Since its debut in 2017, the Welles Chandelier by contemporary furniture and lighting brand Gabriel Scott has become a symbol of luxury and elegant design. The innovative chandelier came from a need to create a modular lighting system that could be expanded without visible rods. Seven years later, Gabriel Scott introduces a fresh evolution of the chandelier: the Welles Reimagined series. Designed in collaboration with renowned American architect David Rockwell, this new collection retains the geometric essence of the original while offering a contemporary twist inspired by natural clusters in crystals, clouds, and chemical compounds.Welles Central Chandelier by David Rockwell, Smoked Bronze GlassWelles Pendant by David Rockwell, Smoked Bronze & Clear GlassWhere the Welles Chandelier featured steel elements to encase the bulbs, the Welles Reimagined collection embraces a jewelry-like brilliance with hollowed glass polygons. These luminous shapes, assembled at varying heights and in diverse dimensions, are available in five stunning finishes: Smoked, Purple, Alabaster White, Bronze, and Clear. This transformation represents a beautiful progression of the Welles design, emphasizing customization and adaptability. Inspired by the elegance of jewelry, the Welles Chandelier epitomizes our design philosophy to create modular products customizable to exact specifications, says Scott Richler, Founder and CEO of Gabriel Scott. The Welles Reimagined by David Rockwell capsule collection stands as a sculptural masterpiece, and we are thrilled to augment its allure with additional glass finish options in our standard series. Our clients value choice and personalization, and this expansion epitomizes our commitment to meeting their diverse needs.Welles Triple Sconce by David Rockwell, Smokey Grey GlassWelles Pendant by David Rockwell, Smoked Gray & Clear GlassThe expanded collection includes chandeliers, pendants, and sconces, offering endless possibilities for mixing and matching finishes to suit individual styles. These customizable options allow the Welles Reimagined series to effortlessly elevate spaces, whether illuminated or not. Our partnership enabled the creation of something truly exceptional, blending Gabriel Scotts modular lighting approach and impeccable craftsmanship with our emphasis on narrative and materiality, adds Rockwell. Through experimentation with volume, color, texture, and scale, we crafted organic compositions of light that profoundly influence ambiance and spatial perception.Welles Triple Sconce by David Rockwell, Alabaster White GlassWelles Triple Sconce by David Rockwell, Clear GlassWelles Pendant by David Rockwell, Alabaster White GlassWelles Pendant by David Rockwell, Clear GlassWelles Pendant by David Rockwell, Smoked Bronze GlassWelles Long Chandelier 17, Clear, Smoke Grey & Bronze GlassWelles Long Chandelier 17, Smoked Grey & Clear GlassWelles Long Chandelier 17, Smoked Bronze & Clear GlassWelles Long Chandelier 17, Clear GlassWelles Long Chandelier 17, Alabaster White GlassWelles Central Chandelier by David Rockwell, Alabaster White GlassWelles Central Chandelier by David Rockwell, Smoked Grey & Clear GlassWelles Central Chandelier by David Rockwell, Clear GlassWelles Central Chandelier by David Rockwell, Smoked Bronze & Clear GlassTo learn more about the Welles Reimagined series by David Rockwell for Gabriel Scott, visit gabriel-scott.com.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.If youre after wireless earbuds with strong features but dont want to spend top dollar, the Google Pixel Buds Pro are currently $109.99 on Woot. Thats almost half off of their usual $199 price tag (for the next 10 days or until it sells out), and the deal includes a 90-day Woot Limited Warranty. Additionally, Prime members get free standard shipping (non-Prime users will need to shell out an extra $6). That said, shipping isnt available to Alaska, Hawaii, or PO boxes. Google Pixel Buds Pro Get Deal Get Deal The Pixel Buds Pro are a little on the bulkier side, but that bulk actually works to their advantagestaying snug without requiring extra clips or wings. Plus, they come with three sizes of gel eartips (S, M, L) to help you find a comfortable fit. They support Bluetooth 5.0 and are compatible with AAC and SBC codecs, with an 11mm dynamic driver delivering the audio (and while you wont get audiophile-level sound, the experience is solid for the price). They do a stellar job at cutting out low-frequency noise like airplane rumbles, holding their own against pricier models like Sonys WF-1000XM4 ($278). However, higher frequencies, like ambient chatter, are less effectively muted, and a faint high-frequency hiss is present during ANC, according to this PCMag review. If youre looking for complete isolation, these may not fully deliver. Transparency mode, on the other hand, reportedly works beautifully, letting you chat or hear your surroundings naturally.The capacitive touch controls on each earpiece are intuitive, allowing you to manage playback and calls with ease. However, customization options (via the app) are limited; you can adjust only the tap-and-hold gesture. The app also offers features like Google Assistant integration, Find Device, and toggling between Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) modes. The earbuds have an IPX4 water-resistance rating, meaning light splashes and sweat are fine, but dont test these under running water. Battery life is solid, offering approximately seven hours with ANC on and up to 11 hours with it off, plus additional charges from the case (according to the manufacturer). Your mileage may vary. Charging is convenient with a USB-C port (though no cable is included) and support for Qi wireless charging.

