It’s finally the weekend, which means it’s time again for us to name our tech winners and losers this week.
The highly anticipated sequel God of War (2018) launched this week. God of War Ragnaroksome very early Pixel 8 leaks and the first lot Black Friday The deals come ahead of a huge sale later this month.
Scroll down to see who we picked as this week’s winners and losers…
Winner: LG
Our winner this week is LG after the company unveiled a potentially game-changing new display technology.
A technology that LG called “Stretch” display, apparently the world’s first 12-inch high-resolution display with 20% stretchability. Essentially, this means that the screen can be extended, collapsed and twisted without damage or distortion.
The display, based on the same silicon substrate as in contact lenses, uses a micro-LED light source. It has a resolution of 100 pixels per inch and supports full-color RGB, which allows it to compete with many existing monitors, according to the brand.
Apparently it’s pretty durable too. The flexible, spring-loaded, S-shaped wire structure allows the screen to stretch from 12 to 14 inches while also being able to withstand “significant external impacts.”
While we’re probably still a long way from seeing this technology in the real world, LG is already envisioning a wide range of scenarios for the stretchable display. For example, it can be attached to curved surfaces such as clothing, furniture, cars, airplanes, and even skin.
with complex displays that appear on more and more smartphones and foldable screens on the horizon, it seems that it is only a matter of time before the debut of stretchable devices.
Loser: Twitter
Twitter has largely remained stable over the past decade, with the biggest scandals being the large number of bots populating the site and what Donald Trump was doing before his account was suspended in 2021.
That all changed this week, however, when new owner Elon Musk launched a revamp of Twitter’s Blue subscription service.
For the low price of $7.99/£6.99 per month, you can also see fewer ads, post longer videos, prioritize your tweets on the platform, and see your account verified with the same blue checkmark as before was reserved for the likes of Joe Biden, the BBC, Beyoncé and Musk himself.
Of these features, the blue tick has generated the most buzz on the site, with many users noting the obvious implications of allowing people to verify their own accounts for the price of a Starbucks Frappuccino.
We’ve seen verified accounts post tweets attributed to the likes of Nintendo of America, LeBron James and Jesus Christ himselfand that’s not even mentioning accounts impersonating companies and celebrities that spread dodgy links, putting your personal data at risk.
Other sites have laughed at the situation, with Tumblr currently selling two packs of “Important blue Internet ticks” for $7.99 with no limit on how many you can buy.
At the time of writing this column on Friday, we noticed that the button inviting you to join Twitter Blue had mysteriously disappeared from some of our accounts, and the app now claims that signing up will soon be available at our location (this was not the case in Thursday).
What this all means for Twitter Blue remains to be seen, but in the meantime, you can get a little glimpse of the chaos that’s taken place on the site this week in this thread.
