Painters Regret is one of the first treasure maps you can get in the Emerald Stair region of Avowed and potentially one of the more dangerous quests there as well.The map itself is in a safe area, but the treasure location is surrounded by a group high-level enemies. Your reward is a trinket that, despite its humble appearance, has high potential for increasing your damage output when paired with the right skills and other pieces of equipment.This Avowed guide shows where to find the Painters Regret treasure map, where the treasure map is telling you to go, and what reward is waiting for you at the end.Where to find Painters Regret treasure mapThe Painters Regret map is on an easel in a large farmhouse north of Elias Revenant Farm, the region you first travel through when you enter Emerald Stair.The farmhouses front door is barred, but if you follow the porch to your right, youll find an unlocked side door. Enter the house, and grab the shining map from the easel in the middle of the room. Theres also a collectible journal entry about the painter who left the treasure in a book next to the easel, if youre keen on grabbing it.Painters Regret location solutionThis map takes you to the edge of the Wildwoods, a dangerous location with Exceptional-quality enemies and not a place where you want to linger. Theres a path up the hill next to the Rootbound Ruins, but this one takes you through a mob of foes. Instead, from the pier near the River Fork beacon, turn right and enter the river. Look for this spot.Youre far enough away from the xaurips on the north bank and mushrooms on the south bank to avoid getting caught in battle. Climb up the ledges next to the tent, and youll see another easel and a glowing treasure chest near it. Inside is the Painters Brush trinket.Painters Regret rewardThe Painters Brush is an earring item, which means it has no stat boosts or item bonuses. Instead, it comes with a single enchantment.Painters Brush enchantmentA Critical Eye: +5% critical hit rateIts a nice fit with the Gloves of the Strangler and stealthy ranger playstyles, though it works effectively with any build where you just want to increase your chances of dealing extra damage.For more treasure maps in the Emerald Stair region, see our solutions to the Practical Pockets and Earthly Aegis treasure maps. And dont miss our full Avowed walkthrough.

There are many easy ways to launch apps on your Mac. You can click an icon in the Dock, use Spotlight Search (or better alternatives), or visit the Applications folder and fire up your favorite apps. None of these methods are as fast and as fun as launching apps with Pieoneer, a launcher that lets you add your favorite apps to a radial menu. It also has two other useful featuresa built-in app switcher and an easy way to surface hidden features of your favorite apps.Using Pieoneer as an app launcher Credit: Pranay Parab This is the simplest part of using Pieoneer. Once you've installed the app, you can click its menu bar icon and go to Settings > Launcher. Here, you can record a keyboard shortcut to activate the Pieoneer, and you can add, reorder, and remove apps from the launcher. Pieoneer doesn't appear to limit how many apps you can add to the radial launcher, but maybe it should. It looks great for up to 10 apps, but starts to look cramped after that. As an experiment, I added every app that I launch regularly. With 21 apps in the launcher, Pieoneer started to look like a pizza with way too many toppings.Thankfully, sanity prevailed, and I removed apps that I don't need to launch all the time. Once setup is complete, Pieoneer will do its job quickly and reliably. Press the keyboard shortcut to see the radial menu and use your mouse cursor to click the app you want to launch. I found myself wishing for a way to use Pieoneer without the mouse, but at the moment that isn't possible. It'd be quite janky to try to use arrow keys to navigate the radial menu anyway, so I agree with the developer's design decision here.Setting up the app switcher Credit: Pranay Parab You can also use Pieoneer as a faster way to switch between running apps. To try it, find the Switcher tab in the settings menu, then set a keyboard shortcut for this action. Once you do that, you can fire it up to see all your open apps in the same radial menu. Use the mouse cursor to quickly select an app and it'll immediately come to the foreground. I find this faster than using Command-Tab to switch between running apps on my MacBook.The hidden gem: ControllerI think the best feature in Pieoneer is Controller, which makes it easier to access features buried under layers of menus in various apps. To use this, you'll have to give this app Accessibility permissions on your Mac. Pieoneer is on the Mac App Store, which means it's under additional scrutiny from Apple, so you shouldn't worry about granting these permissions. Go to the app's settings, select the Controller tab, and click the button to grant Accessibility permissions, which will open System Settings. Once you've approved the app there, restart Pieoneer to use this feature. Credit: Pranay Parab You should set up a keyboard shortcut for the Controller first, then start adding apps that you want to use it with. Once you've added some apps, you need to manually add shortcuts to each app. I used the opportunity to add my favorite shortcuts in Ulysses, my default writing app. From that moment, I've been using the Controller to quickly run these shortcuts to view the word count, export text, check the outline, etc. It's a bit tedious to manually set this up for each app, but it's a one-time hassle, after which Pieoneer makes things a lot easier.A better overall experiencePieoneer has improved my experience of launching and switching between apps, and its Controller feature is the icing on the cake. The best part is the app's UI. I love the attention to detail, too. Each animation looks fluid, the switches in settings can be clicked or dragged, and the app lets you enable sounds too. When you scroll through the radial menu, each item selection plays a nice sound and you can switch it to a more playful variation that sounds like do-re-mi-fa-so.My only complaint with this app is that it sometimes automatically opened the settings window on my Mac. Other than this minor bug, Pieoneer has done everything it promised, and done it quite well. While I was able to buy the app for $5, the price seems to have jumped to $10 since I started using it. However, the app is still a good value if you like the idea of using radial menus for launching or switching between apps.

