Cleaning is a task that is best done in short bursts, but even if you're sticking to a schedule and only working for short amounts of time, you still need some structure to determine what to focus on. Enter the 5x5 method, which has recently been picking up steam on social media. It offers a way to structure your cleaning sessions while keeping them quick, reducing the likelihood you end up overwhelmed or burned out. What is the 5x5 cleaning method?Think of it a little like the Pomodoro productivity technique: You'll need a timer, which you'll set in five-minute increments, and a list of five zones in your home that need some attention. You'll work on each zone for five minutes before moving to the next one. As with the Pomodoro technique, you shouldn't keep going on a particular zone once the timer goes off. This approach is gaining popularity online, where CleanTokkers are celebrating it for keeping their cleaning routines simple and helping them make small impacts that add up to bigger ones over time. What to keep in mind with the 5x5 cleaning methodI'm a well-documented fan of cleaning in 15-minute bursts to cut down on strain and feelings of being overwhelmed, so the 5x5 approach, with its 25 dedicated minutes of cleaning, is a little outside what I tend to recommend. Because the chunks of time devoted to each zone are so small, however, it doesn't end up feeling that overwhelming at all. You have two options when you set out to do this: You can choose five standard zones to address every day, or devote each day to whichever five unique zones are in the most serious need of some attention. The goal here is to pick small, workable spaces, not entire rooms, which differentiates the technique from other zone-based cleaning approaches like the FlyLady method. Instead of attempting to devote five minutes to "the bathroom," for instance,break the bathroom down into five smaller zones: the medicine cabinet, bathtub, toilet, etc. Play around with the approach for a few weeks to determine what works for you. For me, personally, this kind of routine usually involves zones that are pretty disparate. Spending 25 straight minutes in the bathroom would sap my motivation, but giving five minutes to the kitchen sink, then the shower, then the dining room table keeps me engaged and in the zone. It's also important not to go over the allotted time, to the best of your ability. No, you shouldn't drop your vacuum in the middle of the room if you haven't finished the whole floor when the timer rings, but ideally, after doing this for a while, you'll get the hang of figuring out what can and can't be done in five minutes, so you don't end up in that position. Sticking within the five-minute window will make you focus, work harder, and be more decisive, knowing your alarm is about to go off. There are, of course, bigger tasks that can't be done during five-minute bursts, so 5x5 may not work as an everyday approach for you. When mapping out your cleaning schedule for a given week, consider making three or four days a 5x5 day and setting aside a certain day or two for the bigger projects. Overall, what you want here is to build the habit of always maintaining your space, not letting messes pile up until they're overwhelming. Five minutes might not seem like a lot of time (because it isn't!) but a daily commitment to it will result, eventually, in a much cleaner home.

PUBG: Battlegrounds will add non-player characters powered by NVIDIA ACE generative AI. These PUBG Allies are being dubbed Co-Playable Characters, and they can have real-time conversations with a player about what's happening in a match. They can also adapt their strategies and gameplay to work with the player's style. Krafton, the battle royale's publisher, demoed this technology at CES 2025."We will continue to innovate user experiences by integrating CPC into our games and aim to establish it as a benchmark for the gaming industry," said Kangwook Lee, head of Krafton's deep learning division. Krafton will also publish upcoming life simulator inZOI, and had a CES demo of a CPC in that game as well.NVIDIA introduced its generative AI tech, the Avatar Cloud Engine, during a keynote at Computex 2023. The ACE generative AI is also present in the multiplayer title Mecha BREAK, which appeared at Gamescom last year. The Krafton games are using on-device small language models built with NVIDIA ACE. The publisher did not specify in its press release when it will start rolling out CPCs.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pubg-will-get-ai-powered-npcs-220218057.html?src=rss

