LG has unveiled the Smart Monitor Swing, a 31.5-inch 4K UHD touch-enabled display that comes on wheels and runs webOS.

The comments come as Alphabet and other tech companies prepare to pay up due to the Trump administration's trade policies.

Plus, how key characters like the evil Malgosha and the wolf Dennis were made. When Wētā FX began venturing into A Minecraft Movie with director Jared Hess, one immediate challenge the studio faced was how to realize the ‘blocky’ style of the Minecraft world, from the video game the film is based on.  “We knew right from the get-go that it wasn’t necessarily something we could approach as traditional matte painting,” identifies Wētā FX visual effects supervisor Sheldon Stopsack, who worked with production visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon on the film. “We couldn’t paint our way out of it for the extended vistas and scopes of the Overworld and the Nether. We knew we had to build this world from the ground up, from front to back in every single aspect and detail. Our models team came up with a prototype and idea fairly early on, which ended up being called the ‘Blockz’ tool.” The Blockz tool allowed artists to block out broad, and sometimes intricate, shapes with basic geometry. “What the models team then did was turn a watertight mesh into a closed volume, which became a point cloud, effectively,” explains Stopsack. “We then utilized this point cloud to instance individual blocks from our inventory to create a blockified version of the input geometry. The idea was to be able to utilize different block types and materials that are created just like in the game. And then, we assembled them. The tool gave us a lot of control about different scales and material propagation. We could even introduce an amount of jitter so that there was a little bit of imperfection. That all played a role in the sense of figuring out how stylized and how true to the game we wanted to go.” The next challenge was how accurately to represent landscapes inside the world with blocks themselves (as they are in the game). “We wanted to honor the game very much so we looked at, what if we build everything with a true-to-the-game block size, which might be a meter high each?” recalls Stopsack. “But, if you do something like that and then you build, say for the Overworld environment, a mountain in the background, which we called Mount Minecraft, it would be six kilometers high. So, if you were to build it true to the scale of the blocks in the game, you wouldn’t even see a block anymore. It’s so tall, it would basically be a subpixel blur and your block size wouldn’t necessarily work anymore.” For this reason, the studio decided not to represent assets in those exact block sizes, but instead play with different scales. It still resulted in something like Mount Minecraft being 3,434,127 individual cubes (ie. around 20 million faces), but with the ability to art direct the look a little more. “In the end,” says Stopsack, “we would bake the asset down and then we created a new hero holistic asset from that which we then could treat a little bit more organically with more textures and treat them so that they were not just replicas of each other. It was an ongoing journey to find the right balance of blockiness and stylization, yet also obeying some realism. We also had to combine this with live-action photography, so there was no escape.” How much ‘blockiness’ to go with was also a consideration for the characters that Wētā FX developed, such as Dennis the wolf. “He was a struggle to get right,” notes Wētā FX animation supervisor Kevin Estey, referring to translation of the wolf from a blocky character in the game to the film. “Every time we tried to round anything off like his smile or the corners of his eyes or anything like that, if you went a little bit too round, it almost got a bit uncanny in a weird way. It took a while to finally crack the code and understand that we had to stick to the squarish aesthetic with harder corners in the eyes and harder corners in the mouth.” A blockiness style applied to the animation as well, to some degree, advises Estey. “We did approach everything with the understanding that it needed to sit in reality with live-action characters, which meant we couldn’t go so stylized that we ended up doing, say, step animation or anything like that. But we did have freedom to explore different things that might not always work with standard visual effects in a live-action film.” This related further to facial animation in terms of the face shapes that Wētā FX built for Dennis. “I remember that was a big moment