These past few years have felt like a trial run of living through the end times. Thankfully, 2022 seems like it’s off to a promising start: Turkmenistan plans to close the blazing natural gas crater known as the “Gateway to Hell,” presumably to keep the other three horsemen of the apocalypse from following their buddy…
Lang, who had been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma, helped create the historic 1969 music festival that served as a touchstone for generations of music fans.
You might not have to send your devices in (or buy replacement parts) if the display breaks — you could just make new screens yourself. University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed what they say is the first fully 3D-printed flexible OLED display. In theory, you wouldn’t have to depend on panels made at large, distant factories to build or repair your gadgets.
The new approach combines two methods of 3D printing to print the six layers needed for a functional display. The team used extrusion printing to make the electrodes, encapsulation, insulation and interconnects, while active layers were spray-painted at room temperature. Past attempts by various teams either had issues with light uniformity (consistency across the whole panel) or relied on techniques beyond 3D printing to put some components in place, such as spin-coating or thermal evaporation.
The prototype was just 1.5 inches wide and used just 64 pixels. Any practical uses would require much higher resolutions (a 1080p display requires over 2 million pixels), and the scientists also want to improve brightness. It might also take a while to adapt the technology for home use. The university used a custom 3D printer that costs as much as a Tesla Model S — it might take a while for the method to be viable on off-the-shelf printers, even including high-end models like FormLabs’ $4,850 3B+.
The very nature of the technology makes those goals relatively achievable, though, and opens the door to numerous possibilities if and when home-printed OLED displays are practical. On top of do-it-yourself repairs, this could help you build homebrew gadgets with custom screens. While this effort doesn’t quite represent the democratization of tech manufacturing (there are many more parts than displays, after all), it could reduce your dependence on companies’ pre-assembled components.
Roblox may be enjoying success in many parts of the world, but it’s currently in limbo in China. TechCrunch has learned Roblox temporarily shut down the Chinese version of its game platform, LuoBuLeSi, on December 8th for some “important transitory actions” needed to develop a future version. The company was shy on what those moves involved beyond the “data architecture,” but a spokesperson said crafting the platform for China was an “iterative process.”
The pause hasn’t thrilled fans. Roblox only launched LuoBuLeSi five months before the shutdown, and many players felt the company only gave them very short notice. They also didn’t buy an official claim they’d been playing a test version, noting they could still spend real money.
There’s a chance China’s strict digital rules may have played a role. The Chinese government requires licenses for games, and Roblox has more challenges than most developers. Its role as a creative platform could easily draw concern from Chinese censors worried about dissent, and the attempt to pitch LuoBuLeSi as a digital education system may have invited attention from officials cracking down on private education. China’s data protection rules could also have contributed to the decision by dictating where and how Roblox stores users’ information.
Whatever the reasons, the temporary halt underscores the difficulties foreign game developers have in China. They not only have to compete in one of the world’s largest markets, but avoid clashes with a government that sometimes has a very different agenda.
For Bob’s Burgers fans, the wait for the theatrical movie has been quite a lengthy one. The movie was originally announced in 2017 with a planned release for 2020, but the merger between Disney and Fox has meant the latter company’s movies have been in a strange state of limbo. There would be few or no updates at all…
The movie community wept when news broke earlier this week that Jared Leto’s Morbius was delayed to April. Marvel’s vampiric antihero is meant to be the next addition to Spider-Man’s cinematic world, which has expanded in some interesting ways recently, but it just hasn’t come to fruition for the frontman of 30…
More than 800,000 noncitizens and “Dreamers” in New York City will have access to the ballot box for municipal elections as soon as next year.
A photographer who once helped project Rilu’s image onto the Empire State Building reminded people to get vaccinated: “It’s more than just human lives that are at stake.”
A whale-shaped bath spout cover, a leave-in conditioner for curly hair, light switch extenders, and more parent-approved finds.
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