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Tag: computers

  • Rabbit’s R1 Is Just Another AI-Powered Gimmick

    Rabbit’s R1 Is Just Another AI-Powered Gimmick

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    At the R1’s launch event in New York City, Lyu demoed an example of having the R1 look at a paper with a printed spreadsheet on it. He asked the R1 to swap two columns, and then send the result to his email. I didn’t have a spreadsheet on paper, but I did have an auto-inspection report that I wanted to send to my email. I asked the R1 and … it said it didn’t have my email address. (I set up my Rabbit account with my email information.) I asked the company about this, and I was told the R1 didn’t support documents other than spreadsheets yet. Great. So I printed a spreadsheet, asked it to swap two columns, and sent it via email, and it sort of did this. It swapped the two columns, but for some reason, it didn’t include several other columns that were on the paper.

    I picked up my copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and asked the R1 whether it could look at it and tell me what it’s about. The R1 instead just described the cover and said it’s “likely” a work of fiction. If it could read out the name, why couldn’t it research it at the same time and give me a synopsis? Even the Humane Ai Pin could do this.

    You can also have the R1 take notes, and edit these notes in the Rabbithole, but there’s no reminder functionality. I also find it annoying that the Rabbithole keeps logging me out after some time, so whenever I want to check a note, I might have to log in first. There are also voice recordings, and the R1 plays a nice tape recorder animation when it’s working. Too bad the recording itself is low-quality and muffled. It does summarize the contents of the recording though, and you can download the WAV file.

    The translation capabilities, much like the Humane Ai Pin, are good. Just ask it to translate a specific language, and you can now have a back-and-forth conversation. The R1 will automatically change the translation language, so when I speak English, it changes it to Spanish. When the person across from me speaks Spanish, it swaps to English.

    Hop to It

    You know what else does all of this stuff pretty well? Smartphones! This is also the question I receive repeatedly whenever I show someone the R1. “Why can’t it just be an app?”

    I posed this question to David Widder, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell Tech studying open source artificial intelligence. “Hardware is cool—there’s increasing frustration from app developers on having to give so much money to Apple and Google. I think there’s a little bit of, ‘We want to do our own thing and not be beholden to them.’”

    That’s fair, but the R1 is just not ready yet. I considered skipping this review and writing a more experiential story, but this is a product anyone can buy right now. A company is charging you $200 to be its beta tester, and while Rabbit has a roadmap of features and services—including a Teach Mode that lets you train the R1 to do specific tasks—I don’t see a reason to buy it now. Revisit it when it’s more feature-rich and genuinely useful, and buy it then if you want.

    At the very least, I haven’t had the battery issues plaguing other reviewers. The R1 recharged quickly for me and doesn’t deplete juice too fast in standby mode. When you do use it, the battery drops fairly quickly though.

    In the end, the biggest issue boils down to the fact that I now have to carry two devices. I’m WIRED’s resident smartphone reviewer and I hate carrying two phones—it’s why I always put my personal SIM into each new device I test. Over this past week, I forced myself to use the R1 but often ended up using my phone instead. (Weirdly, the Humane Ai Pin was better in this regard, as it is wearable and I don’t have to carry it in a pocket or hold it.)

    Rabbit was clear in saying that the R1 will not replace your phone, but if I can do all of the same tasks and so much more on my smartphone (Google’s Gemini has given me identical if not better results than the R1), I have no reason to use it. At least it looks pretty. I’ll add it to my growing collection of AI-powered paperweights.

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    Julian Chokkattu

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  • Want to Buy a Decommissioned Supercomputer? Here’s Your Chance

    Want to Buy a Decommissioned Supercomputer? Here’s Your Chance

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    On Tuesday, the US General Services Administration began an auction for the decommissioned Cheyenne supercomputer, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The 5.34-petaflop supercomputer ranked as the 20th most powerful in the world at the time of its installation in 2016. Bidding started at $2,500, but its price is currently $270,085.

    The supercomputer, which officially operated between January 12, 2017, and December 31, 2023, at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, was a powerful (and once considered energy-efficient) system that significantly advanced atmospheric and Earth system sciences research.

    “In its lifetime, Cheyenne delivered over 7 billion core-hours, served over 4,400 users, and supported nearly 1,300 NSF awards,” writes the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) on its official Cheyenne information page. “It played a key role in education, supporting more than 80 university courses and training events. Nearly 1,000 projects were awarded for early-career graduate students and postdocs. Perhaps most tellingly, Cheyenne-powered research generated over 4,500 peer-review publications, dissertations and theses, and other works.”

    UCAR says that Cheynne was originally slated to be replaced after five years, but the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted supply chains, and it clocked in two extra years in its tour of duty. The auction page says that Cheyenne recently experienced maintenance limitations due to faulty quick disconnects in its cooling system. As a result, approximately 1 percent of the compute nodes have failed, primarily due to ECC errors in the DIMMs. Given the expense and downtime associated with repairs, the decision was made to auction off the components.

    With a peak performance of 5,340 teraflops (4,788 Linpack teraflops), this SGI ICE XA system was capable of performing over 3 billion calculations per second for every watt of energy consumed, making it three times more energy-efficient than its predecessor, Yellowstone. The system featured 4,032 dual-socket nodes, each with two 18-core, 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors, for a total of 145,152 CPU cores. It also included 313 terabytes of memory and 40 petabytes of storage. The entire system in operation consumed about 1.7 megawatts of power.