After being rumored to be in the early stages of the project last year, Meta confirmed today that it's building "Project Waterworth," an over 50,000 km subsea cable that will connect five continents. The company has partnered on other cable projects previously, but this would be the first piece of subsea infrastructure it owns outright.The project touches land in the US, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and is apparently breaking new ground technically, too. Meta claims Waterworth is the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world, and the company is using "first-of-its-kind routing" to place the cables as deep as possible, "at depths of up to 7,000 meters." If cables aren't deep enough, undersea hazards, like boats dropping and dragging their anchors, can cause permanent damage, disrupting service.MetaMeta's announcement doesn't go into detail about how the cable will be used, beyond noting that subsea cables enable "digital communication, video experiences, online transactions and more," and that high-speed connectivity is a necessity for "AI innovation." On their own, Meta services and platforms are said to account for about 10 percent of global fixed internet usage and 22 percent of mobile traffic, so at the very least the company's existing businesses stand to benefit from a stable connection.A United States-India joint statement released after Prime Minister Modi visited the US "welcomed" the announcement. It also notes that India itends to help to finance, maintain and repair undersea cables in the Indian Ocean. A Meta spokesperson clarified that India is not involved in the financing of Project Waterworth.Update, February 14, 5:30PM ET: This article was modified after publish to clarify that India is not involved financially with Project Waterworth. We regret the error.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-confirms-its-building-its-own-subsea-cable-190153227.html?src=rss

If you're on the market for a new pair of wireless earbuds, the latest sale on the AirPods Pro 2 is a good one to consider. As part of Apple Presidents' Day deals, they're down to $169 at the moment, which is 32 percent off their regular price. While not quite as low as we saw them during the holiday shopping season last year ($154), this is the best price they've been in 2025 so far. Apple's AirPods Pro 2 came out in 2022 and yet we still rate them the best wireless earbuds for iPhone. At the time, we gave them a score of 88 thanks to big improvements from their predecessor, including fantastic sound and an amazing transparency mode. They'll last you six hours at a time with ANC on or seven hours without it. Notably, Apple's newest generation of earbuds are also on sale. The AirPods 4 are down to a new all-time low price of $100, from $129, thanks to a 22 percent discount. We also gave the AirPods 4 an 88 in our review, noting their improved fit, comfort and sound quality. Their biggest drawback is the lack of ANC but, if you don't need that, then this is a great deal. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apple-presidents-day-sales-include-the-airpods-pro-2-for-32-percent-off-140656141.html?src=rss

The typical debloating tool can be complex or even arcane to understand and configure, but Talon takes a very different approach.

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Trump Media & Technology Group is worth almost $7 billion, but the company generated less than $4 million in revenue in 2024, according to a new filing.