AMD's Ryzen AI Max chips came as a huge surprise at CES 2025. They're basically super-powered versions of the company's Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, alongside a pool of as much as 128GB integrated RAM. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max chips will deliver up to 2.6 times faster 3D rendering than Intel's Core Ultra 9 288V, as well as 1.4 times better graphics performance.Squint a bit, and you might think AMD was taking a bit of inspiration from Apple Silicon, with its powerful CPU cores, graphics and unified memory. But according to VP Joe Macri, AMD was building towards this long before Apple. "We were building APUs [chips combining CPUs and Radeon graphics] while Apple was using discrete GPUs. They were using our discrete GPUs. So I don't credit Apple with coming up with the idea." AMD also had experience stuffing gobs of memory into its Instinct data center GPUs.Still, Macri gives Apple credit for proving that you don't need discrete graphics to sell people on powerful computers. "Many people in the PC industry said, well, if you want graphics, it's gotta be discrete graphics because otherwise people will think it's bad graphics," he said. "What Apple showed was consumers don't care what's inside the box. They actually care what the what the box looks like. They care about the screen, the keyboard, the mouse. They care about what it does."With the success of Apple Silicon, Macri was finally able to get approval to spend a "mind boggling" amount of money developing the Ryzen AI Max. "I always knew, because we were building APUs, and I'd been pushing for this big APU forever, that I could build, a system that was smaller, faster, and I could give much higher performance at the same power," he said.I briefly saw the Ryzen AI Max in action while testing the latest ASUS ROG Flow Z13 at AMD's CES booth. I was able to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart in 1080p at well above 60fps, with tons of graphical flourishes. It was tough to tell on such a small tablet screen, but the overall performance looked on par with a base PlayStation 5 (albeit at a slightly lower resolution). AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max is also comparable to Apple's 14-core M4 Pro chip (which it also beats out in the Vray benchmark).Ryzen AI Max systems will roll out in the first and second quarter of the year, including the aforementioned ROG Flow Z13 as well as HP's ZBook Ultra G1a.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amd-vp-explains-why-the-ryzen-ai-max-likely-wouldnt-exist-without-apple-220034111.html?src=rss

The Detroit-based company Astrohaus has been making its distraction-free writing tools under the Freewrite name for about a decade. So far, those have all been standalone, single-purpose devices meant simply for drafting text, but Astrohaus is branching out at CES 2025. The company just announced a mechanical keyboard called the Freewrite Wordrunner, a device designed specifically with writers in mind.This comes more than three years after Astrohaus quietly revealed intentions to build a keyboard, originally known as the Maestro. But the company eventually pulled the plug on its planned 2022 launch, and I hadnt heard anything about it since then it seems that theyve just been working away at it this whole time. CEO Adam Leeb said in a press release that the company had been iterating and developing it for almost four years.FreewriteMechanical keyboards have largely become the domain of gamers; the company wanted to build a device for people who make their living writing instead. Without spending some quality time with it, I cant say if theyve hit that mark yet, but there are some fun ideas on display here.The Wordrunner has a tenkeyless design that looks familiar at first glance, but youll quickly notice that the function row has been replaced by a custom set of keys thatll make zipping around text documents faster. That includes find and replace, undo and redo, paragraph up and down as well as back, forward and reload keys. Id be upset about losing media controls from the function row, but the Wordrunner has it covered with the bright red joystick / button. It moves in all four cardinal directions and can also be pressed in vertically to skip tracks, play media or adjust volume.FreewriteOn the other side, youll find three customizable macro keys with the cutesy names zap, pow and bam. Theyre programmable for anything you might want, but Astrohaus suggested using them to launch specific writing apps, converting text to title case or inserting the date. I dont yet know what Id use them for, but having customizable keys is a table-stakes feature for most enthusiast keyboards so Im glad to see them here.Probably the most visually striking thing about the Wordrunner are the two mechanical counters youll see up top. One is a timer you can use for writing sprints or just staying focused for a bit. More intriguing is the Wordometer dead-center at the top of the keyboard. Itll track your words with its whopping eight-digit mechanical counter, and since it saves your word count as long as you want, you could try and max it out someday. Of course, you can also reset it at any time or pause it if you dont want it to advance while youre chatting with friends or sending emails.FreewriteBeyond that, the Wordrunner features an aluminum body that Im looking forward to seeing in person I love the aluminum shell of the Freewrite Smart Typewriter and Im hoping that the keyboard feels similar.The mechanical keys are backlit, but Astrohaus isnt saying who is making them yet. But it also has some sound dampening built in so you can use it without subjecting everyone around to you overly loud key clacks (this may be a plus or minus depending on how you like your keyboards). As for connectivity, the Wordrunner uses Bluetooth or USB-C, and you can pair the keyboard with three different devices and quickly switch between them with dedicated hotkeys.Finally, theres the ever-present question of availability. Astrohaus is launching the Wordrunner on Kickstarter, as it has done with most of its other hardware over the last 10 years. The campaign should start in February with early bird pricing, but we dont know what that price will be yet. Fortunately, theres a pretty low-commitment way to get the best price if youre curious. Astrohaus says you can place a $1 reservation for priority access and the best possible pricing, with plans to deliver the first batch of keyboards before the end of the year. Thats a long ways out, but a buck isnt a bad investment if youre interested.Astrohaus is showing off a protoype of the Wordrunner at CES, and I'll be updating this post after I get my hands on it and see how it feels at this stage of development.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/the-latest-freewrite-device-is-a-fancy-mechanical-keyboard-built-with-writers-in-mind-220005961.html?src=rss