    Just to compare, the world’s top-rated supercomputer at the moment—Frontier at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee—features a theoretical peak performance of 1,679.82 petaflops, includes 8,699,904 CPU cores, and uses 22.7 megawatts of power.

    The GSA notes that potential buyers of Cheyenne should be aware that professional movers with appropriate equipment will be required to handle the heavy racks and components. The auction includes seven E-Cell pairs (14 total), each with a cooling distribution unit (CDU). Each E-Cell weighs approximately 1,500 lbs. Additionally, the auction features two air-cooled Cheyenne Management Racks, each weighing 2,500 lbs, that contain servers, switches, and power units.

    As of this writing, 23 potential buyers have bid on this computing monster so far. The auction closes on May 3 at 6:11 pm Central Time if you’re interested in bidding. But don’t get too excited by photos of the extensive cabling: As the auction site notes, “fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are excluded from the resale package.”

    This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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    Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

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  • The Best Gaming Laptops That Pwned the Competition

    The Best Gaming Laptops That Pwned the Competition

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    The Razer Blade 14 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) blew me away when I tried it right around when Starfield came out. Razer is known for its high-end gaming laptops, and the slim, aluminum chassis on this laptop has the same luxe build quality we’ve liked it for in the past. But the 2,560 X 1,600 IPS, G-Sync-compatible display is what caught my attention. Even at 30 to 40 percent brightness, it felt bright and vivid, with blacks so dark it’s as if the screen disappears in dark rooms. It’s not quite what you’d see in an OLED display, but it was close enough that it fooled me for hours while I flew through space. Best of all, the 240-Hz panel allows for ultra-high frame rates for the smoothest gameplay.

    Inside, the Blade 14 comes equipped with the powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS. There is a slightly newer version with the Ryzen 9 8945HS, but you likely won’t see much of a difference in performance. You also get 16 GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1-terabyte NVMe SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU (upgradeable to an RTX 4070). The RTX 4060 is decently powerful, but the RTX 4070 is a respectably strong GPU that can help power through even demanding games like Starfield. It also has a USB-C and USB-A port on both the left and right of the laptop, making it convenient to plug in peripherals. It comes with a full-size HDMI port too. It includes a large charging block, which you’ll need for charging while playing power-hungry games, but you can charge it via USB-C if you need to top it off while working. It’s pricey, but the Blade 14 routinely dips to $2,000, which is great value.

    Specs to look for: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060/4070 Laptop GPU, 16 GB DDR5, 1-TB NVMe PCIe SSD, 14-inch 2,560 X 1,600 IPS display with 240-Hz refresh rate.

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    Eric Ravenscraft

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  • Inside an Intel computer chip plant amid rush to grow U.S. production

    Inside an Intel computer chip plant amid rush to grow U.S. production

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    Inside an Intel computer chip plant amid rush to grow U.S. production – CBS News


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    Computer chip maker Intel is at the center of the latest high-tech race between the U.S. and China. Jo Ling Kent visited their state-of-the-art facility in Oregon for an in-depth report.

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  • Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra Is the Laptop to Beat When It Comes to Power

    Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Ultra Is the Laptop to Beat When It Comes to Power

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    It’s been a long time since I’ve used a laptop with a screen larger than 13 or 14 inches for any length of time. It’s so refreshing to have the room to spread my apps out … even if the machine no longer fits in my backpack. Maybe being able to fit your bag under the seat in front of you is overrated.

    Compared to the cavalcade of 13- and 14-inch laptops that cross my desk, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, with its 16-inch touchscreen (2,880 x 1,800 pixels), is a behemoth. Weighing in at 3.9 pounds (but only 19 mm thick), it has a heft that’s backed up by its top-shelf specs, which include 32 GB of RAM, a 1-terabyte SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The centerpiece is the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup.

    Photograph: Samsung

    As benchmarks go, the Galaxy Book4 ran rings around all the other Core Ultra laptops I’ve tested in the last few weeks since the new chips launched, though none of those had an Ultra 9 or a discrete graphics processor. On some CPU-based tests, the system doubled up on the performance of the Lenovo X1 Carbon, and on graphics-based tests, I was regularly able to get three to five times the frame rates I saw on machines that used the Core Ultra integrated graphics processor. The Book4 is certainly credible for use as a gaming rig if desired. Plus with 12 hours and 43 minutes of battery life, as tested via my full-screen YouTube rundown test, you need not fret about being away from an outlet all day.

    The larger chassis gives Samsung room to squeeze a numeric keypad into the picture, though I longed for full-size arrow keys when working with the device. The responsive keyboard is paired with one of the largest touchpads I’ve ever seen on a laptop. At 6 x 4 inches, it’s considerably bigger than a standard passport—arguably too big, as there’s barely room on the left side of the touchpad for your palms to rest. I generally disliked working with this touchpad, as I found it both missed clicks and inadvertently registered unintended taps much too often.

    Side view of partially opened laptop

    Photograph: Samsung

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    Christopher Null

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  • White House awards Samsung $6.4 billion to expand U.S. chipmaking

    White House awards Samsung $6.4 billion to expand U.S. chipmaking

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    White House awards Samsung $6.4 billion to expand U.S. chipmaking – CBS News


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    The Biden administration is awarding Samsung $6.4 billion to expand American chipmaking. The company will spread the money across at least five facilities in Texas. Sujai Shivakumar, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins CBS News to assess the economic and technological impacts.