I dont want to hate on green salads, but for me, they're a tough sell. Its not the vegetable aspect thats unattractive to me, but just how unsatisfying a dish of 90% loose leaves can be. If Im going to make a salad at all, it must be full of chunky and interesting components where leaves serve as the hype man. I usually make one of two types of saladshearty grain salads (like this warm rice salad that I love), or what I call a "sandwich salad."The inspiration came from an Italian sandwich I was fantasizing about when I was running errands. Its from a shop in the financial district called Pisillo Italian Paninia chicken sandwich with roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, arugula, and provolone on a thick, chewy roll. And I deserved to have it. However, I was nowhere near the deli.I settled on buying the ingredients so I could make it at home. Its never quite the same as having somebody else make you a sandwich, but needs must. Knowing I had some good bread and chicken waiting for me, all I needed were some jarred artichokes and a pepper I could quickly air fry at home.I don't know if everyone experiences this, but whenever I know I have something at home and I'm looking forward to eating it, inevitably someone has already done so. My chewy sandwich rolls were gone. Without bread, and stubbornly refusing to backtrack when I had just returned from running errandsbecause absolutely not!I threw the sandwich parts into a bowl instead. That salad completely scratched the itch of my missing sandwich. It had all of the major players anyway, and by the time I put down my fork I was completely stuffed. My first sandwich salad was born; the trailblazer for all of my future sandwich salads.How to make a sandwich saladA sandwich salad is any three to eight(ish) ingredients youd normally fill a roll with, tossed in a bowl with anything youd dress that sandwich with. They're filling, supremely flavorful (there's no bread diluting the ingredients), and they never get boring. Just like most sandwiches can taste great if you swap out the protein (chicken for turkey, prosciutto for salami), you can do the same with the salad. The only slight modification I recommend is if the sandwich naturally doesnt include lettucelike a bacon, egg, and cheese, for examplethen Ill usually drop in a handful of something leafy just to break it up and add some texture.Not too much, just enough to complement the rest of the bowl.Some other sandwich salads I enjoy are:Pan bagnat salad. Toss a can of tuna in oil in a bowl with chopped black olives, chopped green beans, sliced red bell pepper, chopped anchovies, chopped hard boiled eggs, and drizzle it all with a mustard and oil dressing. Optional: add a handful of arugula and a flurry of lemon zest.Cubano salad. Combine torn roast pork, chopped ham, cubed swiss, and oblique cut dill pickle in a bowl. Dress with mustard thats been thinned out with a splash of vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil. Optional twist: add some spritzy kimchi instead of the mustard dressing.Muffuletta salad. It practically makes itself. Chop assorted Italian meats, like salami, capicola, and mortadella, and toss them together thoroughly in a bowl. Add a heap of jarred olive salad (along with the oil its packed in) and cubed provolone cheese. Heres my recipe for the sandwich if you ever miss the bread. Optional: add hot banana peppers, pepperoncini, or a handful of salted pistachios.If your dressing is normally mayo on a particular sandwich, thin it for a less gloppy consistency before adding it to your salad components. I recommend using components that already exist in the dressing, so for mayonnaise that would be a good squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil. If youd normally use mustard, then a spoonful of oil and vinegar will do the trick.If I'm using a marinated or jarred ingredient, like artichoke hearts or olives, I'll let some of the liquid splash it as a flavorsome helper to any other dressing components. Chicken Sandwich Salad RecipeIngredients:1 chicken breast, sliced thinly (or replace with any lunch meat)1 to 2 ounces chopped provolone cheese3 to 5 jarred roasted red pepper strips4 to 8 marinated quartered artichoke hearts1 handful of baby arugulaA squeeze of fresh lemon juiceOlive oil for drizzlingSalt and pepper1. Add all of the ingredients to a bowl and toss. For extra dressing, add a splash of the marinade from the artichoke jar.

