Rob Lutter

MOANA live-action remake, starring Dwayne Johnson, has pre-sales bombing harder than expected. The projection for its domestic opening weekend is now down to $45M-$60M. With a budget of ~$200M, it is on track to become one of Disney’s biggest bombs.

So, is this the part where my 3D printing chapter starts to close? For anyone new here, my name is Austin, aka ZombieHedgehog. I’ve been printing nearly nonstop for over 4 years across everything from off-the-shelf machines to completely custom builds. I livestream multiple times a week on Twitch, post content on YouTube, and spend a probably unreasonable amount of time thinking about how to make printers, prints, and the overall 3D printing experience better. During the day, I work full time as an Electrical Engineer designing critical electrical substations. That means working on failed equipment replacements, expansions, and completely new sites to help keep up with the growing demand on the electrical grid. It’s technical, high-responsibility work, and it has definitely shaped the way I look at machines, systems, reliability, and problem solving. In 3D printing, my focus has always been bigger than just showing off prints. I do printer unboxings and first impressions because after using so many machines, I’ve developed a pretty sharp eye for spotting potential problems, smart design choices, and the little things that can make or break the user experience right out of the box. Custom printer builds are where my 3D printing journey really started. I began by designing my own parts to build the best machine I could with the limited budget I had at the time. Over the years that turned into everything from mostly 3D printed machines to fast CoreXY builds, experimental beta machines, and multiple heavily involved toolchangers. Some of those printers were even built specifically to bring to RepRap events to help inspire the next generation of builders. Printer mods are another major part of what I do. Whether it’s a custom build or an off-the-shelf machine, I’m always looking for ways to improve workflow, reliability, quality, performance, and of course make the printer look as cool as possible while doing it. Then there are the actual 3D printed projects. Over the years I’ve built RC cars, detailed display pieces, functional dart blasters, organizer systems, working instruments, trains, props, multicolor models, and plenty of strange ideas that somehow became real. I try to keep the projects diverse because 3D printing is so much more than one category of objects, and I want to show as many sides of it as I can. Filament is a huge part of that too. I honestly can’t count how many spools I’ve gone through at this point, but based on how consistently I print, it is probably over 500 spools and counting. Polymaker has been a huge supporter of the channel from early on, but I made sure my First Partner agreement stayed non-exclusive so I can continue testing filaments and equipment from other brands fairly. I care about printability, but I also care a lot about color choice, material choice, and planning prints in depth so the final result actually matches the idea I had in my head. Printer tuning has also been a constant obsession since my earliest machines. I love trying to find the best balance between quality, speed, strength, and reliability. I’ve created a lot of tuned profiles over the years and published some on Patreon for convenience, but I’ll always explain my methodology and thought process live on stream when people ask. To me, the goal is not just printing faster. The goal is making every print successful, intentional, and worth the time and material that went into it. All of this comes back to the same main goal: making 3D printing a better experience. I’m not doing this just to chase the most money possible. I’m doing it because I genuinely believe good content, honest testing, clear explanations, and shared resources can help people. I’m not perfect, and I never will be, but after years of printing, building, failing, fixing, and sharing, I know I can make an impact, even if it only helps a small percentage of people get better results or feel more confident trying something new. So is this a long explanation of why I’m stepping away from 3D printing? Of course not. It’s the opposite. This is me taking the next big step toward the educational content I’ve been planning for years. Over the next few months, I’ll be gathering suggestions, building resources, and continuing the larger Hedgehog Makes: The Future initiative I started last year to help push 3D printing forward. Thank you all for watching the content, hanging out during livestreams, engaging on social media, supporting the channel, and helping shape what this has become. And this is just the beginning😎

Hello, Piston Peak and Villains Land. 👀

We lost this for this. Was it worth it?

We checked out the new Ice Cream Museum in Las Vegas! Fun museum with slides, activities & photo ops. Best of all, it's home to the world's largest all you can eat ice cream buffet! There are 24 flavors including Dole Whip, plus 40 toppings to choose from! Ticket starts at $42. Located at Area 15 next to Universal Horror Unleashed 🍨🍦

Some people should not be printing.

This is an important email I sent today to all employees at XBOX: Team, We are beginning the most significant restructure in XBOX history. After careful consideration, I've made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave XBOX to new management. I recognize that a year-long restructuring creates additional challenges. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make all the necessary changes in a single day, and I wanted to be direct about the scale. I know this is painful. These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building XBOX. Many joined us through acquisitions, while others were recruited here, or sought us out because they loved this industry and loved XBOX. Today's decisions do not reflect their talent or dedication. Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3–10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX. First, we will reset our content portfolio. Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined. We now find ourselves competing not only with the largest publishers, but also with smaller independent studios. It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested. As we reset XBOX, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision. Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to management and transition to independent studios with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3. In France, Arkane’s management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options. We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects. These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions. In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players. They bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX. Second, we will reset our platform. We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined. That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset XBOX, we will simplify. We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes. And we will streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base, shared services, and 50% reduced vendor spend. Third, we are resetting how we operate. As XBOX grew our headcount, we became more fragmented. Teams, studios, and functions often operate independently, and it became harder to work towards a shared goal, make the right tradeoffs, and get things done. For the first time, we are establishing a Chief Operating Officer with end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services. Helen Chiang has been promoted to this role and will report directly to me. Over nearly two decades at XBOX, Helen has helped build some of our most important businesses, from XBOX Live to leading Mojang and the Minecraft franchise. She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results. Thank you, Dave McCarthy, who is retiring after 17 years with XBOX. Dave has played a defining role in building the platform that millions of players rely on every day and has been a trusted partner through many of the biggest moments in XBOX's history. We wish him all the best. These changes are about a bigger future for XBOX, not a smaller one. The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we've seen before. This year, we'll invest as much in XBOX as we ever have, but we'll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making XBOX where the world plays and creates. I want XBOX to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect. I know we can achieve this goal. XBOX has many of the most beloved franchises in entertainment history, talented studios around the world, and we will return to growth in 2027. History is full of companies that mistake longevity for inevitability. We will not be one of them. Asha