word for ‘coffee’ carries the weight of ritual, social connection, and daily pleasure. In Stockholm, Nespresso’s Vertuo World pop-up found its footing between these two deeply expressive traditions: Sweden’s culture of fika and Italy’s espresso-bar ritual.

While the brand has been part of this at-home ritual for decades, Nespresso enters a more expressive era with the launch of its new Vertuo World campaign and the introduction of the Vertuo Up machine. Nespresso recently transformed Francesco, one of Stockholm’s most talked-about Italian restaurants, into an immersive pop-up café for two days. Located on Södermalm and known for its younger, culturally engaged audience, Francesco offered the ideal setting for a brand experience built around the ways coffee is increasingly staged, shared, and folded into contemporary lifestyle culture.

The activation translated Vertuo World’s larger campaign premise—that every cup of coffee opens a new world—into a distinctly local, design-forward experience. Across the global campaign, Nespresso moves through a series of visual worlds shaped by coffee, culture, and time of day, from a slow New York morning with Melozio to an afternoon Altissio espresso in Italy, an iced Double Espresso Chiaro by the pool, and a French Lavender & Vanilla Decaf to close the day. The campaign leans into curiosity, travel, creativity, and the question of “What else?” as an invitation to explore coffee beyond routine.

In Stockholm, that sense of exploration was given physical form. Francesco was reimagined through a palette of green and deep purple that reflected Nespresso’s new brand direction, while sculptural furniture, curated materials, and carefully selected Louis Poulsen lighting grounded the environment in a Scandinavian design context. Rather than relying on a fully temporary build-out, the concept showed how an existing café can be transformed into a branded destination through atmosphere, materiality, and carefully orchestrated details.

The menu became part of the experience as well. Francesco’s founder and chef, originally from Napoli, created a signature iced pistachio coffee exclusively for the pop-up, combining Nespresso coffee, pistacchio, ice, whipped cream, and finely chopped pistachios. Inspired by Southern Italian flavors and reinterpreted through a modern coffee lens, the drink became one of the activation’s most shared elements, alongside custom Nespresso-branded maritozzi.

“It’s more than a campaign, but a new way of experiencing coffee. We want to inspire people to think differently about their coffee moments, more creatively, more socially, and more personally,” says Petra Dahlman, Nordic Marketing Director at Nespresso.

The activation also speaks to a broader shift in Scandinavian coffee culture. While more than 80 percent of adults across the region drink coffee daily, Nespresso notes that habits are changing, particularly among younger audiences drawn to iced coffee, slower mornings, intentional routines, and social micro-communities.

In this context, Vertuo World positions coffee as a designable experience—one that can move between comfort and novelty, hot and iced, private ritual and public performance.

Francesco’s Iced Pistachio Coffee

Ingredients
1 tablespoon pistachio cream
1 double Nespresso Intenso
1 cup milk
5 ice cubes
1 tablespoon whipped cream
1 teaspoon pistachio grains

Procedure

• Brew the double Nespresso Intense
• Mix the pistachio cream with the double Nespresso Intenso until smooth.
• Add ice and milk.
• Top with whipped cream and finish with pistachio grains.

The drink reflects the overall concept. It is layered, indulgent and designed to be both consumed and captured.

Photography courtesy of Grand Relations. Signature drink recipe by Francesco Giudice, founder and owner of Francesco.

Microsoft has shut down a wave of its own repositories on GitHub, including those related to Azure and AI coding agents, as it investigates a data breach, according to research from cybersecurity researchers and a statement given to 404 Media by Microsoft. Hackers planted malware that would harvest peoples’ credentials when they opened it in AI coding tools like Claude Code or Gemini CLI, according to one set of researchers.

The exact contours of the breach are unclear, but researchers say Microsoft has disabled more than 70 of its own repositories, and pointed to a particular package that was previously compromised.

“We have temporarily removed some repositories as we investigate potential malicious content,” Microsoft told 404 Media in an emailed statement on Monday.

At the time of writing, various GitHub repositories reads:

“This repository has been disabled. Access to this repository has been disabled by GitHub Staff due to a violation of GitHub's terms of service. If you are the owner of the repository, you may reach out to GitHub Support for more information.” 

Last week, cybersecurity website OpenSourceMalware.com, which acts as a clearing house for indicators of supply chain attacks so defenders can secure their own networks, and which also publishes its own write-ups, wrote about the mass disabling of Microsoft GitHub repositories.

“GitHub disabled 73 Microsoft repositories across four of its GitHub organizations—the entire Azure Functions org, the whole Durable Task family, and a row of AI sample apps—in a 105-second sweep on June 5,” the website wrote on Friday.

Is it very unusual for any company, let alone Microsoft, to disable so many of its own repositories in one go. They include 49 related to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing arm, and some concerning AI agents. 

The shutdown repositories also include ones related to durabletask, a Microsoft development tool. 

Researchers from StepSecurity wrote on Friday that the GitHub closures came after a malicious commit was pushed to the durabletask repository. That attack planted configuration files that would harvest peoples’ credentials when they opened the repository in Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, or VS Code, StepSecurity wrote. 

