Few fantasies are harder to wipe away than the romance of a clean slate. Every January, when we're twitchy with regret and self-loathing, advertisers blare, "New Year, new you," urging us to jettison our failures and start fresh. In fiction, self-reinvention is a perennial theme, often shadowed by the suspicion that it can't be done. Lately, novelists have put a political spin on the idea, counterposing hopeful acts of individual self-fashioning to the immovable weight of circumstance. Halle Butler's "The New Me" (2019), a millennial office satire, finds its temp heroine, Millie, trying to life-hack her way out of loneliness and professional drift--buy a plant, whiten her teeth, make friends, think positive.

Petco Love Lost is a free platform that uses AI-powered photo matching to reunite lost pets with their families. When Michael Bown left New York City for a family reunion at the Jersey Shore, he never imagined he'd return to a nightmare. His beloved adopted dog, Millie, just a year old, slipped out of her collar during a walk in the East Village and vanished into the night. What followed was a frantic, emotional and ultimately heartwarming journey, one that highlights the power of community, technology and a little bit of luck. Join The FREE CyberGuy Report: Get my expert tech tips, critical security alerts and exclusive deals -- plus instant access to my free Ultimate Scam Survival Guide when you sign up! Michael's story began with a simple act of trust, leaving Millie in the care of a close friend.

I finally got the opportunity to watch Free Guy recently. Before I go any further, there are probably going to be spoilers here. The further we get from the original release date, the less that will matter. However, there may be some people who still haven't seen this movie and don't want it spoiled. I will say it was a good movie that could have been better. I enjoy movies in this genre.

The hero of "Free Guy" is a guy named Guy (Ryan Reynolds). He has a best buddy named Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), and they live in a city named Free City. What, however, is the nature of their liberty? Guy wakes up every morning, dons an identical blue shirt, buys a cup of coffee, and goes to a bank, where he works as a teller. His customary greeting is "Don't have a good day.

The great big handsome-goofy face of Ryan Reynolds looms out of the screen in this fantasy comedy from screenwriter Matt Lieberman and director Shawn Levy (of the Night at the Museum franchise). It's an undemanding and cheerfully silly riff on the themes of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and what the heck we're all doing in this big old universe of ours: as if someone took The Truman Show or Inception – or even The Lego Movie – and stripped out every serious satirical ambition, replacing it with M&M-coloured spectacle. The result is not something that's in any way challenging, but Reynolds is so puppyishly eager to please. Reynolds plays a normal, boring guy whose name is Guy (amusingly, it is never clear if this is his actual given name, as in Guy Crouchback, or the more generic "guy"). He smiles incessantly, wears a bland, short-sleeved blue shirt and goes to work every day as a bank teller in a serenely marvellous-looking modern city, resembling Vancouver.

Twenty Billion Neurons (TwentyBN), is a leading provider of real-time, interactive computer vision and artificial intelligence solutions. It is an AI company with the mission of instilling common sense into computers through video understanding and of turning inanimate devices into human eyes that can understand the world around them, assist humans, and ensure a safe and healthy lifestyle. Founded in 2015, a company is building an artificial intelligence system that interacts with humans while "looking" at them. This enables the system to understand their behavior, surrounding and the full context of the engagement. This AI solution allows people to interact with technology and each other in new and exciting ways that will impact every aspect of their lives.

Millie really wants you to buy that new outfit -- Millie thinks it makes you look so good! Instead, it's an AI avatar built specifically to flatter you and push you to spend more at retail stores when you walk near its kiosks. That's according to the MIT Technology Review's Will Knight, who recently tested out the system. Millie's software uses computer vision to tell when a customer approaches, as well as when someone accepts Millie's encouragement to try on new clothes or pick up a nearby product -- all tactics that TwentyBN, the company that created Millie, says are intended to increase sales. When Knight tried a pair of sunglasses, for instance, Millie asked if he was a model.