A young DARPA-backed startup with a fresh spin on a low-power computer chip has raised over $100 million in a Series B funding round, a sign of the wild appetite for more energy-efficient ways to build bigger and better AI.The company, EnCharge AI, aims to move AIs heaviest workloads from big, power-hungry data centers to devices at the edge, including laptops and mobile devices, where energy, size, and cost constraints are tighter. Its approach, known as analog in-memory computing, comes from research that CEO Naveen Verma spun out of his lab at Princeton University, where hes still a professor of electrical and computer engineering.Verma wouldnt say who its customers are. But in addition to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which gave it $18.6 million last year, a whos who of industrial, electronics, and defense players are interested in EnCharges chips. The oversubscribed funding round, led by Tiger Global, includes the intelligence communitys investment unit In-Q-Tel, alongside the venture arms of defense giant RTX, power producer Constellation Energy, South Koreas Samsung, and Taiwans Hon Hai (Foxconn). The Santa Clara, California-based startup is also working with semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) to produce its first-generation chips.The new investment brings EnCharges total funding to more than $144 million, and will help the 60-person company commercialize its technology, which isnt cheap in the world of semiconductors.Given the capital intensity of the semiconductor industry, the Series B is an important step for advancing commercialization of its first chips, Verma tells Fast Company. He declined to disclose the companys new valuation.EnCharges push comes at a pivotal moment for the AI industry, which is grappling with the fast-growing energy and compute demands driven by a storm of generative AI. The advent of DeepSeek last month has brought new efficiencies and lower costs to AI model training and inference. (Its unclear if more widespread use of DeepSeek-like models will cancel out those efficiency gains.) But DeepSeek is unlikely to stem the industrys demand for more compute, more memory, and more energy. EnCharge says that, for a wide range of AI use cases, its specialized chips, or accelerators, require up to 20 times less energy compared to todays leading AI chips.To make it work, the company relies on a high-wire technique. Rather than using only digital transistors to perform some of the multiplication operations at the heart of AI inferencethe continuous computations that produce chatbot outputsEnCharges chips exploit the non-binary wonders of the analog world.Analog computing isnt new, says Verma, but EnCharges specific implementation and system-level approach address many of the fundamental issues that caused previous analog computing approaches to fail.Finding efficiencies in analog amid the noiseMemory access is computings biggest energy hog, and in AI, inference, rather than training, makes up the bulk of most models computations. Type a prompt and press enter, and the process of inference begins somewhere in the cloudwhich is to say in hulking data centers where giant clusters of hot, energy-intensive GPUs and CPUs demand massive amounts of electricity and water.Along with the existing environmental costs, the energy required to train and run generative models on these chips is spiking demand on a stretched-thin energy grid. According to the International Energy Agency, a typical request to ChatGPT consumes 10 kilojoules, roughly ten times more than a typical Google search.Memorys energy demands also mean limits that could slow machine learning progress. Those include the way that, on a chip, the speed of computation is outpacing the bandwidth of memory and communication. Researchers call this problem the von Neumann bottleneck, or the memory wall.EnCharges approach to the challenge is part of a decades-long quest to find efficiencies by placing memory circuits not next to, but inside a computing core, a technique called in-memory compute (IMC). Though it can be tricky to pull off, IMC promises speed-ups by bringing memory and logic closer together and making it far less computationally costly to access memory.This is where the analog computing comes in. Whereas digital devices since the mid-twentieth century operate in a world of on or off, discrete 1s and 0s, analog devices exploit the in-between information of physical phenomenasuch as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantitieswhich allows them to store more data and operate at far lower energy than digital processors. (Quantum computers take the idea to another level, by exploiting the behavior of very, very tiny things.) Because the states in analog devices may be, in the case of EnCharges chip, a continuum of charge levels in a tiny resistive wire, the difference between analog states can be smaller than those between 1 and 0. That requires less energy to switch