The FTC and 22 state attorneys general are suing Amazon, accusing the company of secretly inflating advertising prices through undisclosed changes to its auction system that may have extracted more than $20 billion from advertisers since 2019. "Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices," FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement. "These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers." CNBC reports: The complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, centers on Amazon's sponsored products ads, brands ads and display ads that run alongside search results on its sprawling webstore. Amazon has amassed the third-largest digital advertising business globally, trailing only Google and Meta. The company hauled in more than $68 billion in ads revenue last year, with the lion's share coming from sales of sponsored products ads. Third-party sellers who hawk their wares on Amazon's marketplace have recently criticized surging advertising costs on the site, including a string of recent policy changes, which led to some top merchants withholding their ad spend in a boycott. The company has traditionally used a "second-price" auction system, wherein it told advertisers they "only pay the least bid amount needed in order to win," the complaint states, citing Amazon's own marketing materials. The FTC alleges in its complaint that Amazon in 2019 changed its auction rules without notice by adding an undisclosed surcharge it referred to as a "soft reserve price," which led to higher ad prices. "Amazon made this surreptitious change to its auction because it was unhappy about how much revenue its advertising auctions were generating," the agency said in its complaint, which cites internal communications between Amazon ad executives. In one exchange, a company executive allegedly acknowledged it uses an "invented auction participant" to increase prices, the FTC said. The FTC and the states alleged Amazon's practices violate federal and state consumer protection laws, and they're seeking civil penalties, restitution and other unspecified damages. In a blog post, Amazon called the FTC's lawsuit "misguided" and said the complaint "fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate." The company added that the agency's lawsuit doesn't include evidence of consumer price increases. "We've provided advertisers with guidance about our auctions and pricing in the main tools they use to manage their campaigns, and we continue to update that guidance," the company said. "We look forward to making our case in court."

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According to The Information (paywalled), Apple reportedly moved up the release of new Mac mini and Mac Studio models after unexpectedly strong enterprise demand for Macs capable of running AI workloads. MacRumors reports: Apple normally releases new Mac models in the autumn, closer to October or November, making this week's announcement unusually early, falling just before the anticipated arrival of new iPhone models. The Information says that the AI-driven boom in Mac Studio and Mac mini sales is behind the early launch. Apple noticeably promoted the ability to link multiple Mac Studios together into a single, more capable system for running large frontier AI models, a feature aimed at business and developer customers rather than everyday consumers. Apple highlighted the Mac mini and Mac Studio's shift toward business buyers in June, with a "Business at the Park" event involving executives from major companies Ford, Disney, and Anthropic. The Mac mini was said to be the "darling" of the event. Even so, enterprise's rush toward powerful desktop Macs more broadly took Apple by surprise. The company reportedly did not possess an engineering team dedicated to business customers or staff focused on developer relations, and lacked an enterprise AI strategy. Businesses that approached Apple asking to buy access to the company's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure were reportedly turned down. Apple is instead leaning on partners such as WebAI and Mount Thor, which provide AI tools and execution environments built on Apple hardware.

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Broadcom is launching "TrueSource," an effort to curate and secure open-source components used with its Tanzu platform, including Spring, RabbitMQ, and libraries across Java, Python, and Node.js. "The idea is to provide a set of solutions focused on providing clean and secure artefacts," Purnima Padmanabhan, vice president of Broadcom's Tanzu Division, told The Register. "We choose and build every Spring library, databases, other Java components," she said. The Register reports: Padmanabhan said that promise means VMware will also provide "TrueSource trusted artifacts" for code that is not part of Spring, including the wider Java ecosystem, Python, and Node.js. "Broadcom's curation process ensures that the libraries conform to a reference architecture and are supportable by the maintainers of record," according to a company statement. "Thousands of engineers across Broadcom's software divisions scan, fix, contribute to, and consume them every day." A VMware spokesperson told The Register the Broadcom business unit "will work with and support maintainers on open source software and we will provide fixes to open source upstream for any active projects." "With Spring and RabbitMQ, we are the maintainers. For other open source software, we will work with the maintainers. We believe that the community maintainers must remain the source of truth," the spokesperson said. This is just the sort of contribution that the open-source community wants vendors to do to reflect the value they extract from software they did not create alone. It's also the sort of thing vendors sometimes conclude they need to do to keep products based on FOSS viable.