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  • To Build a Better AI Supercomputer, Let There Be Light

    To Build a Better AI Supercomputer, Let There Be Light

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    GlobalFoundries, a company that makes chips for others, including AMD and General Motors, previously announced a partnership with Lightmatter. Harris says his company is “working with the largest semiconductor companies in the world as well as the hyperscalers,” referring to the largest cloud companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

    If Lightmatter or another company can reinvent the wiring of giant AI projects, a key bottleneck in the development of smarter algorithms might fall away. The use of more computation was fundamental to the advances that led to ChatGPT, and many AI researchers see the further scaling-up of hardware as being crucial to future advances in the field—and to hopes of ever reaching the vaguely-specified goal of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, meaning programs that can match or exceed biological intelligence in every way.

    Linking a million chips together with light might allow for algorithms several generations beyond today’s cutting edge, says Lightmatter’s CEO Nick Harris. “Passage is going to enable AGI algorithms,” he confidently suggests.

    The large data centers that are needed to train giant AI algorithms typically consist of racks filled with tens of thousands of computers running specialized silicon chips and a spaghetti of mostly electrical connections between them. Maintaining training runs for AI across so many systems—all connected by wires and switches—is a huge engineering undertaking. Converting between electronic and optical signals also places fundamental limits on chips’ abilities to run computations as one.

    Lightmatter’s approach is designed to simplify the tricky traffic inside AI data centers. “Normally you have a bunch of GPUs, and then a layer of switches, and a layer of switches, and a layer of switches, and you have to traverse that tree” to communicate between two GPUs, Harris says. In a data center connected by Passage, Harris says, every GPU would have a high-speed connection to every other chip.

    Lightmatter’s work on Passage is an example of how AI’s recent flourishing has inspired companies large and small to try to reinvent key hardware behind advances like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Nvidia, the leading supplier of GPUs for AI projects, held its annual conference last month, where CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the company’s latest chip for training AI: a GPU called Blackwell. Nvidia will sell the GPU in a “superchip” consisting of two Blackwell GPUs and a conventional CPU processor, all connected using the company’s new high-speed communications technology called NVLink-C2C.

    The chip industry is famous for finding ways to wring more computing power from chips without making them larger, but Nvidia chose to buck that trend. The Blackwell GPUs inside the company’s superchip are twice as powerful as their predecessors but are made by bolting two chips together, meaning they consume much more power. That trade-off, in addition to Nvidia’s efforts to glue its chips together with high-speed links, suggests that upgrades to other key components for AI supercomputers, like that proposed by Lightmatter, could become more important.

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    Will Knight

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  • The MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo Is a Lightweight, Powerful, and Affordable Laptop

    The MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo Is a Lightweight, Powerful, and Affordable Laptop

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    MSI has long been an under-the-radar producer of PCs and laptops, with as many hits as misses in its repertoire. As we enter the “AI laptop” age, MSI’s first volley in the new category lands squarely on the hit side, with its Prestige 13 AI Evo nailing an effective balance among price, performance, and portability.

    As the name suggests, the Prestige 13 is an ultraportable 13.3-inch laptop, featuring a 2,880 X 1,800-pixel OLED display (no touchscreen). Inside is an entry-level Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU with 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB SSD. Nothing fancy, but enough to get the job done. There’s also a version with the Core Ultra 7 with double the RAM and storage for not much more.

    For those of you who haven’t been following the microchip world closely, Intel’s Core Ultra series features (among other innovations) a new neural processing unit designed specifically to improve artificial intelligence operations. The “Evo” designation is bestowed on devices by Intel for laptop designs that “pass rigorous testing around performance, battery life, connectivity, audio and visual quality, size, weight, and more.”

    Photograph: MSI

    With that preface, I’ll start where the laptop soars the highest: performance. The Prestige indeed lives up to its name on general apps and AI-related tests. MSI’s ultralight Windows machine ran rings around the performance of the more tricked-out Lenovo X1 Carbon, which features a faster Core Ultra processor. The MSI bested it on general app benchmarks by 3 to 47 percent, depending on the test, and the difference was noticeable in daily use, as the Prestige felt whip-crack fast to load apps, recalculate spreadsheets, and the like. The picture wasn’t as rosy in its graphics capabilities, as the lower-end CPU and lack of memory suppressed frame rates on video tasks considerably—although the Prestige did perform surprisingly well on photo rendering tests.

    At 2.1 pounds and 18-mm thick, this laptop is about as portable as it gets in the 13.3-inch category, though more diminutive 13.0-inch units can be a few ounces lighter. Available in white or black, the magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis isn’t the sturdiest I’ve felt lately, but at the same time, it doesn’t come across as flimsy.

    Side view of slim black laptop opened about 45 degrees

    Photograph: MSI

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    Christopher Null

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  • HP’s Spectre x360 2-in-1 Laptop Is Fantastic—but Not Flashy

    HP’s Spectre x360 2-in-1 Laptop Is Fantastic—but Not Flashy

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    Once an edgy alternative to stuffier laptops like the Lenovo ThinkPad line, the HP Spectre x360 series has settled into a much more corporate groove of late. Back in the late 2010s, Spectres looked like props from Tron, with sharp edges, cut corners, and gold trim on some models, for Pete’s sake.

