logo
Quote of the Day: The Global A.I. Divide

Quote of the Day: The Global A.I. Divide

New York Times16-07-2025
'The A.I. era runs the risk of leaving Africa even further behind.'
BRAD SMITH, Microsoft's president, speaking about a yawning gap that has opened among nations in the race to build artificial intelligence. Africa faces a particular challenge as many places do not have reliable electricity.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Huawei shows off AI computing system to rival Nvidia's top product
Huawei shows off AI computing system to rival Nvidia's top product

Yahoo

time4 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Huawei shows off AI computing system to rival Nvidia's top product

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China's Huawei Technologies showed off an AI computing system on Saturday that one industry expert has said rivals Nvidia's most advanced offering, as the Chinese technology giant seeks to capture market share in the country's growing artificial intelligence sector. The CloudMatrix 384 system made its first public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai where companies showcase their latest AI innovations, drawing a large crowd to the company's booth. The system has drawn close attention from the global AI community since Huawei first announced it in April. Industry analysts view it as a direct competitor to Nvidia's GB200 NVL72, the U.S. chipmaker's most advanced system-level product currently available in the market. Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research group SemiAnalysis, said in an April article that Huawei now had AI system capabilities that could beat Nvidia. Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system. A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions. Huawei has become widely regarded as China's most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces U.S. export restrictions. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been "moving quite fast" and named the CloudMatrix as an example. The CloudMatrix 384 incorporates 384 of Huawei's latest 910C chips and outperforms Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 on some metrics, which uses 72 B200 chips, according to SemiAnalysis. The performance stems from Huawei's system design capabilities, which compensate for weaker individual chip performance through the use of more chips and system-level innovations, SemiAnalysis said. Huawei says the system uses "supernode" architecture that allows the chips to interconnect at super-high speeds and in June, Huawei Cloud CEO Zhang Pingan said the CloudMatrix 384 system was operational on Huawei's cloud platform. Sign in to access your portfolio

Microsoft's Critical Password Warning — Users Have 5 Days To Act
Microsoft's Critical Password Warning — Users Have 5 Days To Act

Forbes

time6 minutes ago

  • Forbes

Microsoft's Critical Password Warning — Users Have 5 Days To Act

Unsaved Microsoft Authenticator passwords will be deletd on August 1. Passwords: You can't live without them, despite the advance of passkey technology, but unless you act before August 1, the passwords you have generated using Microsoft's Authenticator app will be deleted. Yes, deleted. This should not come as a surprise, not least as Microsoft has been warning users for the longest time of the password changes to come: In June no new passwords could be added to the app, during July the autofill feature ceased to work and, in just five days time on August 1, your saved passwords won't be accessible via the app anymore. All of this, seemingly in the name of better security, and with password hacking such a cyber-epidemic, that might not be a bad thing. Or at least it wouldn't be if I actually believed that to be the case. Here's what you need to know and do. Microsoft Passwords Deadline — What You Need To Know The whole password deletion and usage debate revolves around one simple act: Microsoft has decided to discontinue the autofill function of the Microsoft Authenticator app as part of an update to streamline the process 'so you can use saved passwords easily across devices.' The reasoning behind this seems, dare I say, a little spurious to me. After all, Microsoft readily admits that 'autofill in Microsoft Authenticator has been a way to securely store and autofill passwords on apps and websites you visit on your phone,' and that hasn't changed. What has changed is the desire to get users to move to the more secure passkey technology and, perhaps more pertinently, to move to the Microsoft Edge web browser. There's nothing wrong with the password management functionality of the Edge browser, nor the Chrome browser, nor most any browser. From my perspective, however, a dedicated password manager app is a much better option when it comes to password security and management. Removing that option, unless you have set up passkeys for your Microsoft Account as Authenticator will still support these and disabling Authenticator in these circumstances will disable your passkeys, just serves to complicate matters. As the whole passkeys thing I've just mentioned goes to prove. How convoluted is it all? Here's what Microsoft said: 'Your saved passwords (but not your generated password history) and addresses are securely synced to your Microsoft account, and you can continue to access them and enjoy seamless autofill functionality with Microsoft Edge.' Microsoft Passwords Deadline — What You Need To Do Before August 1 Let's start with the Edge browser requirement, which Microsoft has stated you are welcome to ignore and use a different provider, such as Google Password Manager, iCloud Keychain, or any other password management app. Microsoft said that once you set Microsoft as your default autofill provider on your phone, you will need to export passwords from Microsoft Authenticator and then import them into the new service. 'For security reasons, you will need to manually recreate your payment info,' Microsoft added. However, your time is fast running out to do this if you haven't already. Although your passwords that have already been saved in Microsoft Authenticator will be visible to Microsoft Edge, from August 1 they will no longer be accessible in the app and, therefore, you won't be able to export them anywhere. And, of course, any generated passwords that have not been saved from the app generator history into the saved passwords category will be deleted. If you are happy to use Edge as your password autofill provider, then Microsoft has easy-to-follow instructions on its support pages.