between values. And that reduces the data movement costs between a chips memory and compute, says Verma.But, like quantum, analog computing is notoriously noisy and difficult to scale. Verma says EnCharge addresses the accuracy and scalability problems using precise geometry control of its metal wire capacitors, static random-access memory (SRAM) to store the model weights, and a digital architecture that includes a software stack and a compiler to map applications to the chip.The result is a full-stack architecture that is orders-of-magnitude more energy efficient than currently available or soon-to-be-available leading digital AI chip solutions, Verma says. This includes all the digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion overheads, which need to be designed in specialized and integrated ways with the in-memory-computing architecture.To reduce the costs involved in converting from digital to analog and back, the chip relies on a technique Verma calls virtualized IMC. This involves performing computations directly within a first level of memory, but also by using a memory-system hierarchy, in an analogous way to virtualized memory systems, to enable the computations to efficiently scale to very large AI workloads and models. While traditional architectures face decreasing bandwidth and increasing latency as data size grows, he wrote, EnCharges virtualized IMC enhances latency and efficiency when accessing and computing on larger amounts of data, making it efficient for both small and large language models.Since Verma spun out the research in 2022, the company has been working with customers to refine and derisk its hardware and software designs. The current chipsdiscrete boards on PCIe cardscan run machine-learning algorithms at over 150 tera operations per second (TOPS) per watt, versus 24 TOPS per watt by an equivalent Nvidia chip performing an equivalent task. A newer process to trace finer chip features has allowed the company to triple its energy efficiency metric, to about 650 TOPS per watt.The efficiency breakthrough of EnCharge AIs analog in-memory architecture can be transformative for defense and aerospace use cases where size, weight, and power constraints limit how AI is deployed today, said Dan Ateya, president and managing director of RTX Ventures. Continuing our collaboration with EnCharge AI will help enable AI advancements in environments that were previously inaccessible given the limitations of current processor technology.Dozens of companies are developing new kinds of chips and other architecture to grapple with the energy and computing challenges of AI training and inference. Startups like Cerebras Systems, Samba Nova Systems, and Graphcore, acquired last year by Japans SoftBank, have sought to compete with Nvidia in the AI training market.Cerebras, which sells its giant AI chips and offers services to customers through the cloud, filed paperwork in September to list its shares on the Nasdaq in an initial public offering. In its IPO prospectus, the company said it expects the AI computing market to grow from $131 billion in 2024 to $453 billion in 2027.Other companies are also exploring in-memory analog computing, including startups Mythic, Neo Semiconductor, and Sagence. In a set of new papers, IBM Research scientists also demonstrated advances on analog in-memory computing, including research on a brain-inspired chip architecture for large models, as well as phase-change memory for smaller edge-sized models, and algorithm advances. Analog in-memory computing could substantially improve the energy efficiency of LLMs by leveraging mixture of experts (MoEs) models, according to one of the studies, which is featured on the January cover of the journal Nature Computational Science.The Defense Department also continues to pursue analog computing. The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on Monday released a solicitation for a digital engineering platform to accelerate the design and validation of analog chips, as well as mixed-signal, photonic, and hybrid varieties.[T]he design of these chips is often a bottleneck, with prolonged design cycles and high redesign rates, said the solicitation. Current manual design processes are time-consuming, iterative, and error-prone. Furthermore, the rising costs of prototyping and the shortage of skilled analog designers have created bottlenecks in the development pipeline. The DoD needs a way to accelerate the design process and reduce errors.Russ Klein, the program director of Siemens EDAs high-level synthesis division, told Semiconductor Engineering in December that if an analog IMC system like EnCharges can effectively scale, it could establish a new energy standard for inference and other high performance computing.The energy savings of not having to move all that data and the parallelism that IMC promises will massively impact not just AI, but any computation that takes place on large arrays of data, he said.