that we were in the middle of the shoot with the production team and we were still trying to figure out how to make Dennis not look kind of freaky,” shares Estey. “When we realized that the mouth shapes had to maintain the corners that we build into the facial animation, that was a big moment for understanding that the squarishness and the blockiness needed to travel through into the motion as well.” Making Malgosha Another standout character for Wētā FX was the Piglin ruler of the Nether, Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House). The studio referenced Mama Fratelli from The Goonies, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars and the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal in their designs for Malgosha.  “She is so unique in having a super squared-off fridge-sized hunchback,” says Stopsack, who observes that bringing that kind of look to life was a tough task. “Her appearance was almost 90 percent cloak. The cloak played a pretty pivotal role. We were fortunate enough that the production’s costume department actually built a super-elaborate 35 kilogram heavy cloak for on-set reference. It was so heavy, it wasn’t practical to use for any sort of proxy actor to actively wear on camera, but it was good reference.” Wētā FX also engaged with creature performer Allan Henry, standing in for Malgosha on set. After principal photography, Henry was part of a motion capture shoot at the visual effects studio’s mocap stage that further aided in finding the character.  “Malgosha’s hunchback was something that spoke a lot to what her gait would be and how she’d carry herself,” describes Estey. “Allan was great in figuring out how to make her walk with a bit of a limp, even to the point where he would favor a certain side of his body. We always tried to make sure that the staff was on a certain side that was helping the limp. He would always carry in his other hand—we just called it the chicken claw. And so, that became something that was very synonymous with Malgosha’s character and it was fun because she kept hooking her finger inside the cloak. It was all those pieces of input that helped with our exploration of how you make this giant, hulking refrigerator with gangly limbs move in a realistic way, as well as Rachel’s input.” One particular sequence in the third act battle sees Malgosha, near defeat, try to convince Jeff to step closer to her so she can stab him with a series of concealed blades. Each attempt becomes more humorous than the last. “I remember laughing so loud on set when this was actually played out with Jack and Allan,” notes Stopsack. “It was absolutely hilarious.” “Yes, the entire crew of 100 people had to just hold their mouths, and then, as soon as they called cut, people would burst out into laughter,” recalls Estey. “Allan and Jack came up with the final line. Jack’s character throughout the film is always saying ‘sneak attack’ and they thought it would be funny if Malgosha also says it at the end when she does her final blade throw in the most useless and weak way. And that’s the thing that just had people absolutely rolling.” Estey mentions that, in addition to the hilarity of that moment on screen, Wētā FX was actually also able to craft some background action with some Piglins holding censers that played further into the slightly absurd nature surrounding the character. “This really speaks to the free-flowing nature of the production. We had a two week mocap shoot here at Wētā, and Jared came up to me and the stage manager and said, ‘I’ve got this really stupid idea, could we get two little Piglins that have censers with incense. I just think it’d be funny if they’re always next to Malgosha, no matter what.’ So, we mocked something up. And on set, we just started calling them ‘Priestie boys’ and then that became their name, internally.” The wackiness surrounding Malgosha did not stop there. At one point, she stabs a little Piglin who has made a drawing of an idealized house and garden. It turns the Piglin immediately into a pork steak. “Originally,” states Estey, “what was meant to happen was that she smacks the Piglin away and it’s meant to fall back and off-screen. We did a few like that on the mocap stage, but then I think Jared said, ‘What if we stabbed the Piglin?’ I’m like, ‘Can we do that? Is this a PG movie?’ Then I thought, ‘Well, what if the Piglin just turns into a pork chop on the end of the knife?’ So that’s what we did. I love that it made it because I thought, ‘I don’t know, stab a kid?’” The drawing the Piglin shows Malgosha just happened to be one made by a daughter of Stopsack, as he recounts. “We knew we had this drawing to do, so we encouraged kids to do some artwork. We actually called it, ‘We Need a Terrible Drawing.’ Not exactly an incentive to the child—’Hey, can you provide me with a terrible drawing?’ But, we had this art competition and all these kids of our co-workers did them. The original drawing was Malgosha and the Piglin holding hands, very cute, but Jared discarded the idea for a little while. Then it was back in, and I tasked my kids with, ‘Hey, can you give us a terrible drawing of a Minecraft house?’ So yet again, they went back to the drawing board and both of them chimed in and put their best foot forward, and we submitted it to Jared for review.” “And then, ultimately, he made a pick, but the pick didn’t go through without a note! I had to break the news to my daughter that she had to address the note. So she gave us another revision and we made another submission with that note addressed, and we submitted it to Jared and it got finally approved, which was great.” Crafting more characters In addition to Malgosha and Dennis, Wētā FX was responsible for designing a range of others featured in the film. These were also shared with the show’s other VFX vendors including Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. The bee and the sheep are two of Estey’s favorites from the film, all the way from early movement tests. “We did these internal asset turntables where we presented a character, both internally and to the client. I decided to use that as a bit of a platform to have fun with the characters and see what we could do.” “And so,” adds Estey, “I had come up with this bee animation of him flying around a C-stand and then running into the camera, which made it into one of the trailers. That was just from an internal test. I really wanted to make him run into the camera and then knock it over. I even made him stain pollen on the lens. It was just to get a bit of a laugh out of everyone internally.” The sheep was a clear example of the way Wētā FX got to interpret the Minecraft universe for the film, flags Estey. “It was an example of the creative license and freedom that the animation team felt in creating some of the motion. There’s actually a moment where the sheep just randomly pukes up some grass that it’s been chewing. It was one of our animators who decided to try to give us a laugh by making it puke. I said, ‘I’m sending it.’ I knew Jared would probably love it and put it in the film, and sure enough he did.” “What’s fun about these characters,” comments Stopsack, “is that all of them were really treated as if they were the hero of the show. Each of them had their own unique little story. We even kept calling the Piglins by individual names, like Grunter, Trotsky, Snowball, Snout—so many. They all went through their own deserved cycle of working out, what is their appearance, body behavior and emotion?” ‘No longer the experts in the room’ While Wētā FX is used to solving complex visual effects problems, one aspect of working on A Minecraft Movie left the team perhaps more humbled than usual. “We were no longer the experts in the room,” admits Stopsack. “Typically, you are the supervisor, you go into the room, you give notes, and everyone expects you to have the answers. On this one, it was interesting because we were like, ‘OK, do this,’ and then, all of a sudden, a voice in the dailies review sessions would be, ‘Yeah, but in the game, it’s like this…’. And then, you’re like, ‘Okay, I learned a thing.’ We were constantly schooled about what is true in the game and what the rules are within Minecraft.” “We had so many people on the team that were just so savvy,” adds Stopsack. “They were consultants, really, because they’ve been living and breathing this game for most of their lives and they all chimed in. It was fantastic because it was a completely different level of engagement.”  Estey agrees, and to help honor the legacy of the video game he began playing it again during production with his son, now 14, but who originally played Minecraft when younger. “It helped me understand the ins and outs of it. I remember there was a dailies session where Sheldon was discussing the scene of Jack throwing some blocks to make a building. Sheldon was asking, ‘Should we maybe mix up the materials of these blocks?’ and I just chimed in by saying, ‘Well, make sure you don’t do dirt because dirt won’t stick on the side of wood, it’ll just fall to the ground.’ I really surprised myself, knowing this!” The post Behind the tool Wētā FX developed to help ‘blockify’ geometry in ‘A Minecraft Movie’ appeared first on befores & afters.