    Alas, those days are over, and while the Spectre x360 is still a top-shelf ultralight Windows laptop, it has traded in style for consistency. All-gentle, OSHA-friendly curves clad in corporate black, silver, and blue give the sense that the Spectre didn’t sell out, but rather bought in.

    The 2024 rendition of the Spectre x360 sticks closely to the design of the 2023 model, all built around showcasing the “360” portion of the name. A pair of hinges allows the screen to fold back 180 degrees, converting the laptop into a 14-inch tablet. A fingertip works on the screen, as does the stylus included in the box, and the rechargeable active pen snaps magnetically to the side of the chassis when not in use.

    Photograph: HP

    As with most new machines hitting the market this season, the major upgrade here is the introduction of the AI-infused Intel Core Ultra CPU—in this instance, the Ultra 7 155H model, backed up by a beefy 32 GB of RAM and a 2-TB solid state drive. The unit is a bit light on ports, with two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports (one used for charging) and a single USB-A port partially covered by an awkward and unnecessary spring-loaded, flip-out panel.

    Sure enough, there’s ample power in those specs, and the Spectre x360 turned in the best performance I’ve seen to date on general business apps—by a healthy margin of 20 percent or more versus other Core Ultra laptops on many tests. It was about par for the course on graphics apps, though no slouch in this department either. Despite improvements in the Core Ultra’s integrated GPU, you’ll still need to upgrade to a laptop with a discrete graphics processor if you want to undertake significant gaming or rendering activities. On AI tasks, the Spectre fell just a hair shy of the high mark set by the MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo in my prior testing.

    Size and weight are fine, although the unit is heavier than the similarly sized Lenovo X1 Carbon, with 19 millimeters of thickness and a 2.4-pound weight. That’s not bad considering the inclusion of a touchscreen and the 360-degree hinge. The extra weight may also reflect a slightly larger battery. My testing (with a YouTube video playback at full brightness) achieved 10.5 hours of running time—significantly better than other Core Ultra laptops I’ve tested to date.

    2 side views of a thin black laptop while closed

    Photograph: HP

    The OLED screen is dazzlingly bright, which is right in line with the rest of the market today. The speakers on the unit are also excellent, with top-firing tweeters and two front-firing woofers, improved by an impressive cooling system that barely saw the super-silent fan kicking in at all.

    My only real complaint is a fairly mild one. While the Spectre’s keyboard is fine, the haptic touchpad can be erratic, missing taps and clicks, depending on where you hit it. I don’t know whether this is a simple user error due to freakishly long fingers, but it’s an issue I’ve had with various Spectres for years. It has arguably improved a bit with the new touchpad, but it’s still a thorny problem that created a minor headache for me during extended use.

    Pricing is tricky, as the exact specification I was sent isn’t readily available. You can get a close version for $1,400 on HP.com with 16 GB of RAM, but if you configure it on HP’s website, you’ll come up with a price of around $1,850. Even at the higher price, I’d say the exceptional performance, battery life, and usability options merit the outlay.

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    Christopher Null

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  • Colorado public defender ransomware attack may have exposed Social Security numbers, personal data

    Colorado public defender ransomware attack may have exposed Social Security numbers, personal data

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    The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender has acknowledged personal data may have been stolen during a ransomware attack that crippled the statewide agency in early February — but won’t say much else about the ongoing effort to restore its systems after the hack.

    Files “were copied without permission” during the cyberattack, which was discovered on Feb. 9, and those files may have included names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical information and health insurance information, the agency said in a statement Friday.

    Officials from the public defender’s office are still investigating whose personal data may have been stolen, and whether the personal data of attorneys or their clients was compromised, they said. A statement on the agency’s website urges “individuals” to remain vigilant against identity theft and fraud.

    It’s been more than a month since public defenders across the state were locked out of their computers and files in the ransomware attack and hundreds of court hearings were delayed over the next week because public defenders couldn’t do their jobs.

    Officials this week refused to answer questions from The Denver Post about what particular parts of the agency’s systems remain inoperable. In a ransomware attack, hackers use malware to hold an organization’s data hostage then demand a payment in cryptocurrency in order for organizations to regain access to that data.

    The public defender’s office also would not disclose the amount of ransom demanded or whether a ransom was paid. A statement on the agency’s website says the office has “made progress in returning to full operations.”

    Heavily redacted emails and text messages released to The Post by the Governor’s Office of Information Technology this week in response to an open records request mention the cyberattack recovery law firm Mullen Coughlin. Chief Deputy Public Defender Zak Brown would not confirm whether the public defender’s office is working with the firm.

    “We have provided all the information we are able to at this time,” he said in an email.

    A message left with the Pennsylvania-based law firm was not returned Wednesday.

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    Shelly Bradbury

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  • As Nvidia prepares to post results, these three Europe chip names are tipped for gains, JPMorgan says

    As Nvidia prepares to post results, these three Europe chip names are tipped for gains, JPMorgan says

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    As Nvidia prepares to publish its much-anticipated full-year results this Wednesday, analysts at JPMorgan say VAT Group, ASML Holding, and ASM International all offer the strongest prospects for investors seeking to cash in on an upturn in the market for microchips. 

    JPMorgan analysts led by Sandeep Deshpande explained that while the slump in the microchip market is now showing signs of improvement, certain segments of the market — including those that supply chips to the auto and industrial sectors — are improving more slowly than others.