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Kalshi has issued its first-ever lifetime ban to former U.S. Rep. George Santos after concluding he failed to fully cooperate with an insider-trading investigation. He is also being fined $71,356, according to a filing (PDF) on its website. Engadget reports: It was reported in June that Santos was under investigation from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over insider trading. Prediction markets like Kalshi allow users to buy contracts or shares in the outcome of events. Participants don't necessarily have to wait for an event to resolve before selling these contracts and cashing in. Santos allegedly bought contracts on Kalshi indicating that he would not attend this year's State of the Union speech after weather disrupted his travel plans. According to the CFTC, Santos then sold those contracts for a profit after claiming on social media that he would be in attendance. The former congressman is said to have made more than $17,500 through this scheme, which Kalshi reportedly detected and flagged to authorities. In July, Santos agreed to pay over $35,000 to settle the CFTC's claims against him. The agency also issued him a three-year trading ban. Kalshi, however, doesn't plan to allow Santos back on its platform in 2029 (or anytime after that). The company confirmed to The Wall Street Journal this was the first time it had given anyone a lifetime ban and that it did so because Santos didn't fully cooperate with its investigation. He can appeal the decision to the CTFC.

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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey is warning that advanced "frontier" AI models could materially increase cyber risk across the global financial system by making attacks faster, cheaper, and more scalable. In a letter to G20 finance officials, he said financial firms need stronger defenses and contingency plans for simultaneous disruptions. CNBC reports: Writing in his capacity as chair of the Financial Stability Board, an international body that coordinates policy and makes recommendations to national authorities, Bailey identified the potential impact of frontier AI -- which refers to the most advanced AI models -- on cyber risk as "the most immediate concern" for the financial system. "Frontier AI may have the ability materially to alter the speed, scale and economics of cyber risk, which could undermine market confidence system-wide, especially due to highly concentrated third-party service providers," Bailey said. "Recent developments have also highlighted to me that many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond," he added. [...] Financial institutions and technology providers will need to improve vulnerability management, response and recovery capabilities -- "and prepare for more severe scenarios involving simultaneous disruption across multiple firms or shared technology dependencies," Bailey said. Alongside new AI models, Bailey cited "fragilities" in sovereign debt markets, the growing use of debt by investors in equity markets and stretched asset valuations, particularly AI-related investments, as among his concerns.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Today is Tim Cook's last day as Apple CEO, with John Ternus set to take over tomorrow. To mark his last day in the role, Cook penned an emotional memo to Apple employees today. In the memo sent to employees this morning and obtained by 9to5Mac, Cook reflects on his time at Apple and thanks employees for all of their work. He also says he takes "enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable" as John Ternus. "Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership," Cook writes. "There is something truly special about Apple," writes Cook. "I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple helps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long before you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company and what continues to drive the work you do every day." He continues: "Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone. And that's the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up. We have made it possible to leave our 'dent in the universe,' as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am..." Cook also thanked the Apple community in a post on social media, writing: "Sending lots of love to the Apple community on my last day as CEO. My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will. Thank you for being a constant source of inspiration. My gratitude is endless, and I'm excited for the next chapter!"

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MapQuest's refusal to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America" has sent its app surging up the charts, making it the No. 1 navigation app in the U.S. and driving "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads. In contrast, Google Maps announced on Saturday that it was complying with the Trump administration's name change. TechCrunch reports: The "OG of online mapping," as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump's executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest's mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store's Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast. MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States. In Canada's App Store, the app reached No. 2 overall as of Sunday evening. The 30-year-old company remarked that it received "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app's usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels. "We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they're familiar with," said Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, in a statement. "Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app."