Imagine: A switch is flicked and, in a heartbeat, every process spewing deadly pollution into the heavens is replaced with something clean and sustainable. Sadly, even then, the Earth would still tip towards being uninhabitable thanks to all of the carbon weve already dumped up there. If we as a species are to survive then all of that junk needs to be pulled back to Earth, and fast. Proponents of Direct Air Capture believe its a vital weapon to accomplish that task; its critics say its so inefficient that wed be better off trying anything else first.Direct Air CaptureMission ZeroPut simply, Direct Air Capture (DAC) is the practice of removing CO2 from the atmosphere by pulling air through a mechanical or chemical filter. Air is typically drawn through a DAC system via one or more fans, while filtering is done with a solid (known as a sorbent) or with a liquid (known as a solvent). Once captured, heat or electricity is applied to the filter material to remove the CO2, both to re-use the filter and get the CO2 ready to move on. Its this last stage thats often the most energy-intensive, and therefore costly, part of the process. Given the amount of air that will need to be cleaned (all of it) for this to work, DAC needs to be as energy efficient as possible.The most cost-effective way to do this is by capping the smokestacks of a carbon-intensive process, like a factory or fossil fuel power plant to prevent more CO2 release. But that does nothing to reduce the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. Thats why some scientists and entrepreneurs are inclined to gamble on DAC plants in free air to scrub the heavens clean.The NOAA explains that in 1960, humanity was pumping out 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. Half a century later, and that figure now stands closer to 40 billion, which is why emissions-reduction work is so vital. But even if we did manage to reduce all of our new emissions to zero, wed still have to address the 950 gigatons or so of CO2 lurking in the atmosphere already. At the time of writing, the CO2 in the atmosphere as recorded by the NOAAs Global Monitoring Lab at Mauna Loa is 422.38ppm. The scientific consensus is any figure over 350ppm will spell catastrophic doom for humanity and the state of the planet more generally.This June, the University of Oxford published research saying that if we want to limit warming to just 1.5 degrees (which would be catastrophic), humanity will need to extract between seven and nine billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the air each year by 2050. The COP28 declaration supports signatory nations throwing their weight behind carbon capture technologies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says there is no viable pathway to averting climate change unless large volumes of CO2 are pulled from the air. This has been the status quo for a while: In 2017, a coalition of prominent scientists led by Professor Jim Hansen said it was imperative that humanity began mass-removing atmospheric CO2.What to do with all the CO2Once DAC has sucked the unwanted carbon out of the air, it needs to be put somewhere. One option, The British Geological Survey explains, is to easily and affordably convert CO2 to its supercritical form, which behaves like a runny liquid. This liquid can then be stored underground after being injected into porous rocks, with old oil fields and coal seams appearing to be ideal places. The oil and gas industry actually uses this approach to boost production in existing fields, as the liquid CO2 fills up the space, pushing more oil toward the extraction site. But the International Energy Agencys (IEA) briefing paper on Direct Air Capture suggests more than half of all atmospheric CO2 emissions recovered will need to be sequestered.Obviously, getting more fossil fuels out of the ground to burn does not do very much for the climate, and ideally the governments of the world would just invest in effective carbon capture to prevent us from boiling to death. Fortunately for humanitys fixation on market solutions, recycling some of the non-sequestered CO2 could become an industry unto itself.CO2 can also be turned into synthetic fuels in traditional combustion engines. Air travel is the most obvious example, especially given that the size and weight of batteries make it nearly impossible to build an electric jumbo jet. Recovered CO2 can also be used as the base for common non-fuel products including construction materials, in chemical and agricultural products, not to mention putting the fizz in our drinks.Holocene is one of many companies looking to turn CO2 extraction into a viable, long term business by selling carbon removal credits to big businesses. Its approach is to pull air through water which has been embedded with an amnio acid that binds to CO2. The water and CO2 mix is then combined with guanidine, which turns the CO2 into a solid that can be easily filtered out, allowing the amino acid water to be reused. The solid CO2 is then heated to a low temperature, which separates the guanidine from gaseous CO2, ready for use or sequestration. Holocene believes a reusable solvent (and reusable chemical treatment) combined with the low-temperature heat makes its approach far more cost-effective than that of its rivals.Mission Zero is also looking to develop a low-cost way of procuring large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. It draws air into its hardware and then applies a water-based solvent. But rather than treating this mix chemically, it uses electrodialysis and an ion exchange process to purify the liquid and extract the CO2. From there, the liquid can be reused and the CO2, again, can either be buried underground or, turned into viable products. The company says that its electro-chemical process is similarly far more cost and energy-efficient than many of the other companies operating in this space.Given the commercial sensitivities involved, its not easy to get a real handle on how much it costs to extract CO2 from the atmosphere using DAC in open air. Depending on where you look, the figure can be as much as $600 per ton, but a more common figure is between the $300 and $400 mark. For years, the received wisdom has been that DAC needs to reach a cost of $100 per ton in order to become economically