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. For anyone following the headlines about African fintechs over the last few years, it must have felt like a wild ride—from buzzing highs to plunging lows, and everything in between. But beneath these surface narratives, a more interesting story is emerging. This will be the year the focus on African fintech shifts from valuations to delivering value, and the process is already underway.  Sustainable practices take center stage  ​​​​​Fintech funding in Africa dropped by 37% from 2022 to 2023. The downward trend persisted in 2024, with funding in the first half of 2024 falling from $864 million to $419 million, a 51% decrease versus the same period in 2023. This funding downturn has forced fintechs to reassess their models, moving away from growth-at-all-costs towards sustainable business practices that emphasize real-world solutions and long-term viability. Now, fintech companies must focus on building resilient, profitable businesses that can thrive without relying on constant infusions of venture funding.  Take Nigeria’s emerging direct debit solutions worth​​​​​​ over $13 billion in 2023, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria. This isn’t a speculative bet on one of the many technology trends. Instead, these are practical innovations that help businesses in the country stabilize cash flow and simplify recurring payments for consumers. The focus on solving real problems rather than securing the next investment round signals a maturing ecosystem—one that prioritizes longevity over hype.   Technology that matters  The shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. African consumers are more selective than ever—they’re not just mobile-first but mobile-native. They expect frictionless digital experiences comparable to global platforms, but with local relevance. This is forcing fintechs to focus on what truly works.   Artificial intelligence plays a role in this transformation, but not in the way many predicted. Fintechs are using AI to enhance fraud detection, automate compliance, and personalize financial services—practical applications that build trust and drive adoption.   Similarly, blockchain is proving valuable beyond speculation. Instead of chasing volatile cryptocurrencies, fintechs are leveraging blockchain to improve cross-border payments, cutting costs, and speeding up remittances. With Africa receiving over $100 billion in annual remittances, these innovations have a direct, meaningful impact. When traditional transfer fees eat into crucial remittances, blockchain’s ability to reduce costs and increase speed isn’t just a technical achievement, it’s a tangible improvement in people’s lives.  The new success metrics  The combination of consumer-driven demand and practical innovation is reshaping how success is measured in African fintech. The next wave of investment won’t be driven by hype or viral success stories. Instead, investors are looking for sustainable growth and profitability over inflated valuations. They are looking for products that address fundamental pain points rather than trend-driven solutions as well as operational efficiency and strong regulatory compliance.   As we enter a new cycle where reality replaces hype, 2025 will mark a turning point for African fintech. The most successful companies won’t be those chasing the biggest headlines but those solving simple, essential problems exceptionally well. This isn’t the end but merely the beginning of a more mature, impactful, and enduring era. The revolution may be quieter than expected, but its impact will be deeper than ever imagined.   Olugbenga GB Agboola is founder and CEO of Flutterwave. 

These Polli monolithic outdoor furniture pieces were designed by Karim Rashid and Zachary A. Design, a Chicago-based manufacturer of sculptural furniture. The Polli line appears to be made out of stone, but they're actually a proprietary blend of resin, stone aggregate and fiberglass; company founder Zachary Bitner, a furniture designer and SCAD grad, began experimenting with the mixture in the 2000s. The resultant pieces are all-season weatherproof and, unlike stone or concrete, lightweight enough that the pieces are easy to move. The apostrophe-shaped backless version weighs 27 pounds, and the backed version isn't much more at 35 pounds. Each seat is available in both left- and right-oriented versions. They're made-to-order in Chicago, and available in a variety of colors.

Somewhere between Apple’s $399 iPad baseline and Samsung’s own tablet ambitions, China quietly cracked the code. Not with flagship specs or branding clout – but with sheer, brutal value. Vivo’s latest tablets – the Pad SE and the Pad 5 Pro – don’t make any sense… because how the heck could you get Android tablets from a reputed brand that are somehow as cheap as last year’s AirPods?! The Pad SE kicks off at just 999 yuan – around $137. That’s for a 12.3-inch Android tablet with a 2.5K display, a 90Hz refresh rate, and Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 under the hood. It’s not here to run Final Cut Pro or render 3D models. It’s here to make education accessible, replace your need for a student laptop, and give you all-day battery life without asking for two weeks of groceries in exchange. Designer: Vivo Vivo isn’t even trying to hide its target market. The Pad SE comes with a dedicated Learning Center, featuring AI tutors, textbook libraries, and video lesson