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Not content with having hundreds of millions of users peppering ChatGPT with queries and conversations every day, OpenAI wants to further embed itself in our digital lives. This week the company released Atlas, an AI-laden web browser it hopes will challenge incumbents and be adopted at scale. Atlas is one of a raft of AI-powered browsers that have been unleashed on the market in recent months. Perplexity, the AI answer engine, has Comet. Opera, a smaller European competitor to the likes of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge, released Neon, which has its own AI functionalities. OpenAI stands a better chance than most of dislodging Google Chrome, which is used by around 70 percent of all web users, according to web analytics company Statcounter. But it’s still hard to see how Atlas will eat into Chromes supremacy. Its hard to get people to change browsers, says Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Open Markets Institute who has investigated how users choose different digital services. Of course, OpenAI has good reason to feel confident. ChatGPT became a success within a matter of weeks, thanks to its novel interactivity. OpenAI followed it up earlier this year with its controversial Sora 2 video generator, which gained a million users in five days. But for the average person, web browsers are decidedly less sexy. Unless youre extremely techy, the reality is that a web browser is a utilitarian piece of software, designed to get you from point A to point Bfrom one website to another. Provided it does that without destroying your device in the process, most people are content with how it works. Over Statcounter’s 15-year history of recording web-browser market share, two browsers have dominated the market. Until 2012, that browser was Internet Explorer, as it had been since around the millennium, when it held a market share of 80% to 95%. But as competitors began offering better features and higher service quality, Internet Explorer’s global dominance began to fade. In Europe, demand for Internet Explorer took a hit following a 2009 agreement with the European Commission requiring Microsoft to offer a “browser choice” screen to users, letting them know that there were alternatives to Internet Explorer. While the company did not immediately comply, around the time it began implementing the change, in 2011 and 2012, Internet Explorer was supplanted by Google Chrome. Those who do deviate from the mean when it comes to browser choice often do so for moral reasonspreferring, for instance, DuckDuckGos browser because of opposition to what they see as Googles overly draconian data collection on its usersor a personal preference for a different type of browser. The web browser market consists of the three big browsers that ship as the default on their respective operating systems. Beyond that, there is a vivid market of people who seek a different and better web experience, says Jan Standal, vice president at Opera. But, barring egregious performance issues, most people stick with whatever theyre given. I personally hopped around various browsers between 15 and 20 years ago because they offered then-revolutionary tools like tabbed browsing, better multimedia support, or the ability to customize how they worked with extensions. But todays crop of browsers is much of a muchness: Even the vaunted AI integration that OpenAI puts at the core of its marketing for Atlas is common now in many browsers. If a web browser works well enough, then people tend to stick with it. Thats been true for decades. Internet Explorer was the market leader for years up until the early 2010s because it was bundled into the Windows operating system as the default browser, with no immediate indication to users that there were alternatives. Ryan points out that Atlas has one thing going for itthe perceived increasing unreliability of Chrome. Many users complain about its CPU-draining draw on processing power, and the way its tabs can quickly use up a devices memory. As Chrome gets worse, the incentive goes up, Ryan says. But he points out that as the general worries around AIs environmental impact mount, users may think twice about adopting a browser so reliant on AI. As unease about AI data centers causing blackouts and water shortages grows, is this really the browser people will choose to move to? he asks.