viable.Earlier this year, a German climate-focused VC firm, Extantia Capital went digging into the source of that $100 shibboleth and traced it back to a paper from early DAC firm Carbon Engineering in 2018 when it published a paper projecting its long-term cost would fall to as little as $94 per ton. Suddenly, the phrase less than $100 per ton became the benchmark to which all other DAC companies were held. But, as Extantias Torben Schreiter wrote, that figure was also pegged to 2016 dollar prices, so it hasnt grown with inflation. In 2023, the World Economic Forum said the cost of Direct Air Capture had to fall below $200 per ton before it would be widely adopted.It doesnt matter if your aims are environmental or industrial, we know the volume of CO2 that needs to be extracted from the atmosphere is significant. For that to be viable, the cost of extraction needs to fall by a significant degree. A more mature metric would be that pricing falls in line with, or below, the perpetually in-flux cost of carbon dioxide as a commodity.HoloceneAll these DAC approaches use a bunch of energy, said Holocenes CEO Keeton Ross. Ross says its the cost of this energy that is keeping the price of Direct Air Capture higher than it needs to be. He believes heat-based systems (like Holocene's) will likely win out in the end because heat can come from any number of affordable sources. These claims of being able to cut the costs of DAC were compelling enough that in September Google invested in Holocene and pledged to buy carbon credits from it in future.Dr. Nicholas Chadwick, CEO of Mission Zero, told Engadget his company is targeting around $350 per ton by 2026, but that figure is dependent on a specific price of electricity. That price, he believes, is "substantially better than whats available in the commodity market, making it a no-brainer for industries that are reliant on CO2 to start buying from Mission Zero.RoadblocksThe obvious objection to Direct Air Capture is that while theres a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, its still a relatively small proportion of the whole. Ive heard the process described as panning for gold in the ocean, and the energy costs alone will make it unfeasible on the scale necessary. In 2022, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis bluntly claimed the process simply wont work. Part of the objection was that it can be (and is) used for enhanced oil recovery, but also that when DAC facilities are up and running, theyre often far less effective at capturing CO2 than initially promised.In 2023, a piece published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists expressed outrage that the US Department of Energy invested $600 million in one such project. Its authors said the energy costs required to filter that much air to extract just 0.04 percent of its total are far in excess of other, already less expensive ways to reduce emissions, and that there won't be any dramatic improvement in the physics and chemistry that will make Direct Air Capture dramatically more efficient. They said, bluntly, "Its just dumb to build today something that we wont need for 50 years, if ever."Chadwick said a lot of the criticisms around DAC center on its technical feasibility, which he says is the wrong point. There are tons of industrial processes where the thermodynamics are terrible, look at ammonia, he said, it took years and years to get the yields to where they are right now. What drove those otherwise inefficient processes was the economic imperative for it in the marketplace, he said. When someone proves they can do [Direct Air Capture] for $200 a ton, all of these arguments go away.Both Chadwick and Ross spoke about the importance of scale to help accelerate the still quite nascent industry. In 2023, Carbon Engineering, 1PointFive and Occidental broke ground on the Stratos plant in Texas that, when completed, is expected to suck 500,000 tons of CO2 out of the air per year. Both are optimistic, however, that the projects that are currency under construction will help engineers solve those questions. Its a long, long way to go before we get to the billions of tons experts believe well need to be extracting to have a hope of survival.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/can-our-climate-be-saved-by-vacuuming-carbon-out-of-the-skies-145944818.html?src=rss

Google has decided to invest another billion into Anthropic, four sources told the Financial Times, bringing its total sunk cost to more than three billion dollars. Both companies have declined to comment. Google uses Anthropics Claude AI models on Vertex AI, an AI-powered development platform.Amazon has also invested four billion into Anthropic to integrate its Claude AI models into the next generation of Alexa speakers. Other sources say Anthropic is also in talks with Lightspeed Venture Partners to raise another two billion. This investment would make Anthropic worth 60 billion. Even so, investors dont believe that Anthropic or its rivals will be profitable soon due to the extreme costs of developing AI models.Google invented transformers, a type of neural network that became a backbone technology for AI models, back in 2017. Despite some success with models like Gemini, Imagen, Chirp, Veo and more, Google doesnt have as significant a foothold in the generative AI market.Having so many big tech companies backing AI start-ups alarmed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which investigated Google parent Alphabets first $2.3 billion investment in Anthropic. However, as the Financial Times notes, FTC commissioner Lina Khan, who had a reputation as an aggressive antitrust enforcer, has since stepped down from her post at the head of the agency as the Trump regime took power, which could mean similar deals might not receive the same scrutiny in the future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-investing-another-billion-dollars-in-anthropic-145548826.html?src=rss

At an exclusive VP roundtable during CES, I learned more about Samsungs plans SmartThings - including how devices like the Samsung Galaxy Ring might fit in

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Featuring work by Rodeo FX, Image Engine, ILP and more.The post All the Dune: Prophecy VFX breakdowns in one place appeared first on befores & afters.