ByteDances TikTok and CapCut apps are back in the Apple and Google app stores after having been absent from both for nearly a month. And in a sign of just how popular both apps are, both apps have rocketed up the App Store charts. Heres what you need to know about their returnand why you might want to download them again while you can.TikTok quickly becomes most downloaded appYesterday evening, numerous ByteDance-owned apps unexpectedly returned to the Apple and Google app stores after being absent for nearly a month. This includes TikTok and the video editing app CapCut. Both were removed from Apples and Googles app stores on January 18, just hours before a U.S. ban on the distribution of ByteDances apps came into force on January 19.Within hours of the apps return, they quickly shot to the top of Apples App Store charts. As of the time of this writing, TikTok is the No. 1 most downloaded app on the App Store, while ByteDances popular video editor, CapCut, which many TikTok creators rely on to edit their videos, is currently the fourth most downloaded app on the Apple App Store.While both apps are also back on the Google Play store, neither are yet in the top 25 most downloaded free apps chart, according to data from SensorTower. A possible reason for TikToks absence from the Google Play chartsdespite its No. 1 position on Apples chartsmay be because Android users have been able to sideload the app on Android phones since last week.Regardless, both TikToks and CapCuts positions on Apples App Store charts exemplify just how popular the apps are with the general public despite the national security concerns the U.S. government harbors about them and parent company ByteDance.Why are TikTok and CapCut back in the app stores?When President Donald Trump returned to office, one of the first executive orders he signed was an order pausing the TikTok ban. Trump halted the banwhich came into effect the day before he took officeby 75 days in order to give his administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.But while Trump paused the ban, ByteDances apps did not return to the Apple and Google app stores. One of the main reasons for this is that some legal experts were uncertain about whether or not Trumps administration actually had the power to pause the ban. If it was found the administration did not, and Apple and Google had returned to hosting ByteDances apps on the platforms, both tech companies could have been liable for billions of dollars in fines under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the bill passed in April 2024 that authorized the ban.So, whats changed? Apple and Google received a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that assured the companies that the ban wouldnt be enforced immediately, according to a report from Bloomberg.This letter was apparently enough for both tech companies to feel that they are no longer at risk of finesfor the time beingif they once again host the apps on their app stores.You might want to download TikTok and CapCut soonIts important to note that despite the assurances Apple and Google received, and despite TikTok and CapCut being once again available on the app stores, the TikTok ban has not gone away. Right now, its just paused.That pause lasts until the first week in April. If a new deal acceptable to lawmakers and ByteDance is not reached by then, then the TikTok ban will go back into effect unless Congress repeals or alters the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.What this means is that, come early April, you may once again no longer be able to download TikTok, CapCut, and other ByteDance apps. So you might want to do it now while you still have the chanceunless, that is, youre fine with dropping thousands of dollars on an eBayed smartphone.

Renowned for its forward-thinking designs, Italian brand Paola Lenti has redefined outdoor furniture through the innovative use of 100% polypropylene mesh fabric. With approximately 180 vibrant color variations, this recyclable mono-material is celebrated for its durability and water resistance. But what happens to the fabric remnants left behind in the manufacturing process? In an inspired act of sustainability, a new furniture collection, Hana-Arashi (Flower Storm), emerges giving discarded materials an artistic second life.Designer:nendoAt the heart of Hana-Arashi is a pioneering technique that capitalizes on polypropylenes low melting point. Instead of relying on traditional secondary materials like sewing threads or adhesives, the fabric offcuts are layered and bonded using a high-frequency thermocompression method. By carefully adjusting temperature and heating time, designers can selectively harden sections of the mesh, strengthening specific areas while allowing light to filter through others. This process not only reinforces the structure but also introduces a delicate interplay of translucency, transforming functional furniture into sculptural, luminous objects.The production process begins with assembling large offcuts into a base layer. Smaller fabric remnants, uniformly cut into specific shapes, are then welded onto the base to enhance surface strength. This method of blind stamping adds depth and texture while also enabling the creation of lighting elements. The final transformation takes place as the base fabric is gently rolled and its edges fused, resulting in a three-dimensional form that appears as if it were effortlessly wrapped around an invisible core.The beauty of Hana-Arashi lies in its organic unpredictability. As different-colored remnants merge, they create dynamic, unrepeatable compositions reminiscent of petals swirling in the wind, a poetic nod to the Japanese concept of transient beauty. The collections unusual forms, almost resembling a loosely wrapped carpet, feel both sculptural and ethereal, sparking curiosity and conversation. Their hollow yet voluminous appearance plays with perception, making each piece feel weightless yet structurally sound.Beyond its visual appeal and sustainable approach, Hana-Arashi is a perfect fit for community-building spaces, public areas, parks, or childrens play zones. Its extensive range of color options allows for playful and inviting designs that can enrich public environments, fostering social interaction and engagement. The lightweight yet durable construction makes it a practical choice for these settings, ensuring longevity while maintaining a sense of artistic fluidity.By applying a single technique in multiple ways, Paola Lentis Hana-Arashi collection masterfully balances form, function, and sustainability. Without compromising the meshs smooth texture or high recyclability, the collection breathes new life into discarded materials, proving that waste can be reimagined as art. In a world striving for eco-conscious innovation, Hana-Arashi stands as a testament to how thoughtful design can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.The post Japanese Company Turns Fabric Waste into Stunning, Sculptural Outdoor Furniture first appeared on Yanko Design.