Author: easyfilo

Enlarge (credit: BOE/Sina.com)

Monitors with high refresh rates are able to depict fast-paced action more smoothly than standard 60 Hz monitors. Today’s screens can go as high as 360 Hz, but BOE, a Chinese electronics company, is working on increasing speeds to 500 Hz. And it has the prototype to prove it.

Today’s PC monitors typically use a thin film transistor (TFT) array made with amorphous silicon, the same type of non-crystalline material found in products like solar cells. According to a report spotted by Tom’s Hardware and Wccftech from a Chinese publication on Sina.com, BOE, whose business includes making display panels for smartphones and tablets for the likes of LG and Apple, has been working on making it more efficient to replace the silicon TFT active layer with an oxide TFT one, allowing the company to make a monitor prototype that can refresh 1920×1080 pixels 500 times per second.

“Oxide semiconductor display technology has the advantages of high mobility, low off-state current, simple process technology, and large size, which can meet the dual needs of future product quality improvement and energy consumption reduction and has become an inevitable trend in technology and market development,” the Sina.com report reads, based on a Chinese-to-English translation by Google.

Enlarge / Joe Rogan. (credit: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

Spotify publicly posted its platform policies for the first time on Sunday following artists’ outrage over COVID-related episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The policies, which previously weren’t known to the public, offer podcasters and musicians wide latitude over what they can stream on Spotify. They’re similar to the approaches used by other platforms. Spotify does not allow hatred and incitement of violence, deception, graphic depictions of violence, sexually explicit material, and illegal content. The streaming service also says it forbids “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health.”

“These are rules of the road to guide all of our creators—from those we work with exclusively to those whose work is shared across multiple platforms,” CEO Daniel Ek said in a blog post.

Enlarge / China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft flies above Mars. (credit: CNSA)

China celebrates the start of a new year on Tuesday—it will be the Year of the Tiger—and on the eve of the holiday, the Chinese space program sent a special message from the red planet.

The country’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Mars for nearly one year, captured a “selfie” video that shows the craft passing in front of the planet. This video was taken by a camera on the end of a narrow arm that extends 1.6 meters away from the vehicle and is used by operators to monitor the health of the spacecraft.

Highlights of the visuals include Tianwen-1’s waggling solar panels, main engine, and fuel tanks. About halfway through, the ice-capped northern pole of Mars appears in the background as Tianwen-1 makes its orbit around the planet.