access. You’re not getting iPadOS or DeX, sure – but you are getting tools that actually matter for students. In an ecosystem where phones still hover around the $300 floor, a full-screen productivity hub at under half that cost feels like a mic drop. And if you’re worried about screen time frying retinas, the Pad SE’s Soft Light Edition packs nano-etched glass that cuts glare by up to 97%. It’s TÜV Rheinland certified, includes blue-light filtering at the hardware level, and even syncs its brightness to your melatonin cycle. Suddenly, a cheap tablet feels like it was engineered by a sleep scientist. Now, if you’ve got the budget to go bigger, the Pad 5 Pro is waiting – and it’s flexing hard. A 13-inch 3.1K display, 144Hz refresh rate, 1200 nits peak brightness, and more than ten layers of eye protection tech make it a legitimate alternative to far pricier flagships. The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset inside is no slouch either. Pair it with up to 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, and you’ve got a beast that handles gaming, multitasking, and even performance-demanding tasks without flinching. It’s also packing a monster 12,050mAh battery that pushes 16 hours of video playback. Need fast refuel? It’s got 66W charging. Need great sound? Eight speakers in a panoramic layout. Want stylus support? The Vivo Pencil 3 delivers over 10,000 levels of pressure and air gestures, while the Smart Keyboard 5 Pro adds AI shortcuts for presentations and note-taking. There’s even a detachable double-sided clip accessory because, at this point, why not? And the price? The Pad 5 Pro starts at 2,549 yuan – that’s around $352. Just $3 more than Apple’s ‘entry-level’ iPad. Let that sink in. While Western brands remain stuck in their “Pro” and “Ultra” upcharge vortex, China is playing a different game entirely. What Vivo is doing here isn’t revolutionary from a hardware standpoint. But in terms of market impact, it’s seismic. They’ve managed to hit a sweet spot that Western brands have completely ignored: where the device is good enough, but the price is ridiculously compelling. China’s tablet strategy isn’t about being cheap – it’s about being smart, focused, and way more in tune with what everyday users actually need. Sure, Apple’s M-series chipset is phenomenal and Samsung’s DeX mode is neat, but when you can buy a full-blown Android tablet and a keyboard and a stylus for less than the price of a mid-tier smartphone, the value proposition isn’t eye-catching, it’s practically blinding. If the smartphone era taught us anything, it’s that affordability, when executed well, scales faster than premium polish. Especially when we’re approaching a time when tariffs are going to severely pinch pockets… And Vivo seems to understand that.The post Vivo’s $137 Android Tablet Might Just Kill the Entry-Level iPad first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adobe's Alexandru Costin explains Adobe's balancing act.

A new autonomous vehicle framework would also make it easier for Tesla and other companies to research domestically made self-driving cars that don’t meet all federal safety standards.

Google’s parent company, which is battling the government to stay intact after losing two antitrust cases, also said quarterly profit rose 46 percent.

Macworld Leaker Majin Bu has published a blog post with a few new details about iPadOS 19 and iOS 19, and how they’ll work to improve multitasking and productivity. The first rumor concerns iPadOS 19, which we have already heard will feature improved multitasking and more “macOS-like” capabilities, while not actually running or copying macOS. Bu says this will take the form of what he calls “Stage Manager 2.0” (we can see Apple calling it Stage Manager 2, but probably not 2.0). This will reportedly activate automatically when a keyboard is attached, though we presume you’ll be able to trigger it without a keyboard by using the Control Center, as you can today. When docked with a Magic Keyboard (and maybe any keyboard?), iPadOS 19 will also show a menu bar at the top of the display, just as Macs do. This raises all sorts of questions—will there be menu bar utilities for iPadOS 19, for instance? Moving over to the iPhone, Bu says iOS 19 will bring a big enhancement to how it operates with an external display. As it stands, you can use the USB-C port to connect an external display, but it simply mirrors your iPhone display (this feature dates back to much older iPhones when using Lightning-to-HDMI or digital display adapters). With iOS 19, the external display will reportedly show an expanded view, something Bu calls a “Stage Manager-like interface.” It’s not clear how you will control this view, as your iPhone (the sole means of input) would presumably show the same single-app view it always has. Perhaps when using an external display, your entire iPhone’s screen will become a keyboard/touchpad like the Apple TV Remote app, while the display shows a multi-app interface? The rumor makes it sound like less than the full desktop mode of Samsung’s DeX mode, but still a huge step up from the simple iPhone mirroring we have today. All of these changes are in service of providing a more consistent experience across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, one of the key goals of the big redesign coming to Apple’s operating systems this fall. Apple will unveil the new operating systems at the WWDC keynote on Monday, June 9.