    The market for memory chips is, meanwhile, giving off signals of a bumper recovery, with inventory levels for the microchips used in computer storage devices currently sitting at lower than average seasonal levels, they said in a note to clients that published Monday. 

    As such, those Europe-based semiconductor companies least exposed to the autos and industrial sectors, which have the highest exposure to the market for memory chips, are set to see the biggest benefits in the near term, said Deshpande and the team.

    Swiss company VAT Group
    VACN,
    +0.37%
    makes vacuum valves used in chip manufacturing, while Dutch firms ASML Holding
    ASML,
    -0.10%

    ASML,
    -1.73%
    and ASM International
    ASM,
    -2.13%
    both make the lithography machines used to manufacture semiconductors. 

    Shares in all three European companies are up significantly over the previous 12 months — VAT has gained 51%, ASML 43% and ASM 81%.

    Notably, all three European companies are all focused on making the equipment used to manufacture the advanced microchips used in electronic products, including smartphones and personal computers. In JPMorgan’s view, this puts them in an advantageous position to benefit from any recovery. 

    At the same time, those companies most exposed to the auto and tech industries, including German firm Infineon Technologies AG
    IFX,
    -0.96%
    and Swiss firm STMicroelectronics
    STM,
    -0.29%    ,
    are set to continue trading at subdued levels — despite already being cheap — as the market remains challenging, they caution.

    Deshpande and the team noted that inventory levels for the chips used in the auto and industrial sectors currently sit at rates 38.7% higher than three-year seasonal averages in the fourth-quarter of 2023, marking a deterioration on the 31.1% rate in the third quarter of 2023.

    In contrast, inventory levels for memory chips improved significantly in the final three months of 2023, having fallen from rates 19% above seasonal averages in the third quarter to rates 1.7% below normal seasonal levels at the end of the fourth quarter of last year.

    For reference, ASML Holding, which was previously split off from ASM International in 1984 through a joint venture with Philips
    PHIA,
    -0.32%    ,
    is currently the world’s sole manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines used to make the advanced chips used in the AI industry. 

    ASM International continues to design the wafer processing machines used to make microchips. VAT Group produces vacuum valves that are needed to manufacture high tech chips in sterile environments to ensure they are not exposed to outside particles.  

    Nvidia
    NVDA,
    -0.06%    ,
    the world’s largest chip designer, will on Wednesday announce quarterly results, which investors are expected to pore over, seeking vital clues on the health of the global chip market amid much excitement around a possible AI driven boom. 

    Read: Nvidia’s earnings report could kill the momentum driving U.S. stocks higher, regardless of how it turns out.

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  • 14 Powerful Genre-Bending Films That Explore Love in Unconventional Ways

    14 Powerful Genre-Bending Films That Explore Love in Unconventional Ways

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    Explore the world of love through a variety of lenses. Here’s a collection of powerful films that each portray love and romance in a unique way, spanning multiple genres including drama, comedy, fantasy, animation, and sci-fi.

    “Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.”

    Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu


    Movies give us the opportunity to explore major themes in life in a meaningful and profound way.

    A powerful film can lead to a better understanding of your own experiences. It can communicate thoughts and emotions that may have been challenging to express; and, at times, completely reshape our perspective on life.

    For better or worse, movies play a pivotal role in shaping our beliefs and map of reality. We pick up ideas through films, sometimes absorbed at a very young age, and those ideas find their way into our daily lives influencing our choices and perspectives.

    Filmmakers understand the transformative power of cinema, purposely using it to shake up people’s consciousness. The goal of a solid film is to create an experience that leaves you a different person by the end of it.

    As viewers, it’s essential to be aware of a film’s effects both emotionally and intellectually. Often, the movies that linger in our thoughts long after watching are the most impactful and life-changing.

    Here’s a collection of classic films about love and romance. Each movie has had a lasting influence on audiences in one way or another. It’s an eclectic list that spans multiple genres, including drama, comedy, animation, fantasy, mystery, and sci-fi.

    Titanic (1997)

    James Cameron’s epic tale blends love and tragedy against the historical backdrop of the Titanic’s sinking in 1912. The film weaves a captivating narrative of a forbidden romance blossoming amidst a natural disaster.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

    In this mind-bending story, a man attempts to erase the memories of a lost love using cutting-edge technology, only to find fate conspiring to bring the couple back together repeatedly. The film explores the complexities of memory, love, and destiny.

    Beauty and the Beast (1991)

    Disney’s classic adaptation of the French fairy tale is celebrated for its beautiful animation and memorable songs. The film goes beyond appearances, illustrating the transformative power of true love.

    Her (2013)

    Set in a near-future world, “Her” tells the unconventional love story of a lonely man who forms a deep connection with his computer’s operating system. The film delves into themes of technology, loneliness, and the nature of human connection.

    Before Sunrise (1995)

    Richard Linklater’s film follows two young tourists who meet on a train in Europe and share an unforgettable night in Vienna. The movie explores the transient nature of connections and the profound impact of brief encounters.

    Lost in Translation (2003)

    Sofia Coppola’s film features a washed-up American celebrity and a young woman forging an unexpected bond in Tokyo. “Lost in Translation” navigates themes of loneliness, connection, and self-discovery.

    Cinema Paradiso (1988)

    An Italian filmmaker reflects on his past and learns how to channel his love in a different and creative way through his art and craftsmanship.