The price and battery life on this US-available TCL 60XE Nxtpaper 5G is jaw-dropping.

QNX and Microsoft partner on automotive project through cloud-based software-defined vehicle development.

Windows 11 is often cited as the worst thing about handheld gaming PCs - but it looks like Microsoft could soon fix this.

D-Wave Quantum shares plunged 36% on Wednesday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that quantum computers are decades away.

Behind that stunning visual effect in Deadpool & Wolverine where Cassandra moves her hands through Paradox, Wolverine and Deadpools faces.Few icky visual effects shots have resonated so widely as the moments that Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) uses her powers to run her hands literally through the faces of other characters in director Shawn Levys Deadpool & Wolverine. These include Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds).For befores & afters, production visual effects supervisor Swen Gillberg breaks down, in his own words, exactly how those shots were achieved, including reference gathering, concepts and previs, shooting, and the final execution. As a special bonus, he also describes the moment Cassandra rips off Johnny Storms (Chris Evans) skin.From the comics: Early in prep, I came across these really crazy images in the comics of Cassandra putting her hands through peoples faces. Im like, Wow, thats wild. There was one specific image we saw of her hand going up through Paradoxs face in the comics. We used that as a style guide. Our goal was to create a photoreal version of the comics that was really true to comics. Obviously comic books and real life dont look alike, so its an interpretation, but that was the goal.We also did a bunch of early animation tests just to try to figure it out. And early on, along with the comic book reference, we scoured the internet for all the gross reference that you can imagine. Getting the performance: Having worked on Thanos and having Josh Brolin there as Thanos meant that one of my mantras was to always get the actors to act together to get their performances so they can look each other in the eyes. And so, we had to come up with a way to shoot these Cassandra scenes so that these actors are together and not in separate rooms.There was early talk about making a buck that Emma Corrin would put her hands through. But it was more important to me that Matthew Macfadyen and Emma could look each other in the eyes. So, we had to figure out a way to shoot together. Now, one thing to note is that that whole Cassandra through Paradoxs face scene was probably three times or four times shorter, as originally scripted. Through reshoots, it lengthened considerably, we added a ton of dialogue to it, so it just needed to be ready for changes. We needed a fluid shooting methodology.I worked with Emmas stunt double first to try to come up with a way for them to be together. Basically, it ended up being, just put them together. I originally had made these prosthetics like a fake arm that Emma could hold and push into Matthews face but I abandoned that. What we ended up doing was quite simple in that we just had her put her arm off to the side, trying not to block something to camera. Id have her put her hand on his hip or on his shoulder, and then we would do clean plates and digitally remove her arm and replace it from the shoulder down. That meant it was a digital arm up through his face.Building Paradox: ILM did the hands through Deadpools face in Cassandras lair. Framestore did the shots through Wolverines forehead and through Paradox. In order to get the effect working well, I think we spent six months on the asset of Paradox. We scanned Matthew at Clear Angle Studios and then Framestore took that and made an incredible asset that matched Matthews principal photography look exactly, and it had to hold up for extreme close-ups.Myself and visual effects supervisor Matt Twyford at Framestore wanted to be able to leverage Matthews original performance. So the double needed to directly split with itselfit needed to be an exact match. Indeed, in post, we used as much of Matthews plate photography as possible. We replaced most of it, but if we kept his hair or one ear, we would so that the match had to be just right.Incorporating reshoots: Interestingly, when we did the test screenings, we found that with the Cassandra character, the audience needed