The S&P 500 Is Going to Plunge at Least 30%, Based on What a Forecasting Tool With a 100% Historical Success Rate Has to Say
The S&P 500 Is Going to Plunge at Least 30%, Based on What a Forecasting Tool With a 100% Historical Success Rate Has to Say

Yahoo

time23 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

The S&P 500 Is Going to Plunge at Least 30%, Based on What a Forecasting Tool With a 100% Historical Success Rate Has to Say

Key Points The S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Dow Jones Industrial Average have endured a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows since the year began. A time-tested valuation tool capable of providing the closest thing to an apples-to-apples comparison as investors can get is offering one of its loudest warnings ever. Time in the market has consistently trumped trying to time the stock market's downturns. 10 stocks we like better than S&P 500 Index › It's been a roller-coaster ride for Wall Street and investors through nearly seven months of 2025. In early April, the wheels fell off the wagon, with the benchmark S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), growth-inspired Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC), and iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) plunging. In a two-day period (the close of April 2 to the end of April 4), the S&P 500 registered its fifth-worst two-day percentage drop (-10.5%) since 1950. One week after this chaos began, all three major stock indexes recorded their largest single-day point gains in their respective histories -- and they haven't looked back. The broad-based S&P 500 has rallied by more than 25% in just three months for only the sixth time in its history and surged to a record high. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite has surpassed 21,000 for the first time, with the Dow just 4 points away from an all-time closing high, as of July 23. Between the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and President Donald Trump's administration working out a couple of key trade deals, it would appear nothing can slow down the stock market. But looks can be deceiving... Wall Street's benchmark index is primed for a history lesson Let me preface any and all discussion regarding forecasting tools with this warning: Nothing is guaranteed on Wall Street. Even predictive tools and correlative events that have, historically, been 100% accurate in the past can't concretely guarantee what'll happen in the future. With the above being said, a 100% historical success rate in forecasting future stock returns is generally something investors should pay attention to. At any given time, there are one or more headwinds threatening to drag the stock market lower. Uncertainty regarding President Trump's tariff and trade policy, the potential for the prevailing rate of inflation to pick back up, and Moody's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to AA1 from AAA are all examples of downside catalysts that can spark a stock market correction, bear market, or crash. But among this laundry list of potential problems for stocks, perhaps nothing is more worrisome than valuations. Most investors rely on the time-tested price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio when quickly assessing the relative cheapness or priciness of a given stock. A company's P/E ratio is calculated by dividing its share price by its trailing-12-month earnings per share (EPS). It's a handy tool for evaluating mature businesses, but it often falls short with growth stocks and during recessions when corporate earnings are temporarily disrupted. The valuation tool with an uncanny track record -- i.e., 100% success rate -- of forecasting future stock returns is the S&P 500's Shiller P/E Ratio, which is also known as the cyclically adjusted P/E Ratio, or CAPE Ratio. Rather than accounting for 12 months of trailing EPS, the Shiller P/E is based on average inflation-adjusted EPS over the trailing-10-year period. Accounting for a decade of EPS and adjusting it for inflation minimizes the impact of economic shock events, which allows for the closest thing to an apples-to-apples comparison as investors can get. As of the closing bell on July 23, the S&P 500's Shiller P/E Ratio stood at 38.79, which is just fractionally below its high for the current bull market of 38.89, set in December. To put this figure into context, it's the third-priciest continuous bull market when back-tested to January 1871. The only higher readings were observed prior to the dot-com bubble (an all-time peak of 44.19 in December 1999), and