    Past Lives (2023)

    Two childhood friends reconnect after years apart, seeking to unravel the meaning behind their enduring connection. The film explores the complexities of friendship, time, and shared history.

    Check out: In-Yeon: Exploring “Past Lives” and Eternal Connections

    The Lobster (2015)

    Set in a dystopian future, “The Lobster” challenges societal norms by presenting a world where individuals must choose a romantic partner within 45 days or face transformation into an animal. The film satirizes the pressure to conform in matters of love.

    Annie Hall (1977)

    Woody Allen’s classic romantic comedy is a hilarious and heartfelt movie that explores neurotic love and the psychological obstacles we commonly face in marriage and long-term relationships.

    Your Name. (2016)

    A masterful anime that combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and romance. It centers on a mysterious connection between a boy and girl who swap bodies, learn about each other’s lives, and search to find each other in real life.

    A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

    John Cassavetes’ uncomfortably raw and dramatic portrayal of the profound impact of mental illness on marriage and family, navigating the complexities with unflinching honesty.

    The Fountain (2006)

    Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” explores love and mortality through three interconnected storylines spanning different time periods. The film delves into themes of eternal love and the quest for immortality, providing a visually stunning and emotionally resonant experience.

    Scenes From a Marriage (1974)

    Legendary director Ingmar Bergman’s deeply incisive and detailed chronicle of a rocky marriage’s final days.

    Choose one movie and analyze it

    Each of these films offers a different perspective on love while also pushing the boundaries of cinema and story-telling.

    It’s fun to compare each story: How did the couples meet? What defined “love” for them? What obstacles did they face? Did the relationship work out in the end or not? Why?

    Exercise: Choose one movie from the list that you haven’t seen before and do the Movie Analysis Worksheet (PDF).

    While films are often seen as just a source of entertainment or healthy escapism, they can also be an avenue for self-improvement and growth.

    The “Movie Analysis Worksheet” is designed to make you think about the deeper themes behind a film and extract some lessons from it that you can apply to your life.

    Watch with a friend and discuss

    If you don’t want to do the worksheet, just watch one of the movies with a friend (or loved one) – then discuss it after.

    Watching a film together is an opportunity to share a new experience. It can also spark up interesting conversations. This is one reason why bonding through movies is one of the most common ways we connect with people in today’s world.

    Which film will you check out?


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  • Cyberattack shuts down Colorado public defender’s office

    Cyberattack shuts down Colorado public defender’s office

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    A cyberattack on the Office of Colorado State Public Defender has forced the office to shut down its computer network, locking public defenders across the state out of critical work systems.

    Colorado public defenders do not have access to their work computers, are unable to access court dockets or court filings and can’t do any significant work for clients in court, according to internal emails reviewed by The Denver Post.

    Office spokesman James Karbach confirmed the breach in a statement Monday, saying officials “recently became aware that some data within our computer system was encrypted by malware.”

    Karbach did not say how long the public defender’s office expects to be shut down or when the attack happened, but emails sent to public defenders indicate the statewide office is effectively “non-operational” and the outage could last as long as a week.

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    Shelly Bradbury

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  • Amazon’s stock just racked up its highest close in more than two years

    Amazon’s stock just racked up its highest close in more than two years

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    Amazon.com Inc. shares continued their charge higher Friday, securing their highest close in more than two years.

    The e-commerce giant’s stock advanced 2.7% in Friday’s session to finish the day at $174.45. That was the best ending level since Dec. 9, 2021, when Amazon’s stock
    AMZN,
    +2.71%
    closed at $147.17, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

    Don’t miss: Is Meta now a value stock?

    Amazon briefly surpassed Alphabet Inc.
    GOOG,
    +2.04%

    GOOGL,
    +2.12%
    as the third most valuable U.S. company by market capitalization last week, though it’s since fallen back to the No. 4 spot. Still, the recent momentum for Amazon shares has been enough to help the company hold down a place in the top four even as Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +3.58%
    nips at its heels.

    Alphabet finished Friday’s session with a $1.86 trillion market cap, while Amazon’s was $1.81 trillion and Nvidia’s was $1.78 trillion.

    Wall Street had a mixed reaction to earnings from big technology companies this quarter, but Amazon’s results were among those that were well received.

    See also: Amazon says the ‘magic words.’ They spurred a $130 billion market-cap boost.

    “Overall the overhangs which kept a lid on AMZN shares — e-commerce deceleration in 2021, e-commerce deceleration and margin compression in 2022 and AWS deceleration in 2023 — will have dissipated throughout 2024,” UBS analyst Stephen Ju wrote in a note to clients following those results.

    The company has been a huge driver of earnings growth for the S&P 500 consumer discretionary sector, as its quarterly earnings per share grew to $1 in the latest quarter from 3 cents a year before. The consumer discretionary sector is now expected to post 33% growth in EPS for the fourth quarter, according to FactSet, but without Amazon, that would swing to a decline of about 1%.

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  • Small businesses are paying 100%+ of profits to Uncle Sam after tax-law change

    Small businesses are paying 100%+ of profits to Uncle Sam after tax-law change

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    Small businesses in sectors like software and manufacturing are panicking over the expiration of a critical tax deduction that they say could lead to mass layoffs and business closures, unless Congress acts quickly to amend the law.

    “This is a life-and-death scenario for small software companies,” Michelle Hansen, co-founder of the geocoding company Geocodio, told MarketWatch.

