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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.
The FTC and a bipartisan coalition of 22 states have sued Amazon, claiming it secretly manipulated its advertising auctions to charge advertisers more than they should have paid under the stated 'second price' bidding rules. The complaint alleges Amazon pocketed roughly $20 billion since 2019 by making Sponsored Products advertisers pay their full winning bid nearly 80% of the time instead of one cent above the next-highest bid. Amazon has called the lawsuit 'misguided' and denies misleading advertisers or consumers.
The Federal Trade Commission, joined by 22 states, filed suit against Amazon on Monday alleging the company secretly inflated prices in its Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Display ad auctions for more than seven years. The complaint says Amazon told over 500,000 small and medium businesses they'd pay just a penny above the next-highest bid in a 'second-price' auction, but from 2019 quietly inserted a hidden 'soft reserve price' using a fabricated bidder to push winning advertisers to pay their full bid instead.
OpenAI reported elevated errors and latency on ChatGPT Work, its enterprise AI agent, for about three hours on Monday, while Microsoft separately confirmed degraded functionality across Exchange Online. Downdetector logged over 1,100 reports for OpenAI products and nearly 4,600 for Microsoft Outlook around 2:24 p.m. ET, though the companies gave no indication the two incidents were related.
Microsoft confirmed a widespread outage of Exchange Online on Monday, causing Outlook users to experience delayed or failed emails, authentication errors, and search failures. The company traced the problem to an authentication component and began testing a fix on part of its infrastructure before a broader rollout. Downdetector logged over 5,000 user reports by 2 PM ET, with complaints also flooding social media.
MapQuest has become the top navigation app in Apple's App Store after hundreds of thousands of downloads in recent days. The surge follows the company's statement that it will not rename Lake Ontario to 'Lake America,' despite a Trump executive order calling for the change.
Microsoft confirmed it is investigating a major Exchange Online disruption, tracked internally as EX1464935, after a flood of user reports began around 5:30 PM UTC. Tens of thousands of users reported problems sending and receiving emails, logging into accounts, and managing mailboxes through Outlook and admin tools, according to Downdetector data.
Academa is a new project that treats lecture videos like software: instructors describe what a teacher says and draws using a code-like script, which a compiler then renders into a video with text-to-speech narration and generated graphics. Because the lecture exists as editable source rather than a finished video file, mistakes can be patched and new versions shipped, much like updating a codebase. The team is now applying large language models to this text-based format, aiming to let AI generate or refine entire STEM lectures automatically.
Chess.com has launched Gambit, a free-to-play online poker site built to teach the game without real-money betting, following a beta test that started in May. The site mirrors Chess.com's design, including bot opponents, tournaments, review tools and lesson modes, plus its own rating system to keep gameplay engaging. The company says more companion games beyond poker are planned.
OpenStreetMap has announced that its annual State of the Map conference will be held in 2026 in Paris, with both in-person and online attendance options. The three-day event will feature talks, workshops and discussion sessions for mappers and users of the open mapping platform.
Wild honey from Himalayan cliff bees, called 'bhir mauri ko maha' in Nepal, contains grayanotoxin absorbed from rhododendron nectar and can dangerously slow heart rate and crash blood pressure when eaten in excess. A chemical ecologist notes a recent case where a man was hospitalized after consuming the honey brought from Nepal's hills, and warns that such honey is now being marketed internationally on major online platforms without the dosing knowledge Indigenous communities have developed over generations.
Meta reached a settlement with attorneys general from 48 states and four US jurisdictions over teen safety practices on Facebook and Instagram, agreeing to pay up to $18 billion and implement stricter age verification, notification limits, and screentime caps for minors. Notably, roughly $5.3 billion of that payment is contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting comparable restrictions, a structure Meta explicitly encouraged in a public letter to its rivals.