Hackers from the group TeamPCP previously compromised Microsoft’s durabletask, publishing three malicious versions of the tool in May. TeamPCP has performed a wealth of supply chain attacks in the first half of this year, impacting hundreds of organizations, WIRED reported.

In practice, this means that any GitHub actions that used those repositories will no longer function. And coupled with the statement and research, indicates Microsoft did not fully protect itself and its users after the earlier compromise.

“Why is this mentioned nowhere?” one commentator on a Microsoft forum thread discussing one of the repository closures writes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to give potentially more than a thousand local law enforcement agencies a facial recognition app that would query a database of hundreds of millions of images to verify someone’s immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.

The app would be a dramatic escalation in the technology being used to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are already using Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app that taps into a wide array of DHS and other government databases, on U.S. streets, stopping people and scanning their faces. With that app, ICE officers point their phone camera at a person, the app scans their face, and the app returns a wealth of biographical information and whether they have been issued an order of removal. The app has made mistakes and been used against American citizens.

With this second app, much of that capability would now be in the hands of local police who essentially have become extensions of ICE.

“This embarrassingly cursory document utterly fails to acknowledge the harms that will flow from putting a flawed face recognition app in the hands of many thousands of local police,” Nate Wessler, deputy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Sending local cops out to indiscriminately scan our faces, with a system that is known to generate false matches, that saves our data for 15 years, and that ensnares police into making immigration decisions that they are untrained for and that will undermine community safety efforts, is a recipe for disaster and for terrorizing members of communities across the country. DHS’s privacy regulators fell down on the job. Now it’s up to lawmakers to ensure this dangerous technology stays off our streets.”

Fast 7,5 Stunden Musik verschiedenster Couleur für den Sonntag, selektiert und gemixt von Stachy.

the whole day-analogue & uncut, entire set.
recorded live @der-strand22 May24 2026.
love is stronger than pride-just a perfect day

® AV limited (STACHY.DJ) · Is Stronger Than Pride (Alles Ist Musik)

Griff opened our label showcase at Public Records in 2024, and at the time, our relationship had only just gotten started. His album, Immersion, released last month, was only just in mastering stages with Sven Weisemann, and would take nearly another 1.5 years to see the light of day due to some troublesome test presses. But while his release date was touch and go, an isolatedmix was always written in the stars.

I technically heard Griff DJ at Brooklyn’s The Lot radio station just a few hours before our label showcase - sharing the booth with him as a temporary groupie while I plastered ASIP stickers all over the walls - and had been deep in his guest mixes prior to us even meeting in person. His journey as a DJ regularly takes him to festivals worldwide, and as part of his connection with Delayed, some intimate sets in the Pocono’s have come to fruition and are a worthy bookmark if you end up liking this one.

As someone who can traverse a multitude of styles, from ambient and downtempo to deeper house and techno, Griff’s one of those artists that shows up in different ways - every time. Likely because, his music, and the stories around his reasons for his music, are often very personal. Whether it’s a concept, or a vibe, I get the feeling Griff is a master of sense and construct - a pretty special skill for an artist and DJ to have, where stories told come from the heart and have a pure reason. Not performance for performance sake, but a narrative traveling from the mind, told through a meticulous track selection.

The concept was my attempt to portray various stages of consciousness throughout the morning, from dark into light / sleep to awake, as I get up & start the day & eventually get outside, into the woods for a morning - deep sleep into REM, vivid dreams, waking up from a dream & it’s still dark outside but there’s a faint glow of light, immersed in nature feeling the warmth of the sun in your face. It starts out cold, dark, alien, otherworldly then shifts towards something more mysterious & inviting but still a bit strange, then moves into warm & fuzzy. Analogous to frost on the ground slowly being melted, warmed & evaporated by the sun. - Aspetuck

Download

Listen on Soundcloud, the ASIP Podcast or the 9128.live iOS and Android app.

Tracklist:

01. Altjira - Atvelope
02. Solma - Skaub
03. JEMAPUR - WSIF.rg
04. Corell - Under The Surface
05. Dan Bean - Chum
06. Jeremiah Chiu - Static Stone Railway
07. Talaboman - Midnattssol
08. Skee Mask - Reminiscrmx
09. In Transit - A.2829
10. Innerst Inne - Nils Påls
11. Doltz - Ibuki
12. Michael Rother - Klangkörper
13. Aspetuck - Synth Named Sukie
14. Aspetuck - Hit Me With Your Pet Shark
15. Arovane - Sunter
16. OK EG - Open Sky
17. Luke Abbott - 2nd 5th Heavy
18. Tunnel Dancers - Central Radiance
19. Anushka Chkheidze + Robert Lippok - Rainbow Road
20. Innerst Inne - Hemma Hemma

Aspetuck | Bandcamp | Soundcloud | Instagram

Listen and support Griff’s latest record here

If you made it this far, here are a few download codes for Griff’s new album over on Bandcamp, if you’re fast…please comment below with which one you used one up!

https://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/yum

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