    The tax change that Hansen and other software executives are taking issue with was signed into law by President Trump in 2017, as part of a larger tax overhaul that slashed the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

    But in order to satisfy Senate budget rules and pass the law with only Republican votes, the bill could not increase the budget deficit over a 10-year window.

    So lawmakers included a provision that, beginning in 2022, drastically reduced how much research-and-development spending a business could deduct from their annual revenue to determine taxable income.

    The change penalizes certain industries like software and information technology — where engineer salaries are often classified as R&D expenses — as well as manufacturing and pharmaceuticals
    IHE.

    IntervalZero CEO Jeff Hibbard, whose Massachusetts-based company designs and sells software for installation on precision machines like semiconductor manufacturers, told MarketWatch that he has had to tap into company savings for the past several years in order to avoid laying off engineers.

    He said that his firm brings in about $9 million in revenue annually with expenses of $8 million — but 60% of those expenses come in the form of engineer salaries, which can only be deducted from taxable income over a five-year period because the IRS treats it as R&D.

    He said that after taxes consumed all his profits in 2022, he had to pay an additional $800,000 to Uncle Sam, and an additional $600,000 for the 2023 tax year.

    “We’ve had to do a hiring freeze and postpone projects” in a cutthroat industry where technology progresses rapidly, Hibbard said. “We’ve been in existence for 15 years. For the first 14, we always hired additional people. Now we have a hiring and salary freeze.”

    The House of Representatives voted last week 357-70 to restore full expensing for R&D as part of a $79 billion tax package that boosted the child tax credit and extended other business tax breaks.

    The bill now heads to the Senate, which already has its hands full debating immigration and national-security issues, and analysts say election-year politics could thwart its passage in 2024.

    Henrietta Treyz, director of economic-policy research at Veda Partners, gave just a 10% chance of the bill passing the Senate in a recent note to clients.

    “This year’s effort to pass a tax package has been more robust than the effort we saw in 2022 and 2023,” she wrote. Treyz added, however, that “the competing need to pass border reform and Ukraine/Israel aid, and general dysfunction in Washington keep us pessimistic that we’ll see a bipartisan economic-stimulus package come out of Congress this year.”

     On top of Republicans not wanting to give President Joe Biden a victory that would provide tax relief for businesses and families, Senate Republicans could decide to drag their feet on the bill in the hope that they’ll retake the chamber next year and can play a bigger role in the process, according to Owen Tedford, policy analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors.

    “The critical member to watch is Senator Mike Crapo [of Idaho], the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee,” Tedford wrote. “Crapo has not outright opposed the bill but has raised policy concerns and has expressed a desire to have a chance to amend it.” 

    Political considerations may be dictating the bill’s fate in Washington — but some business owners fear they don’t have the wherewithal to wait until next year for the problem to be fixed.

    Benjamin Bengfort, co-founder and CEO of Iowa-based software firm Rotational Labs, told MarketWatch that he had to lay off workers last year after his 2022 tax bill rose by 438%.

    He noted that even demand for his products has taken a hit because of the change in the law, because his services can count as an R&D expense for his customers, too.

    “So it is [between] a rock and a hard place for us, no matter how you look at it,” Bengfort said. “This is an existential threat for software engineering companies.”

    Andrew Keshner contributed.

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  • Amazon is worth more than Alphabet for the first time in 16 months

    Amazon is worth more than Alphabet for the first time in 16 months

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    Earnings season is causing a reshuffling among the ranks of the largest U.S. companies.

    Amazon.com Inc.
    AMZN,
    +7.87%
    overtook Alphabet Inc.
    GOOG,
    +0.58%

    GOOGL,
    +0.86%
    and become the third-largest U.S. public company upon Friday’s close, after its results were well received by Wall Street and Alphabet’s earlier in the week got panned.

    Amazon edged out Alphabet only barely, with a closing market cap of $1.785 trillion compared with $1.777 trillion for Alphabet, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

    Read: Amazon says the ‘magic words.’ They could spur a $110 billion market-cap boost.

    The e-commerce giant hadn’t been valued above the Google parent company since Sept. 30, 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That was also the last time Amazon was the third-largest by market cap.

    Wall Street found plenty to like in Amazon’s latest report, including drastic improvement in operating income, upbeat commentary on the cloud and momentum within the retail business. Meanwhile, Alphabet’s earnings were met with a chillier reception as the company talked up heavy spending plans linked to its artificial-intelligence ambitions.

    The very top of the market-cap ranks has changed up as well lately, though admittedly with less of a tie to earnings. Microsoft Corp.’s
    MSFT,
    +1.84%
    closing valuation surpassed Apple Inc.’s
    AAPL,
    -0.54%
    on Jan. 12 for the first time since November 2021. While the two traded around the top spot in January, Microsoft has been sitting there since Jan. 25.

    Don’t miss: Microsoft earnings may have offered a big bullish clue about cloud growth

    Microsoft also rests alone in the $3 trillion club, with Apple, the only other U.S. company to ever claim membership, having fallen out of it.

    See also: Apple just did something unusual. Can it help the stock amid growth woes?

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  • Russian hacking group accessed Microsoft executive emails, company says

    Russian hacking group accessed Microsoft executive emails, company says

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    Microsoft Corp. said Friday a Russian hacking group illegally gained access to some of its top executives’ email accounts.