to relate to her more. So we gave her a bunch of additional lines and that became her and Matthews scene. Because our timeframe was tight in post for reshoots, we really wanted to keep the principal photography of Matthew. So we reshot all of Emmas new dialogue with both of them, but we shot it in such a fashion that we could reuse Matthews original plate photography. So, most of that scene is original plate photography of Matthew and new photography of Cassandra. We used poor mans motion control to match each frame, split her out, put her into the original plate photography, and married the two.Proof of concept: We storyboarded the whole thing, then we previsd the whole thing. Previs was a great learning experience. We had to figure out which side she was on him and how she would drag him, and if their hands would be fingers up her fingers down or to the side. We figured out a lot of the mechanics in previs and then we post-visd the whole thing after we shot it. During principal photography, we did gross keyframe animation and it was just gray shaded. We would do a picture and picture of the plate, and then wed do a gray shaded version just showing where her hands were roughly going. I would do notes myself and Shawn would do notes, and we kept honing that in.How the shots were done: The steps towards final started with blocking animation. Then we would do one more pass of more refined animation before final keyframe animation and locking it off. Then wed do a simulation on top of that and that we would get all of the creases and a next level of detail of hand interaction. There was then a creature pass, which was a detailed modeling pass where we get the intersection of her fingers with his skin, and then we did a final pass on skin thickness and intersection.I really wanted to make the skin very thin in order to see the detail of her knuckles under the skin and her cuticles over her nails. We needed to keep her hands below the skin, but make it as thin as possible so we could see the details underneath. Very late in the game, we added in that shot of her hands going under the eyes. Originally the hands went over the eyes and we put them under the eyes to make the eyes bulge out, which I think was a great addition.What we called the effect: We were not super-elegant, we called it hands through face. We did call it Cassandras Magic for a while, but I always found that confusing with her other magic, and there were a bunch of other magic powers that didnt make it in the movie. We were trying to keep her grounded. Along with really trying to creep the audience out, and it was our goal to make the visual effects not take you out of the storytelling. Its my favorite visual effect in the movie, and we put a lot of effort into those assets and to make it really, really, really solid. That other effect: There was also the moment she rips Johnny Storms body skin off. ILM did that shot. For that, we had to do some terrible internet searches that you never actually want to look at. We storyboarded it first, and we used that as a guide, then we searched the internet, and then we really took creative license and dialed the look of the skinless Johnny. We removed his stomach muscles so we could see inside him. We took creative license to get this iconic image that we had in our minds, where we wanted to see his intestines, which you technically wouldnt see if you took the skin off. We also played with different amounts of blood coming off.The eye blinks were in the original storyboards. Originally, it was thought they were too campy, but I kept putting them in and putting them in, and we finally all just laughed our butts off and it stayed in.I think the trickiest part was getting the simulation of the body falling right, not just falling straight on the ground. We did a simulation and then we ended up handcrafting itPut the liver here and then have it tumble over, etc.When we were shooting that, Chris Evans had such a blast. Hes always taken so seriously because hes Captain America, so he loved getting his ass kicked in this one. When Cassandra rips his skin off, he would duck out and run away. And I was standing right here, and Ryan was riffing on the lines, as he always does, and he came up with the, Not-my-favorite Chris. And Chris couldnt contain himself. He just was crying, laughing.The post We called it hands through face appeared first on befores & afters.