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A massive 12TB archive of old Steam2 content has surfaced online, apparently containing nearly every version of games uploaded to Valve's servers between 2003 and 2013, including unreleased prototypes, playtest builds, and cut content. Early discoveries include deleted Portal 2 material, files tied to Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and beta builds of games like Left 4 Dead 2, CS: GO, Spore, and Dragon Age: Origins. Researchers claim much of the material was once accessible through an unsecured public API. Ars Technica reports: The reason this weekend's leaked content cuts off abruptly in 2013 is because that's when Valve updated its content distribution system from "Steam2" to the current SteamPipe system. In moving from a proprietary file distribution format to standard HTTP file trees, the new system removed various update approval bottlenecks on Valve's end and streamlined update and patch downloads so they only reflected file differentials. Publicly accessible early versions of some games released before this SteamPipe transition had been considered lost content by archivists, no longer accessible from Valve itself and living on only as local downloads on aging machines. Apparently all that content wasn't as lost as many thought, though. Longtime Valve watcher and data miner Gabe Follower (previously) wrote on social media this weekend that he had "verified that everything in Steam2 Teraleak was obtained via a publicly accessible [API] endpoint. It's Valve's fault..." Spanish-language Valve streamer and analyst Scolcer also said on social media (via machine translation) that the teraleak was "obtained from a site that was 100% accessible to the public. It was there for everyone to download. No passwords. Nothing. Hidden in plain sight, but with no protection whatsoever." What's unclear right now if that API and publicly available Steam2 server content were accessed recently or if this weekend's leak represents content that was privately archived before the 2013 server transition and is just now being made public. "It could more-so be a collection of different people that knew about it and accumulated whatever people had downloaded back then into this massive archive," said The One Epicplayer, a moderator on the Valve Cut Content (VCC) Discord, which has long followed Valve betas and leaks. "I haven't been filled in on the full details but my suspicion is that these depot [files] were downloaded a long time ago and sat in a private collection," CrazyBubba, another VCC Discord moderator, told Ars. "There were a lot of leaks a few years back and many folks hoarded files for years. ... historically there have been issues with people lording content over other members." A readme file included with the leak offers "warm n good wishes to all hoarders who had stuff from this collection" and encourages users to mirror and share it as widely as possible. On the VCC Discord, a user purporting to be the original uploader of the teraleak (who offered screenshots of a 22TB server upload log among their evidence) wrote that "getting this out really took a significant amount of effort from me and I would like it if it didn't go to waste."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Berlin is being blackmailed by hackers who were able to compromise city systems and steal data earlier this month, its mayor has said. Kai Wegner said officials would not cave in to the ransom demand, which came on Thursday evening. He did not say how much was being sought, though Der Spiegel reports the hackers are demanding 30 bitcoin, worth around 2 million euros. Some of the German capital's online systems were forced to close down as a result of the attack, while investigators were working to understand what data had been taken. The Rhysida group, which is thought to operate from Russia and eastern Europe, and was behind a previous attack on the British Museum, has reportedly taken responsibility. It has said on its website it intends to begin auctioning the 5.79 terabytes of data it was able to steal from Berlin in seven days' time, according to news agency Reuters. [...] Officials for the city-state said an initial data leak occurred between August 7 and 12. Then, on August 14, two department networks were shut down, making applications for housing benefits and payments impossible for several days. "Berlin will not be blackmailed," Wegner said on Friday. He said state police, prosecutors and federal security services were working to investigate the suspected perpetrators "with the utmost urgency," adding that inquiries into the "content and scope of the compromised data are being pursued with great intensity."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A common sweetener used in products such as chewing gum, toothpaste, jam, yoghurts and ice-cream has been linked to an increased risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol present in some natural foods in very low amounts. It is also added -- often in amounts 1,000 times higher -- to artificially sweeten foods, beverages and oral care products. Despite its growing use, the long-term health impacts of xylitol have never been widely studied. In the largest study of its kind, researchers found high blood levels of xylitol were associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. The findings were presented in Munich at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual congress, the world's largest heart conference. Researchers looked at 17,710 people and compared the 25% with the highest levels of xylitol in their blood against the 25% with the lowest. Those who had the highest amount were 57% more likely to die or suffer a heart attack or stroke, than those with the least, within six years. Even after 30 years, they were still 18% more likely to have suffered one of these cardiac events. Taken with data from the middle quartiles, the results from both cohorts suggested a dose-dependent relationship: the higher the xylitol blood levels, the higher the cardiovascular event rate. Furthermore, the researchers showed that there was consistent increase in cardiovascular events with xylitol irrespective of baseline characteristics, such as age and sex. The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.