immediately prior to the start of the 2022 bear market (just above 40 during the first week of January 2022). When back-tested 154 years, the Shiller P/E has surpassed a multiple of 30 just six times, including the present -- and this is where historical precedent comes into play. Following the previous five occurrences where the Shiller P/E topped 30, the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and/or Dow Jones Industrial Average fell between 20% and 89% (this latter figure is a Great Depression outlier). What this signals is that extended valuations aren't well tolerated by Wall Street over an extended period. Furthermore, none of these five 20% (or greater) pullbacks in the broader market found their respective bottoms with the S&P 500's Shiller P/E higher than 27. In other words, the minimum historical expectation is for the Shiller P/E to retrace to 27. Were this to occur, the broad-based S&P 500 would need to lose about 30% of its value. Based solely on what this valuation forecasting tool tells us, Wall Street's benchmark index can lose 30% of its value at some point in the presumed not-too-distant future. Time in the market consistently trumps trying to time the market Thankfully, history is a pendulum that swings (disproportionately) in both directions. Although sizable moves lower in the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Dow Jones Industrial Average can play on the emotions of investors, time and perspective have a way of rewarding those who exercise patience and focus on the horizon. Every year, the analysts at Crestmont Research refresh a published data set that examines the rolling 20-year total returns (including dividends) for the S&P 500 that dates back to the start of the 20th century. Despite the S&P not officially being incepted until 1923, researchers were able to tabulate total return data by tracking the performance of its components in other major indexes back to 1900. This yielded 106 rolling 20-year periods (1900-1919, 1901-1920, 1902-1921, and so on, to 2005-2024). What Crestmont's calculations show is that all 106 of these rolling 20-year periods produced a positive total return. Hypothetically (because an S&P 500 index fund has only existed since 1993), if an investor had purchased an S&P 500 index fund at any point between 1900 and 2005 and simply held this position for 20 years, they would have generated a profit, including dividends, 100% of the time. What's particularly powerful about Crestmont's analysis is these positive returns occurred despite numerous recessions, a few economic depressions, two pandemics, and multiple wars. No matter how dire things seemed for Wall Street at any given moment, investors who held for 20 years always came out ahead. To build on this point and demonstrate how important time in the market is relative to trying to time its inevitable downturns, let's take a closer look at another data set published by Bespoke Investment Group on X (formerly Twitter) in June 2023. The data set you see above represents a comparison of the calendar-day length of every S&P 500 bull and bear market since the start of the Great Depression in September 1929. The 27 bear markets in the broad-based index spanning nearly 94 years (until June 2023) lasted an average of 286 calendar days, or less than 10 months. In comparison, bull markets have averaged 1,011 calendar days, or approximately 3.5 times longer than the typical bear market. Further, the longest S&P 500 bear market since the Great Depression endured for 630 calendar days in the mid-1970s. Including the current bull market (extrapolated to present day), more than half (14 out of 27) of S&P 500 bull markets have lasted longer than 630 calendar days. If the Shiller P/E correctly forecasts a 30% decline in the benchmark S&P 500, long-term-minded investors should use it as an opportunity to invest for their future, knowing that time and history are firmly in their corner. Should you invest $1,000 in S&P 500 Index right now? Before you buy stock in S&P 500 Index, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and S&P 500 Index wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,774!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,064,942!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,040% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Moody's. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The S&P 500 Is Going to Plunge at Least 30%, Based on What a Forecasting Tool With a 100% Historical Success Rate Has to Say was originally published by The Motley Fool

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store