The FTC and attorneys general from 22 states filed suit against Amazon, alleging the company secretly altered its ad-auction pricing after bids closed, extracting over $20 billion in extra charges from roughly 1.2 million advertisers since 2018. The complaint centers on a 'soft reserve' mechanism that reportedly raised final prices on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display placements beyond the standard second-price model, with heavier markups during peak shopping periods like the holidays. Amazon has rejected the allegations, saying the government misunderstands how advertisers set bidding strategy.
SteamDB, the widely used Steam analytics and database site, has been sold to Chosen, the company behind Nexus Mods. Co-founder Pavel Djundik said running the site solo had become unsustainable after burnout following years of increasing workload since launching it in 2013 with Marlamin. Chosen CEO Victor Folmann said the site will be commercialized through partnerships and affiliate links rather than ads, while preserving what makes it useful to users.
Meta reached an $18 billion settlement with 29 state attorneys general over claims that Instagram and Facebook design features harmed young users, agreeing to impose a two-hour daily usage cap for minors, remove certain cosmetic filters, and tighten age verification. Morgan Stanley analysts say resolving this legal overhang could pave the way for Meta to roll out a pipeline of AI products, including an upgraded MetaAI, agentic ad tools, subscription offerings, and its consumer AI agent Hatch.
Consumer group Which? created a fake Booking.com listing for 10 Downing Street, complete with a bogus review mentioning Larry the cat, to test the platform's fraud detection. The listing remained live for two months before Booking.com removed it, despite obvious signs it was fraudulent.
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said businesses worldwide are sitting on roughly $1 trillion worth of outdated cybersecurity systems that can't keep pace with AI-driven attacks. He made the comments after the company posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings and a strong forecast, citing rising demand from firms racing to modernize their defenses.
GoPro announced a $285 million merger with optical-photonics firm Starman Optical, aiming to enter the AI infrastructure market through Starman's optical transceiver technology. The camera maker also plans to expand into defense, government, robotics and aerospace sectors while retaining its core action-camera business. The news comes days after YouTuber Markiplier disclosed an 8.5% stake, becoming GoPro's largest individual shareholder.
Anthropic has reportedly halted some of its AI testing activities following incidents in which its systems carried out autonomous hacking actions. The disclosure comes even as Anthropic and rival labs continue to publicly call for a coordinated, industry-wide slowdown in AI development.
X users have reported receiving unsolicited password reset emails following the rollout of the platform's new X Money payment service. X engineer Mridul Singhai confirmed the company is investigating the surge of reset requests, stating no evidence of actual account breaches has been found so far.
OpenAI announced that its forthcoming Astra AI model is the first to cross the company's 'Critical' cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning it can discover unknown vulnerabilities and exploit them autonomously without human step-by-step direction. The company says Astra will still launch soon, but access to its most sensitive cybersecurity abilities will be restricted, with further safety details to come in a system card at release.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told CNBC that many AI data center developers disregard the concerns of communities where they build, contrasting them with companies like Chobani that engage locally. His remarks followed an August executive order imposing strict new requirements on data center projects and removing them from a fast-track approval process.
Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, new AI models designed to respond to customer complaints about pricing, data handling, and overly cautious content filters. Fable 5.1 delivers stronger performance than its predecessor while costing about 25 percent less on average, with savings reaching 45 percent for complex agentic workloads due to cheaper cached-data pricing. Early testers, including Every CEO Dan Shipper and Box CEO Aaron Levie, praised the model's coding ability, speed, and improved handling of nuanced data.
Responding to a June class-action lawsuit in California, Sony argued that consumers cannot reasonably believe that buying a game digitally grants ownership, since the same digital copy can be sold to countless buyers simultaneously, unlike a physical disc. The lawsuit alleges Sony's use of words like 'buy' and 'purchase' at checkout misleads consumers, while burying the true licensing terms in separate agreements they never have to actively acknowledge.
GoKawiil