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SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month. It wasn't long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX's launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida's east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015. "From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship," Dontchev wrote on X. "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg." "Yep, that'll be louder -- but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so," writes schwit1. SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually." Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)

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President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced history as they flew around the moon and back in April, the first time humans have been in lunar territory since the 1970s. He had previously hosted the crew members at the White House following their mission and called them during the mission while the crew was tens of thousands of miles away. "The one thing that really sticks out to us [from that call] is you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is for the job that we've just accomplished," Wiseman said during Friday's ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation to learn." During the ceremony, Trump also signed an executive order to create the "United States Space Academy." Under the order, a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy has 120 days to create a report with guidelines for the U.S. Space Academy. The Commission will include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as its Chair, as well as other NASA and space officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology. In effect, it allows the Trump Administration to build the U.S. Space Academy to its liking. "It will serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry," Trump said. "And it will attract, train, graduate the very best that our nation and our nation really has to offer." As for where the academy will be located, Trump said he was "going to be choosing a location very shortly."

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alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet. The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and "cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense." It's unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm. One of the reports mentioned in the article estimates that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone. Jim Prosser, a former Twitter communications executive, pushed back on Silicon Valley claims that opposition to data centers is a "Chinese psyop," arguing that Big Tech is using the label to dismiss legitimate local concerns. "If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it's probably not a Chinese psyop," he told Axios. Prosser said the industry needs to spend more time listening to affected communities rather than dismissing them from afar: "If you're a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you've never been to Ohio, that's a problem."

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Longtime Slashdot reader belmolis writes: Part of New York City's 911 emergency system was offline from about 3:13 a.m. to 10 a.m. on August 18th due to a software update, according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center during that period, about 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The city did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known. The early-morning software update was pushed by Motorola, though exactly what it changed or why it caused the failure remains unknown. The city is still investigating whether the update was adequately tested and whether the same software release was deployed elsewhere.

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A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate prediction sites." CNN reports: The 3-0 ruling came from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges. The case originated from Nevada, where regulators tried to shut down the Kalshi prediction site. [...] "The substance of the sports event contracts offered on Kalshi's (exchange) is sports gambling, regardless of whether Kalshi calls them swaps," the appeals panel wrote Friday, adding that "Kalshi's attempts to distinguish its sports event contracts from sportsbooks betting are unpersuasive." The judges also said it was "disingenuous" for Kalshi to argue in court that its products weren't sports-betting when it previously used that phrasing in marketing materials. Kalshi spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement: "Despite the Ninth Circuit's opinion, we still believe the CFTC regulations as written do not prohibit sports contracts, and in any event, the CFTC is working to clarify those regulations. We will be seeking further review." "It's the first ruling against Kalshi at the appellate level, and the opinion seemed to be pretty brutal for the company," said Dustin Gouker, an independent journalist who covers the prediction industry. "This gets us one step closer to an almost inevitable Supreme Court case on the legality of sports event contracts."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the "local, national, and international levels" to collaborate on security. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. "The companies and public services our communities depend on -- from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet -- are at risk." [...] The letter further suggests the mobilization of a "collective response," one in which "new partnerships" are formed "to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats." Several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position. At the same time, they are also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes, including OpenAI's Daybreak program, Anthropic's Mythos, and Microsoft's new cyber platform Perception.

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Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall chart. The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone. Fawaz later added generative AI credits to the song after a backlash. ARIA said that Australian artists were competing for attention "in the most crowded market in history" and that it was "not interested in promoting or celebrating the success of AI-generated music that does not contain human artistry." Under the new rules, AI assistance can still be used, but humans must have written the song, and have performed the lead vocal and primary instruments. AI can also still be used for mastering songs and, for example, using drum machines and auto tune. [...] Artists will be required to declare AI use when they submit a song for chart consideration. ARIA said that if it later emerged music was largely AI-generated it could retrospectively adjust chart positions, and if the piece topped the charts, it may request that awards given for reaching Number One were returned. Artists and their representatives will be able to challenge their exclusion. ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said: "These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is, to say the least, a rapidly developing space. Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists' recordings is a different matter." She added: "A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent."

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Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision. Lin's ruling barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing Donald Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools and overturned the designation of the company as a "supply chain risk" by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The status, usually reserved for foreign firms, would have blocked government agencies from doing business with Anthropic. The case emerged out of a months-long feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon at the start of the year. Anthropic refused to allow the government to use its Claude AI model for fully autonomous lethal weapons or domestic mass surveillance, resulting in Hegseth accusing the company of "arrogance and betrayal". Lin put a temporary pause on the government's punitive measures in March, stating that the government's actions looked like an attempt to "cripple Anthropic" for exercising its first amendment rights. The ruling this week makes that temporary suspension permanent, although the government may appeal. "We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson said.

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Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios.

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