Month: June 2020

• 

  The most conventional view shows you your engine revs on the left and speed on the right, with other pertinent information in the middle. [credit: Ford ]

Among the most immediately noticeable technology upgrades in the new Ford F-150 are the truck's digital displays. We didn't have any images to share when our coverage was published on Thursday, but Ford sent over a pair of short clips that show off the new UI for the digital main instrument cluster and its latest Sync 4 infotainment system. So we decided to share them with you now. You can check out the gallery above, or watch the pair of video clips embedded below.

12.3-inch main instrument display

The F-150 isn't the first Ford to get an all-digital dash; you can find a 12-inch display instead of old-fashioned dials in newer Mustangs, and the electric Mustang Mach-E crossover uses a 10-inch display in front of the driver. The 12.3-inch screen that faces you in a 2021 F-150 looks more elegant than any of those 'stangs, though:

"The idea is it presents information in a very directed way so that it almost behaves like a concierge. So it's presenting the most important information and being able to move things around in a digital environment to make room for other content that's perhaps more important," said Mark Sich, F-150 digital designer at Ford. The move away from a skeuomorphic UI required some testing with Ford's truck customers, Sich told Ars. "What we discovered was that, as long as the information is presented in a real, digestible, understandable, hierarchical way, they were willing to really take that leap of faith."

Enlarge / The polymer, called COP-180, selectively captures gold after it has been leached from e-waste. (credit: Yeongran Hong)

One thing holding back e-waste recycling is the actual recycling process itself. We need cheaper, safer, cleaner, or more effective methods of separating and recovering the valuable elements from electronics before we can make the whole endeavor more attractive and profitable. Some current methods use large amounts of energy to melt components down, but chemistry could provide some tempting alternatives.

A new study led by Yeongran Hong of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology involves a chemical with an impressive affinity for gold. Subject some circuit boards to an acid treatment to release its materials and this stuff will gather up all the dissolved gold. And after it lets go of that gold, it’s ready to be used again.

The researchers’ gold-scrubber is based on an organic compound called a porphyrin. Linked together in a polymer, it possesses lots and lots of little pores that, energetically, want to host a metal atom. That’s the kind of structure chemists look for to help with recycling.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

When the dust cleared, the golem lay in pieces across the dungeon floor. Erik sighed deeply, and though his vision blurred, he could still see the rest of the party coming to his aid. Emmelina, the knight that had first welcomed him into the group, cradled him in her arms as he took his last breath. Our team had come this far only to lose its youngest member. Across five different states, there wasn't a dry eye among our team, but we recomposed ourselves and continued to play our tabletop adventure through the service we’ve used for half a decade now: Roll20.

Perhaps, like me, you had fun adventures with friends locally when you were younger or, perhaps you're interested in role-playing now but unable to actually, you know, meet up with anyone thanks to the pandemic. If so, Roll20 solves the biggest hurdle between you and delving dungeons with your buddies. And it does so without overly complicating things. If you have access to the internet, you can run virtual tabletop games of Dungeons & Dragons—or anything else—thanks to Roll20.

Your standard map with tokens on it after a hard-fought battle with dice rolls to the side.

What is Roll20?

Roll20 is a digital platform from relatively small company The Orr Group. It launched in 2012 and allows people to create, share, and play tabletop campaigns. Various upgrades are available to purchase, but the basic service will let anyone do all of the above without too much muss or fuss. And of all the reasons to give Roll20 a shot, possibly the biggest is the simplest: it’s free.