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E-Commerce
The FBI dropped a bombshell indictment on Thursday, announcing arrests and criminal charges against dozens of people allegedly involved with gambling and rigging NBA games. The whole thing involved not only some of basketball’s biggest names, but also the mob. At a press conference in New York, FBI Director Kash Patel announced a historic arrest across a wide-sweeping criminal enterprise that envelopes both the NBA and “La Cosa Nostra, more commonly known as the Sicilian Mob or Mafia. Among some of the high-profile individuals indicted are Chauncey Billups, an NBA hall-of-fame player and current head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, and Terry Rozier, who currently plays for the Miami Heat. Damon Jones, another former NBA player, was also arrested and indicted. A statement from the NBA, per CNBC, says that both Billups and Rozier have been placed on immediate leave from their teams, and that the league will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. The indictments arose from two fraud-related investigations that included sports betting and underground poker games. In the first instance, it appears that insider information related to player injuries (including one involving an injury to LeBron James) was leaked to sports bettors, effectively giving those bettors an advantagean injury to James, for instance, could impact his level of play, and turn the outcome of a game. The underground poker games, on the other hand, sound like a scheme Tony Sopranos crew cooked up at The Bing. As alleged, members and associates of organized crime families fixed illegal poker games as part of a highly sophisticated and lucrative fraud scheme to cheat victims out of millions of dollars and conspired with others to perpetrate their frauds, said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr., in a statement. Well-known former NBA players and former professional athletes, acted as Face Cards to lure unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games, where they were then at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big. Todays indictment and arrests sounds the final buzzer for these cheaters. Its a huge shakeup in the world of professional sports, particularly as sports betting has become increasingly mainstream in recent years, and has been legalized in several states and jurisdictions. Since the Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting in 2018, data from Goldman Sachs shows that, as of last year, its become a $10 billion industry. Big sports betting companiessuch as FanDuel, DraftKings, and othershave also become seemingly synonymous with names like Wynn, MGM, and Caesars. Its also another blow to the NBA, which was already contending with the news that superstar Kawhi Leonard, who plays for the Los Angeles Clippers, was using an investment firm to circumvent the leagues salary capan investigation thats also snared Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, and has ties to entertainers like Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio
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E-Commerce
Late-night talk shows are a uniquely American invention that blend humor, the news of the day, and celebrity guests. While Johnny Carson was not the first late-night host, he perfected the genre through trial and error during his 30-year tenure on NBCs The Tonight Show, setting the standard for years to come. As the longest-running host in the shows 70-year history, Carson became a permanent fixture in the cultural zeitgeist and a kingmaker and queenmaker, giving many comedians such as Joan Rivers, Drew Carey, and Ellen DeGeneres their big breaks. Recently, late-night talk shows have been making headlines for unexpectedand possibly politically motivatedreasons, calling into question freedom of speech and media monopolies. The announced ending of CBSs The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and the temporary suspension of ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live! were both controversial moves. (CBS maintains its decision was financial, not political.) All this offstage drama is nothing new. Carson faced his own dilemmasincluding having a mobster put out a hit on him. [Image: Penguin Random House] That’s just one of the many intriguing stories found in the new book Love Johnny Carson (Dutton, 2025) by Mark Malkoff with David Ritz. It was released just two days before what would have been the legendary host’s 100th birthday on October 23. Lets talk about Malkoffs credentials before we get into the Frank Sinatra of it all. Who is Mark Malkoff? Malkoffs father first exposed him to Carsons late-night antics. Though my father was just an average fan of the show, like millions of other Americans, when he told me about seeing that taping, it struck a chord somewhere deep inside me, Malkoff writes. A super fan was created. A young Malkoff continued his Carson education by recording the seriesit presumably aired after his bedtimeand watching it the next morning while eating cereal. He would also make a pilgrimage to Carsons Los Angeles NBC studio and attend college at NYU to be close to Carsons New York history. Malkoff began The Carson Podcast in 2014 and spent eight years interviewing people who knew the funnyman. This book feels like a natural extension of the podcast. Malkoffs purpose was to further educate the public on Carsons cordiality, calmness, cool, warmth, wit, and love. How did Frank Sinatra save Carsons life? Many different versions of this story have circulated for years. Malkoff spoke to comedian Tom Dreesen to get to the bottom of it all. Dreesen heard it both from Ermenegildo “Jilly” Rizzo, the owner of Jillys Saloon, and Frank Sinatra himself. Carson was a talented entertainer who also had his fair share of demons, one of which was alcohol. In the spring of 1971, an already intoxicated Carson went out to Jillys with friends, where he spotted a beautiful woman. According to Dreesen, Carson approached her and put his hand up her miniskirt. This woman was the girlfriend of notorious mobster Joseph Crazy Joe” Gallo, who was known for his bad temper. When Gallo found out, he warned that Carsons days were numbered. The word all over Manhattan was Carsons a dead man. Hes gotta go into hiding, Dreesen told Malkoff. Sinatra and Carson ran in similar social circles and had bonded six years earlier at a St. Louis benefit show, according to Malkoff. The crooner came up with a plan to host Gallo and his family at an unpublicized charity show and make a big fuss over them. Backstage, after the event, Gallo thanked Sinatra and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Sinatra answered: Johnny Carson. While Gallo was not happy about this, he backed off for Ol’ Blue Eyes. I dont believe anybody but Sinatra could have saved Carsons life, Dreesen told Malkoff. So while Kimmel and Colberts recent experiences are unfortunate and life-changing, perhaps they can take solace in the fact that it was not a life-and-death situation. Carson went on to host The Tonight Show until 1992, leaving behind a franchise that lives on today in an increasingly fractured TV environment that has been disrupted by streaming and other forms of digital media. According to a UPI report at the time, his final episode attracted more than 62% of the television audience, some 55 million people.
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E-Commerce
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