Hasta La Gadget!

The trial is over former advice columnist’s E. Jean Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her nearly three decades ago in a department store dressing room.

The Democratic incumbent appears set for a rematch with Trumpism, if not Trump himself.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has introduced a new bill that would give it the power slap the biggest tech companies with a fine worth billions if they don’t comply with its rules. It’s a multi-faceted bill that’s aimed at protecting consumers and encouraging competition, and it will allow the CMA to directly enforce the law instead of having to go through the court. 

If the bill passes, the agency’s Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will be able to enforce a set of rules on how companies it deems to have “strategic market status” in key digital services have to operate. The CMA didn’t name any specific company in its announcement, but the DMU will most likely identify Google, Apple and Amazon as organizations with strategic market status. 

The DMU could require them to be more transparent on how their app store review systems work or to open up their data to rivals — in Google’s case, it could be a rival search engine. If these companies fail to abide by the new rules, the DMU could fine them up to 10 percent of their global turnover. Apple, for example, earned around $283 billion in revenue for 2022, so that could translate to a massive fine worth $28.3 billion. 

In addition to giving CMA the ability to set rules for tech giants, the new bill will also address the problem with “subscription traps,” which is costing UK consumers £1.6 billion (US$2 billion) a year. Its new rules will require businesses, not just the biggest tech companies, to provide customers with clearer information before they start a subscription. Companies will also be required to send customers notifications if their free or low-cost trial is coming to an end and before their subscription auto-renews. Plus, companies will have to provide customers an easy way to unsubscribe. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a similar rule back in March that would make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up. The proposal is also still waiting for approval before it can be implemented. 

Another concern the bill will address is fake reviews. The new rules are expected to prohibit companies from commissioning the composition and submission of fake reviews and from posting reviews without taking steps to ensure that they’re genuine. Further, the rules would make it illegal to offer or to advertise submitting, commissioning and facilitating fake reviews.

Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said in a statement:

“The new powers in this bill help the CMA take swift, decisive action to tackle rip offs, protecting consumers whether they are shopping online or on the high street. The new fining powers will provide an important deterrent to businesses seeking to take advantage of people while also ensuring fair dealing businesses can thrive. 

The bill will also strengthen the Digital Markets Unit, helping to ensure digital markets remain competitive and continue to benefit people, business, and the UK economy. We welcome its introduction to parliament and look forward to it progressing.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uk-bill-could-protect-consumers-from-subscription-traps-and-fake-reviews-095558923.html?src=rss

Carlson frequently stumped for Trump on air but in private expressed his hatred for the former president.

Opera has released the early access version of its completely redesigned browser that it plans to launch for all platforms later this year. It’s called Opera One, and it was designed to have a cleaner look with plenty of open space for future generative AI features and extensions in its sidebar and address bar. Opera says it has implemented a new multithreaded compositor and its new modular design principles for the browser to enable a fresh batch of features that include what it calls “tab islands.”

The browser has the capability to automatically and intuitively group websites people open based on their content. It will open all pages with menus and restaurant details in one island, for instance, and all tabs with Google Docs in another. The idea is to reduce confusion and make it easier to jump between tasks, whether for work or for something personal. Opera apparently conducted research and found that users get overwhelmed by the number of tabs they have and wish their browsers could do more for them. This is Opera’s answer to that problem. 

While the browser was designed with the capability to create tab islands on its own, users can manually group pages together, as well. They can drag and drop tabs between islands or create a new one by pressing the CTRL or Command button and clicking on the websites they want to group before right clicking on the “create a tab island” option. Opera considers tab islands as the first manifestation if its modular design strategy with their clearly distinguishable island borders and color markets, so we could probably expect more similarly designed features. 

In addition to tab islands, Opera One comes with ChatGPT, ChatSonic and AI Prompts enabled by default. If you’ll recall, the company introduced sidebar integration for the AI chatbots back in March, allowing users to quickly launch them in a separate window within the browser. Meanwhile, the AI Prompts feature suggests different ways people can use the chatbots to transform the text on page, such turning a chunk of text into a soap opera dialogue or extracting information from it to create quiz questions. 

Opera One is now available for download from the company’s website. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/opera-one-is-a-browser-designed-for-generative-ai-features-070048153.html?src=rss