Multiple massive wildfires toreacross the Los Angeles areawith devastating force Wednesday, destroying more than 1,000 structures and killing at least two people as desperate residents escaped through flames, ferocious winds and towering clouds of smoke.Three major blazes were burning in the metropolitan area, from the Pacific Coast inland to Pasadena, home of the famed Rose Parade. With thousands of firefighters already attacking the flames, the Los Angeles Fire Department put out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help. The efforts were further hampered by high winds that grounded water-dropping aircraft, but they returned to the skies by midday.In addition to the two deaths, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said many others were hurt in the fires, which threatened at least 28,000 structures.Images of the devastation showed luxurious homes that had collapsed in a whirlwind of flaming embers. The tops of palm trees whipped against a glowing red sky.This morning, we woke up to a dark cloud over all of Los Angeles. But it is darkest for those who are most intimately impacted by these fires. It has been an immensely painful 24 hours, LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said.At least 70,000 people were ordered to evacuate a number that kept changing because evacuation orders were continually being issued, officials said. The flames marched toward highly populated and affluent neighborhoods home to Californias rich and famous.Hollywood stars, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods, were among those forced to flee.The home of Vice President Kamala Harris was included in an evacuation zone, although no one was there, according to a spokesperson.We are prioritizing life over everything else, Sheriff Robert Luna said.Jennie Girardo, a 39-year-old producer and director from Pasadena, said she was alarmed when her neighbor came to check on her.When I opened my door, it smelled like I was living inside of a fireplace, she said. Then I also started to see the ash. And Ive never seen that in my life. Like raining ash.Flames that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the foothills northeast of LAspread so rapidlythat staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. They waited in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and construction vans arrived to take them to safety.Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the citysPacific Palisadesneighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity homes and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit Surfin USA. Inthe race to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.Sheriece Wallace was unaware there was a fire burning around her until her sister called at the moment a helicopter made a water drop over her house.I was like, Its raining, Wallace said. Shes like, No, its not raining. Your neighborhood is on fire. You need to get out.A traffic jam prevented emergency vehicles from getting through, and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path. Video along the Pacific Coast Highway showed widespread destruction of homes and businesses along the famed roadway.Pacific Palisadesresident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was blocked. Ash fell all around while fires burned on both sides of the road.People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, Trainor said. They were crying and screaming.A third wildfire started Tuesday evening and quickly prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community thats the northernmost neighborhood in Los Angeles.Californias wildfire season typically begins in June or July and runs through October, according to theWestern Fire Chiefs Association, but January wildfires are not unprecedented. There was one in 2022 and 10 in 2021, according to CalFire.The season is beginning earlier and ending later due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall tied to climate change, according to recent data. Rains that usually end fire season are often delayed, meaning fires can burn through the winter months, the association said.This will likely be the most destructive windstorm seen (since a) 2011 windstorm that did extensive damage to Pasadena and nearby foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, the weather service said in a red-flag warning issued early Wednesday.Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X that California had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to combat the blazes. He also dispatched National Guard troops to help.Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin said much of the city was under evacuation orders as his department waited for winds to die down so aircraft could start dousing the flames. Fire departments across California sent extra firefighters because crews in the Los Angeles area were stretched to the limit, he told KABC television, the ABC affiliate.The fire burned through Temescal Canyon, a popular hiking area surrounded by dense neighborhoods of multimillion-dollar homes. Flames also jumped famous Sunset Boulevard and burned parts of the Palisades Charter High School, which has been featured in many Hollywood productions, including the 1976 horror movie Carrie, the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday and the TV series Teen Wolf.By early Wednesday, the Eaton Fire, which started the day before, had quickly burned 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometers), according to fire officials. The Hurst Fire jumped to nearly a square mile (2.6 square kilometers), and the Palisades Fire had burned 4.5 square miles (11.6 square kilometers), according to Angeles National Forest. All fires were at 0% containment.More than 100 schools were closed due to fire risk. The flames also cut off power to more than 180,000 people mostly in Los Angeles County, according to the tracking websitePowerOutage.us. Southern California Edison shut off some service because of safety concerns related to high winds and fire risks. More than 500,000 could face shutoffs depending on weather conditions, the utility said.Recent dry winds, includingthe notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where theres been very little rain so far this season. Southern California hasnt seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May.The winds increased to 80 mph (129 kph) by early Wednesday, according to reports received by the National Weather Service. They could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills, including in areas that have not seen substantial rain in months.When he heard fire was nearby, longtime Palisades resident Will Adams immediately went to pick his two kids up from school. Embers flew into his wifes car as she tried to evacuate, he said.She vacated her car and left it running, Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.Adams said he had never witnessed anything like it in the 56 years hes lived there.It is crazy, its everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One homes safe, the other ones up in flames, he said.Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth, Jeff Martin, Janie Har, Hallie Golden, video journalist Eugene Garcia, Ethan Swope, Brian Melley, Kathy McCormack, Sarah Brumfield, and Tammy Webber contributed to this report.Jaimie Ding, Christopher Weber and Julie Watson, Associated Press