    In a regulatory filing, the software giant
    MSFT,
    +1.22%
    said a group called Nobelium was responsible for the attack.

    In late November, the group accessed “a legacy non-production test tenant account and [gained] a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents,” Microsoft’s Security Response Center wrote in a blog post.

    Microsoft’s senior leadership team, which includes Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and President Brad Smith, routinely meets with Chief Executive Satya Nadella.

    The company reported that there were no signs Nobelium had obtained customer data, production systems or proprietary source code.

    A Microsoft spokesperson provided this comment late Friday: “Our security team recently detected an attack on our corporate systems attributed to the Russian state-sponsored actor Midnight Blizzard. We immediately activated our response process to investigate, disrupt malicious activity, mitigate the attack, and deny the threat actor further access. The attack was not the result of a vulnerability in Microsoft products or services. To date, there is no evidence that the threat actor had any access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems. More information is available in our blog.”

    Nobelium, also known as APT29 or Cozy Bear, is a shadowy hacking group that attempted to crack the systems of the U.S. Defense Department and did breach the Democratic National Committee’s systems in 2016.

    Netskope Threat Labs, which tracks Nobelium, said the hacking group uses a variety of techniques to compromise accounts, including compromised Azure AD accounts to collect victim emails. “This hack underscores the importance of securing corporate email accounts, even those in non-production and test environments,” a Netskope spokesperson said. “Even if the email account isn’t regularly used or doesn’t contain anything sensitive, it can still be used to launch additional attacks.”

    Microsoft’s disclosure comes amid new U.S. requirements to report cybersecurity incidents.

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  • So Long, Apple and Tesla. We Built a Better Magnificent 7.

    So Long, Apple and Tesla. We Built a Better Magnificent 7.

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    By Nicholas Jasinski

    Jan 12, 2024, 1:00 am EST

    In this article

    AMZN

    AAPL

    MSFT

    NVDA

    SPX

    The Magnificent Seven had an extraordinary year in 2023—one that will be very difficult to repeat. And there will be a new Magnificent Seven in 2024.

    Continue reading this article with a Barron’s subscription.

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  • Hewlett Packard Enterprises to buy Juniper Networks in $14 billion deal

    Hewlett Packard Enterprises to buy Juniper Networks in $14 billion deal

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    In an effort to keep up in the accelerating AI arms race, cloud-services provider Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. on Tuesday agreed to buy Juniper Networks, Inc. in a deal worth around $14 billion.

    Under the terms of the deal, Hewlett Packard Enterprises
    HPE,
    -8.92%
    will acquire Juniper
    JNPR,
    +21.81%
    — which makes communications-networking products and also has an AI segment called Mist AI — for $40 a share. The companies expect the deal to close late this year or in early 2025.

    “The acquisition is expected to double HPE’s networking business, creating a new networking leader with a comprehensive portfolio that presents customers and partners with a compelling new choice to drive business value,” the companies said in a release.

    After the deal is completed, Juniper Chief Executive Rami Rahim will lead the combined HPE networking business, and report to HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

    “This transaction will strengthen HPE’s position at the nexus of accelerating macro-AI trends, expand our total addressable market, and drive further innovation for customers as we help bridge the AI-native and cloud-native worlds, while also generating significant value for shareholders,” Neri said in a statement.

    HPE said the addition of Juniper will boost margins and result in up to $450 million in annual cost savings within three years of the deal’s completion, as well as accelerate growth. HPE’s networking segment was the company’s top source of quarterly earnings before taxes, $401 million, on $1.4 billion in revenue.

    HPE’s deeper plunge into networking closes a chapter of sorts. Then-Hewlett-Packard Co. acquired Aruba Networks for about $3 billion in March 2015, months before Silicon Valley’s original garage startup split in half, resulting in the formation of HPE, which sells servers and other equipment for data centers, and HP Inc.
    HPQ,
    -2.71%    ,
    which makes PCs and printers.

    The Wall Street Journal reported the possibility of a deal on Monday, sending shares of Juniper higher.

    Shares of Juniper
    JNPR,
    +21.81%
    rose 0.5% after hours, after jumping 21.8% during regular trading hours. Hewlett Packard
    HPE,
    -8.92%
    shares were down 0.4% after hours, after falling 8.9% during the day.

    As of Tuesday’s close, Juniper had a market cap of $9.64 billion, while HPE’s was $23.04 billion.

    The companies hope the deal can provide a much-needed jolt after a series of lackluster quarterly earnings. Juniper shares have gained 15.7% over the past 12 months, while HPE shares are down 5.4% over that span. The S&P 500
    SPX,
    in comparison, is up about 21.4% over the past year.

    For decades, Juniper has lagged rival Cisco Systems Inc.
    CSCO,
    -1.09%
    in the networking-equipment market. In its most recent quarter, Juniper reported net income of $76 million on revenue of $1.4 billion, down 1% from the same quarter a year earlier.

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  • WSJ News Exclusive | Hewlett Packard Enterprise Near Deal to Buy Juniper Networks

    WSJ News Exclusive | Hewlett Packard Enterprise Near Deal to Buy Juniper Networks

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    Updated Jan. 8, 2024 6:31 pm ET

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise is in advanced talks to buy Juniper Networks for about $13 billion, in a bid to better position the nearly 100-year-old technology company in the era of artificial intelligence. 

    A deal between the two companies could be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, assuming the talks don’t fall apart. 

    Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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